A Life Transformed by Chess: True Tales of Frank Camaratta

Many chess players have had long-lasting impacts on the sport. They may have an opening named after them, or games considered essential studies. That said, odds are good none of them has impacted the play of competitive chess more than Frank Camaratta. If you’ve ever used a Staunton-style chess set in a tournament or club game, you may have seen his work. Frank’s designs are the living history of chessmen, practical, playable, and beautiful.

If the only way you’re familiar with Frank Camaratta is his House of Staunton legacy, there’s a lot more to him than his beautiful, playable designs. Rocket scientist, founder of House of Staunton, chess historian, chess set designer, card player, boxing and baseball fan, Frank’s story is a fascinating one.

I sat down with Frank for several hours to get more insight into where he started out and how he became The Maestro of chess piece collecting and design.

Interview questions and answers have been edited for clarity and readability. In over five hours of conversation, topics ranged from baseball to space shuttles, and these are the highlights. This interview will be presented in three parts, this first covering the early part of Frank’s life.

Early Life: Philadelphia

Ratcliffe: To start out with, tell me where you grew up?

Frank: Well, first, there's an assumption there that I did. [laughter] I was born in South Philadelphia. I'm first generation, parents are Sicilian and pretty much Northern Italy. My mother was more north, and my father's side is Sicilian. Our family name dates to around A.D. 1150, when the village of Cammarata was established in Sicily. My maternal grandfather was actually born in Tunisia and married Josephine Marotta while living in Italy.

Frank: My father was one of 17 children. He was orphaned when he was around 10. He had no education, and he could neither read nor write. I've often said we grew up in upper poverty. We moved around from South Philly to West Philly. Our first home in West Philly burnt down when I was four or five. That was exciting, lost my dog and almost lost my father, but that's neither here nor there, then moved to another home in West Philly.

Ratcliffe: What was school like for you?

Frank: I went to a Catholic elementary school, called Saint Rose of Lima. The neighborhood was interesting. It was mixed, and the grade school was kind of what I refer to as demilitarized zone, with a fair amount of gang clashes.

Ratcliffe: I grew up in an area of rural poverty, and I understand how the environment at school could be fairly charged. Did you like school, or were you just there because you had to be?

Frank:  Yeah, hated it. Often considered myself a follower, not quite as good as the other kids in my class. Since I was born in October, I was anywhere from six to eleven months younger than everyone else in class. That difference in maturity level had a big effect at that age. I didn’t like homework or studying, so I was usually unprepared for class. When called on to participate in a class assignment, my usual response to the nuns was, “I'm sorry, Sister, but I'm not prepared.” I went through grade school thinking I wasn't too bright. I managed to pass everything as a straight C+ student, but didn't set the world on fire. I didn't like to read, although I had a good memory and a certain aptitude for math.

Frank: We didn’t have books at home. I think I had some fairy tales. Mom used to sit down with me, and I used to scribble on them, but that's about it. I'm not a reader as a result. I probably wouldn't have been a reader, anyway—I just don't like to read. If there's something I need, I'll do it. But other than that, reading somebody else's thoughts? [laughter]

Frank: One interesting story, I walked to grade school every morning, and walking the other way was Wilt Chamberlain, who attended Overbrook High at that time. He was kind of big. [laughter] 

Ratcliffe: He would have been enormous!

Frank: Yeah. He was over 7’, his sidekicks were about 6’ 6”. We used to have basketball practice in Overbrook Gym, and I had the pleasure of being thrown off the court by Wilt. It was their court. We complied, not really being stupid.

Ratcliffe: What kind of kid were you? Were you a tinkerer, a collector, a dreamer? Did you run wild in the streets when you were out of school?

Frank: I love baseball. I played boxball and stickball as a kid, you know. We used to go on the street and draw the bases, and we usually played with a discarded tennis ball. We played stickball with a broomstick. There was a baseball field right near Overbrook. I used to play baseball. I played in Little Leagues, and then I made varsity as a freshman in high school. What did I do a lot? Played boxball in the street and stickball in the alley behind our home.

Frank: I also organized. We had street teams. I lived on Stewart Street. Hunter Street, Addington Street, and Dunlap Street, each had their own team. I would keep the books and a record of the team scores, the stats of the various players. Really liked that. Don't ask me why, just that's what I did.

Ratcliffe: You were a statistics guy, makes sense. Anything else?

Frank: Yeah, tinkering, but only to the extent of working with my father a lot. We did a lot of remodeling houses. I could wire; I could plumb. I could do anything you wanted. Just knew how to do it. When I got our first home after I married, I gutted it, plumbed it, wired it, framed it, and sheetrocked it. I love woodworking. I’ve made furniture, speaker enclosures, chessboards, you name it.

Discovering Chess

After elementary school, Frank’s life changed in several dramatic ways. His family was able to move into an unfinished home in the nearby suburb of Havertown, PA, just outside of West Philadelphia. Frank was adjusting to a new neighborhood and new opportunities while helping his dad, grandfather, and uncles finish construction of the house.

Frank: The neighborhood was far different than Philly. There were some kids my age. They were all in the public school system, and they would sometimes go to their homes and play chess after school. There were four of them who would play amongst each other. I was watching, and one day they asked me, “How would you like to learn to play?” I remember saying, “Well, I think I'm too stupid to learn this game.” The guy that was in last place was very happy to teach me. [laughter]

Frank: That turned out to be not a good choice on their part. For some obscure reason, I just had an aptitude for chess. Don't know why. All of a sudden, it came to me. I think it awakened my abilities in abstract thinking and spatial reasoning. I just took to it, and it worked. It was kind of strange.

Frank: In high school, I formed a chess club and quickly gained a reputation as a strong chess player. I can remember some of the teachers coming in and asking me for advice or some chess lessons. I’m thinking, gee, here's a stupid kid giving lessons to his teachers. I went from basically a C+ student to a straight-A student. Literally, it just spiked like that. Everything became very easy. And again, I don't know why. I think learning chess made me jump that hurdle where you move from normal, two-dimensional thinking to an entirely different plane where you develop an ability for abstract thinking. It seemed to increase my (previously nonexistent) ability to concentrate and focus—just blot everything else out. It just changed everything for me.

Frank described what it was like to go to the Philadelphia Chess Championships for the first time.

Frank: I had been playing for about six months, and my physics teacher got me to play in the Philadelphia Chess Championships. He drove me there. I figured, okay, this will be interesting. I remember going into the club, and there's chess tables with really nice wooden pieces. Posted over each table was [a portrait of] one of the greats of chess, these old-time romantic chess players from the area. It really added to the ambience of the room. Philadelphia Championships! Going into the last round, I find myself tied for the lead with a local expert. Everybody's looking around, wondering, “Who's this kid?” That started it.

A Different Path in Education

After excelling in high school, Frank wanted to continue his education in the field of engineering, a discipline well-suited to a mind gifted in spatial reasoning and mathematics. His path continued to be unconventional.

Ratcliffe: I worked in the aerospace industry on the West Coast, and most of the aerospace engineers seemed to come out of Stanford, MIT, the handful of places known for that discipline. You went to Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University) in Philadelphia—tell me about that choice.

Frank: My choice by default! I couldn't afford to go to college. The family didn’t have the money. I would have normally gone to Villanova, which is where a lot of my high school classmates went, but that was totally out of the question because of the cost. In the northeast area, there are a couple of good engineering schools. MIT is obviously the big one. Rensselaer and Drexel were actually the major local engineering colleges.

Frank: For undergraduates, employers always prefer Drexel grads over either of the other two. The reason is—we went to school for six months, and we worked in industry for six months. We had real engineering jobs that paid us. That was the only way I could afford to go to college. In the summer of my first year, I worked as a landscaper, then started my first co-op job, worked there for six months, went back to school for six months, and so forth.

This college path almost took a disastrous turn in his pre-junior year at Drexel, when his father lost his job, and his family ran out of money. Because his father could not read or write, job prospects were slim at best. Frank had a difficult relationship with his father. He often found himself the target of his dad’s many frustrations, and as the oldest child and only boy (until his little brother was born 20 years later), he was singled out for verbal and physical abuse. Still, he was a dutiful son, trying his hardest to do what was expected to support and help his family. Fortunately, the Dean of Engineering stepped in with a solution and much-needed encouragement.

Frank: My parents got into some financial problems. and my mom said, “You're gonna have to quit school and go to work to help support the family.” My dad was a laborer. He had no skills and no real drive. He couldn't read or write, so he couldn't do much. He used to work doing hardwood floors, sanding them, and the paychecks were abysmal. I can remember opening up his envelope sometimes, and it was $30, $36 and some change for a seven-day week, you know, eight, ten, twelve-hour day.

Ratcliffe: They were taking advantage of him because he was illiterate. [Note: That would be the equivalent of paying someone around $5 per hour in 2024.]

Frank: They were. That eventually went away, and he ultimately got a job at Boeing as a janitor. That was kind of stable and got Social Security. Then Boeing closed, and he ended up as a groundskeeper for Springfield Country Club for the rest of his life. He liked it there.

Frank: But when Boeing closed down, Mom came and said, “We can't make ends meet.” We’d already lost our Beachwood home that the family had spent nearly a year completing and renovating, because she couldn't afford it once it was finished. The utilities, taxes, and upkeep were too expensive.

Frank: I went to my Dean of Engineering, and I said, “You know, I'm gonna have to drop out.” And he said, “Why? Parents need the money, right? You can't not do it.” He said, “They have no right to ask you that. I'll tell you what—I’ll give you an extended tour of industry so you can work an extra nine months. That'll give you enough money to help your parents out, but they don't have a right to ask you to drop out.” He recognized it wasn't fair and was a waste.

The Vietnam War interrupted Frank’s doctoral work as he waited to be called up, an event that never happened. (He was awarded an NDEA Doctoral Fellowship.) By the time the conflict was over, life in Frank’s world had moved on.

A Delegation of One

Frank has been an enthusiastic supporter and promoter of chess ever since learning to play in high school. As a gifted player, he was in high demand for exhibitions, lessons, and community outreach—all on his own initiative, without an organization or club behind him.

Ratcliffe: What are some things you’ve done to promote chess that you’re most proud of?

Frank: Soon after I learned how to play, I learned I could play blindfold. I used to give blindfold exhibitions. There would be ten boards set up with ten people, and you're sitting with your back to them, with no contact with the pieces or view of the board. You call out a move on one board, and the player calls out an answer. It gained a little notoriety. It was kind of unusual, too, in that I could only remember the board I was playing at. I couldn't remember any other boards. When I made a response, the next player would call out his move, and [my mind] would bring his board up.

Frank: From that, I also played simultaneous exhibitions, 25-30 people at one time. For example, I gave one at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. You had all kinds of inmates sitting there, and there were interesting conversations, as you could well imagine. What I found interesting—they were very, very attached to the game, and they really appreciated my coming. I was, I want to say, 17 to 18 years old at the time.

Frank: I would travel to various places on weekends. There was a Children's Hospital, kids with MS and MD. Very young kids. I'd go there to give exhibitions and talk for a while. They really seemed to appreciate that. I used to go to high schools and give lectures and exhibitions, and I ran evening schools for chess. I gave lessons at the adult senior centers. I believe that chess does have some positive effect for dementia patients. It doesn't stop it, but it seems to delay the onset of dementia. That's my opinion, for whatever it's worth.

Frank: That was all doing this on my own. I was not associated with or representing any formal organization. It was just my choice. My reputation carried me around.

Frank was married at 21 and had three boys soon after. The eldest, Marc, had Down’s Syndrome, and Frank’s young family took priority. Sticking closer to home, Frank focused on his career and correspondence chess in the pre-computer age.

Frank: I started playing correspondence chess. I became a Senior Master over the board and an International Master in correspondence chess. I competed in the U.S. Absolute Championships in 1977, 1978, and 1979. The U.S. Absolute is an invitational tournament open to the top players in the U.S. Chess Federation. I also played in international competition. I represented the U.S. Olympic chess team, playing first board and winning the prize for highest scoring player on board one. I like correspondence, but I gave that up when the computer came in. That ruined the game for me.

Ratcliffe: It does seem to be who can play the best computer chess now.

Frank: It’s a totally different game requiring a huge investment in time, as well as hardware and software resources. It’s something I lack the time and inclination for.

Frank: I've had success forming chess clubs, kind of like Johnny Appleseed. [laughter] I came to Connecticut around 1980, and I built a home in Madison, Connecticut, which is a shoreline community. In New England, they have greens. Madison had an old church on the green. It was on the Boston Post Road, which runs all the way up to Boston and beyond. Directly across from the church, there was a building from 1649. How often do you see that?

Frank: I decided, “Okay, let me try to form a chess club here.” I contacted the city, and they said, “Sure, we'd love you to do that.” I figured, okay, I’ll have it on Friday night. I got the place — now all I need are players. So yeah, minor detail. [laughter] It turns out Madison, Connecticut, did not have any U.S. Chess Federation members. I was the only one. So, I sent out a newspaper announcement a couple of weeks ahead of opening day. I remember thinking, “Jeez, you know it's likely to be me and nobody else here.” I set up tables and chess boards, brought in the coffee and pastries. One hundred and forty people showed up the first night! It was just incredible.

Frank: It turned out to be a very successful club, and I developed a format which later became very popular nationwide. It was called a quad, which I think they still call it. It's for groups of four. The players are divided into sections of four players each, grouped by similar club rating. They play each other in their section, a 30-minute game, with the idea being that you could get through your section tournament in a Friday evening.

Frank: From that point, I was elected President of the Connecticut Chess Association, an affiliate of the U.S. Chess Federation (USCF). From there, I was elected President of the New England Chess Association and was politically involved in all the goings-on in the northeast.

Frank: When I got involved in Connecticut chess and the USCF, I became the USCF delegate from Connecticut. I would attend the annual delegates meetings. This afforded me the opportunity to try and get some of my ideas promoted. Then, I decided to run for office.

Always his own man, and a bit of an outsider, Frank was encouraged to “wait his turn” to run for office in the USCF. Some influential parties had hand-picked candidates they intended to elect, and assured Frank he’d get a seat next time if he would play ball. That didn’t sit well with him, and he went ahead with his campaign.

Frank: In my first run for USCF office, I was elected the VP, three years later ran for Treasurer, then three years after that, Vice President of Finance. That's about a 10-year span in the United States Federation Policy Board. It eventually became the Executive Board. I handled things like the Life Member Asset Fund, investing and managing that fund. While active in USCF politics, I became involved in numerous committees. I chaired the Finance, Ratings, Life Member Asset, Computer Chess, and Correspondence Chess Committees. I also served on the Rules, Ethics, Bylaws, and Finance Committees. I was very active and pretty well known. About that time, my professional career started to get in the way. I became bored with corporate executive life and government contracts. I needed to make a change.

Next Time, in Part Two of True Tales of Frank Camaratta

Frank Camaratta’s life changed forever when another teenager offered to teach him chess. He was a kid who didn’t expect much from his life, a poor kid with a rocky home environment and average grades. Beginning with a humble game at a neighborhood friend’s house, all the way to molding USCF policy, chess fueled his trajectory.

Speaking of trajectories—be sure to check out Part II, where we discuss highlights of Frank’s work in aviation and the space program, before we dive back into his many contributions to chess. You may think of him as a chess set designer, but his fingerprints can be found on many innovations in chess today—some may surprise you!