Arthur Pomeroy passes away 7 January 2025. RIP.

It is with great sadness that we acknowledge the passing of Arthur Pomeroy on 7 January 2025.

Arthur was the Wellington Chess Club’s club captain and committee member, an NZCF Councillor, a national selector, an arbiter, strong player and all-round stalwart, and most importantly, a friend. We will all miss him.

Bill Forster writes:

”Arthur has been very ill in recent months. He faced his situation with great courage and good humour. RIP Arthur. Arthur played his first New Zealand Championship in 1973 and his last in 2017. His best performance was in Dunedin 1975, 6.5/11 alongside Sarapu and Sutton and behind only Garbett, Fairhurst and Cornford.

He was very proud of being in the NZ top 50 for 50 years. He was a great club man, showing up every week at the Wellington chess club for decades, and answering the call when needed for thankless administration work. As a chess player Art was a positional player, a man of principle. If he had his chance every white game was a Lopez or an Open Sicilian, every black game a Najdorf or a Kings Indian. He didn’t waver from these choices at all over 50 years.

He was an extraordinarily cultured man. A professor of classics at Victoria University, author of a standard text book in his field along with many other publications. He was a gourmet, a connoisseur of sophisticated music, film and literature. He had no other family in New Zealand, but instead he had a very supportive group of similarly cultured friends. I got to know some of these people as they gathered around Art in recent months, and they were in awe of Art’s wide-ranging knowledge of esoteric subjects and fields, the weirder the better. When I mentioned to this group that Arthur was an expert in the Najdorf Defence, even as non-chess players they recognised that with its exotic name it sounded like exactly the sort of specialised, sophisticated, wonderful thing Arthur would devote himself to.”

Updated – with thanks to Art’s colleague, Stephen Epstein, who writes:

“RIP, Arthur J. Pomeroy (Jan. 21, 1953 – Jan. 7, 2025).

Eccentric, idiosyncratic, unique, sui generis. Lovable, endearing, generous. The ultimate in quirky academics, with a hilarious (at times incomprehensible) sense of humour and a wonderful, kind heart. My closest colleague for my first several years at VUW. Art interviewed me by phone for my job here at the university, an interview memorable for being the easiest one I’ve ever had. It consisted of only two questions: 1) How do you feel about coming to New Zealand? and 2) Do you have any questions for us? The rest of the time we talked about NZ indie bands. He was also the person who met me at the airport upon arrival in Wellington over 30 years ago, then up to Mt. Victoria and out to dinner.

Music, chess, film, wine, cats, ties, and any and every esoteric fact that you could think of, all merged with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Greek, Latin and the ancient world, all often appearing in single conversations. Sometimes bits from several areas would collide in the span of a few sentences and require multiple mental leaps to make the connections that seemed to come naturally to Art. In 2002, the two of us led the Classics field trip to Greece together, with a terrific group of students. Many sites were visited, many games of cards were played, much ouzo was consumed.

One of my favourite memories of Art is his fondness for his Wile E. Coyote doll, or Yote, as he was known to all. The first few years after I arrived he had Yote with him regularly, and once I passed him at lunchtime working at his desk, engrossed in his computer and eating a plate of chips. I never mentioned to Art that I, unseen, watched with delight, as he’d take a chip, lift it to Yote’s mouth for first dibs and then onward to his own to be consumed. Did I say Art was eccentric? But there was something very sweet and human within that act.

After the very evident decline of Art’s lungs and heart over the last year, the ultimate end came swiftly, so swiftly in fact that I was out on my bike on Tuesday afternoon in the hope that it would work for him if I stopped by. I texted him before I left, and heard back as I was cruising around slowly towards his house at 2:25 with the brief message “tomorrow good”, so I went in another direction….but that tomorrow wasn’t meant to be. He seems to have passed on later Tuesday afternoon. I am grateful, though, that I got to see him as much as I did in the first few months after he came out of the ICU with what he knew was effectively a death sentence. As others have noted, Art faced the end with good humour and courage.

With great love and affection to you, Art, ave atque vale.  Tomorrow good.”