America’s best known news-voice lined up his ball on the first tee of the Quaker Hill Country Club, midway between Pawling, N. Y., and Sherman, Conn. Watching were Patty Berg, Helen Dettweiler, Gene Sarazen and Jimmy Demaret. The gallery held its breath.
The ball sailed off the tee—in the wrong direction. Mr. Sarazen looked at Mr. Demaret knowingly. “I guess,” roared Lowell Thomas, “that I should take those six lessons from Madame Lazonga.”
While this shot wasn’t heard around the world, it did inaugurate as unique a country club as can be found in a land where golf to thousands is not just a game, but life itself. This new layout is some 60 miles north of New York City overlooking the Harlem valley in Dutchess county, the home county of President Roosevelt. Its nine holes were made possible by radio and a man who is radio—Lowell Thomas.
For 12 straight years now, Lowell Thomas’ warm, friendly voice has spanned the airways to bring the news of the day, its human interest, laughs, tears, and drama. Broadcasting officials estimate his nightly audience at 20 million. Thomas’ fame has spread through his newsreel commentary, his books, magazine articles and lectures. He has been almost everywhere, knows almost everyone worth knowing; you instinctively like this man of the golden voice and unshatterable poise.
Because of his full weekly schedule, he has not had time in years for an out-and-out vacation, and, as a substitute, spends his weekends on his 3,000 acre Quaker Hill estate. But weekends in the country meant no golf. That was bad. So one day in 1940 while riding horseback on his estate, he had a vision of fields and wooded growths suddenly transformed into rolling fairways, ball-snaring traps and inviting greens. Why not, he asked himself, bring the mountain to Mohammed? The golfing commentator wasted no time. Robert Trent Jones, ace golf architect, was summoned and with the assistance of Sarazen, the “Gentleman Farmer,” the course was properly laid out and work launched. Some $80,000 and one year later the Quaker Hill Country Club had its first play with a benefit match for the Red Cross by the four professionals after Mr. Thomas drove that first ball.
Now the course belongs to the Quaker Hill community for the enjoyment of its residents, who are mainly New York leaders in politics, law, business and banking. They form a restricted group of 55 active and 18 house members; the roster boasts such men as District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey, a member of the board of directors; Kenneth G. Hogate, president of Dow Jones and editor of the Wall Street Journal; G. Lynn Sumner, head of his own advertising agency, and Charles E. Murphy, both ex-presidents of the New York Advertising club.
Then there are Harold W. Williams, British financier; Charles E. Murphy, leading corporation lawyer; Raymond Gunnison, former owner of the Brooklyn Eagle, and Ralph Carson, attorney and Rhodes scholar and the only American ever to be president of the Oxford Union. Sarazen, the Connecticut squire, wasn’t bragging when he declared that within a few seasons, Quaker Hill’s 6010 yards will be as fine as they come. He explained that only time and careful care can develop a great golf course.
While the club actually has only nine holes, a second nine is provided by extra tees. With a par 70, there are 3025 yards going out and 2985 incoming. But it’s the clubhouse, converted from a 100-year-old barn, that dominates the scene and is the pride and gathering place of every resident of the colony.
Lowell explains that when workmen began face-lifting operations, the century-old landmark “not only was old, but falling down.” Now it stands—a golf home of beauty and utility, literally tailor-made by the newscaster for a variety of activities and his professional needs. A large building of white shingles and red trim, it gives a sort of sea-going atmosphere with its two decks. At one corner, a spiral iron stairway leads from the ground to the first deck. The interior scheme is knotty pine and modern bamboo furniture.
No golf club is worthy of the name without a fireplace. The Quaker Hill Commentator planned one that tops them all. Thirty feet high and twenty feet wide, it dominates the main room and is the immediate attraction for all visitors. World-Traveler Thomas decided he wanted a fireplace showing the history of man by its stones. Faced originally with rough tile these are gradually being replaced by stones from some outstanding period or building in history. They range from a 4000 B.C. stone, brought to Quaker Hill from Ur of the Chaldees in Mesopotamia, to one, with two dimes embedded, from Rockefeller Center, New York City, presented by Nelson Rockefeller. Then there is a block from the Palace of King Sargon which is on a 1000-year loan to this rural museum from the University of Chicago, which institution (Squire Thomas explains) is not allowed to give away the treasure. A long white rectangular center stone states in ancient Sanskrit this proverb: “One who lets his day pass without practicing generosity or enjoying life’s pleasures is like a blacksmith’s bellows—he breathes, but does not live.” It appropriately might warn: “One who lets his day pass without practicing will never break 80!”
Whenever a tile is removed and replaced by one of the historic stones, the occasion is marked by an informal program or party. Usually a distinguished guest presides. Former President Hoover dedicated a stone from a long forgotten pre-Inca city of Peru. Brought into sharp relief by expertly concealed floodlights, the fireplace has a stone from St. Peter’s in Rome; two representing long-forgotten Central American civilizations; a stone Buddha given by Burton Holmes, noted world traveler; one from a Hindu temple in Java; a stone from the Peary monument at the frozen tip of Greenland presented to Lowell Thomas by his friend, Captain Bob Bartlett; a block from the Empire State building, donated by Al Smith; a piece from the huge head of George Washington on that mountain in Dakota, sent by Sculptor Gutzon Borglum a week before he died; and stones from the Grand Coulee dam, San Francisco bridge, the home of Thomas Edison, and Mount Vernon. Adding a decidedly unusual clubhouse touch is a soundproof broadcasting studio and office, occupying one side of the building off the main floor.
Here, twice weekly in spring, summer and early fall, Lowell, often hurrying in from a round of golf, goes on the air with the breath-taking events of a fast-moving world. Sometimes club members sit in during broadcasts and frequently the commentator interviews guests.
A teletype brings the news in program form from Thomas’ metropolitan headquarters in the RCA building, New York City. In his rural studio he digests and rewrites before addressing the listening world, from coast-to-coast and from Elsemere Land in the Far North to the pearl fisheries of Western Australia. At another side of the clubhouse and down a few steps from the main room is the trophy room of that fun-loving gang, “The Nine Old Men,” the Commentator’s softball team. Here high on the wall where all can see is a Gene Tunney submitted proverb, in Chinese and American: “Enjoy yourselves for it is later than you think.” That seems to sum up the spirit of this recreation center and its patron.
Giant pictures of the notables who play with “The Nine Old Men,” Gene Tunney, N.B.C. president Lenox Lohr, cartoonists Paul Webb and H. T. Webster, Babe Ruth, Tom Dewey, singers Lanny Ross and James Melton, Brig. General Teddy Roosevelt, Colonel Stoopnagle, radio funnyman, Lew Lehr of Movietone, Grantland Rice, Vice President Wallace, Father Flanagan of "Boys Town," Believe-it-or-not Ripley, Pitcher Walter Johnson, and a score of others cover one wall of the trophy room.
Framed on another wall are the press stories, pictures, cards and balls of the course’s opening day. At the far end of the main room is a stage and motion picture screen. Globe Trotter Thomas, an ardent movie taker, sometimes entertains club members with shows and running comments of local events via a loudspeaker system from the projection booth.
Because of Lowell Thomas, his guests and the games of “The Nine Old Men,” Quaker Hill, with the club as a center, undoubtedly has the distinction of entertaining more headline personalities than any community its size, anywhere from Nome to Zanzibar.
Now Quaker Hill Country Club members are looking expectantly to their first full season of golf this 1942.
As for Lowell, he’s still thinking about those six lessons! Or flying to Africa! Or skiing and broadcasting in the Laurentians!
