By Ash Alder

It happens in October. The morning is charged with autumnal magic, and ancient memories of the circus awaken in our bones.

A yellow spider descends from the porch rafter like an aerial silk dancer, and a crow pivots round on the wrought iron rail between the fence pickets. In the garden, feathery muhly grass whispers a simple incantation, and winter squash and warty goblins embody the weird and the wonderful. The world is a carnival of texture and color, and spirited creatures remind us of stilt walkers and acrobats and mystical sideshows.

The spider ascends.

Inside, red and golden spirals fall away with each smooth crank of the apple peeler, and the dog-eared pages of the family cookbook mark applesauce; apple dumplings, crisp and tart; great aunt Linda’s brown butter apple loaf.

The crow caws madly in the garden, calls us back to the front porch, where sunlight dances in the spider’s web. She’s spun a message: You, too, are the magician.

The Stinking Rose

In ancient Greece, brides carried bouquets of garlic in lieu of flowers. In ancient Egypt, it was fed those who built the Great Pyramids. In addition to warding off vampires and evil spirits, garlic does wonders for sautéed turnip, beet and mustard greens. Break bulbs into cloves and plant them before the first hard freeze. Although it won’t be ready for harvest until next June, growing your own garlic means you’ll be well equipped for cold (and collard) season next fall. And wedding season, of course.

The sweet calm sunshine of October, now

Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mold

The purple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough

Drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold.

–William Cullen Bryant

 

Brain Candy & Ivy People

In the spirit of Halloween, tricks and treats:

• Weighing in at over 2,600 pounds, the largest pumpkin ever measured was grown by a farmer named Mathias Wellemijns, who wheeled the monster from his home in Belgium to the Giant Pumpkin European Championship in Germany last year to take top prize.   

• Master illusionist Harry Houdini, one of the greatest magicians who ever lived, mysteriously died on Halloween night in 1926. Among his first tricks: picking the lock on his mother’s cupboard to retrieve her fresh-baked apple pies.

• Egyptian farmers swaddled wooden figures with nets to create the first “scarecrows” in recorded history. Only they weren’t scarecrows, per se. They were used to keep quail from the wheat fields along the Nile River.

• During the pre-Halloween celebration of Samhain, a Gaelic festival that marks the end of harvest season, bonfires were lit to ensure the return of the sun. Druid priests offered bones of cattle to the flames. “Bone fire” became “bonfire.”

• The Full Hunters Moon rises just after sunset on Thursday, October 5 — a prelude to Mad Hatter’s Day on Friday, October 6. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” Ponder this and other riddles over tea in the garden — top hat optional.

• The ancient Celts looked to the trees for knowledge and wisdom. According to Celtic tree astrology, those born from September 30 – October 27 associate with ivy, an evergreen vine is known for its ability to cling and bind. Ivy people are charming and charismatic, but their compassion, fierce loyalty to others and ability to flourish against all odds is what sets them apart from other signs of the zodiac. Ivy people are most attracted to ash (February 19–March 17) and oak (June 10–July 7) signs.

 

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.

–Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

Success comes home to Bonnie McPeake

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner

 

The lady is tall, dressed in elegant sportswear, with an exquisite complexion, sweet smile and soft Southern voice. She is known locally and nationally for achievements in the hotel industry. She drives a sporty Mercedes and lives in an urban-chic double-decker apartment overlooking the historic West Pennsylvania Avenue block which she owns — from Hotel Belvedere to Siblings Consignment. Otherwise a hard-edged businesswoman, she melts talking about her six grandchildren.

The ballad of Bonnie McPeake commences in West Virginia, where her parents and their 11 children crowded into a two-bedroom, one-bathroom (in the basement) house on a dirt road. “I’m the daughter of a coal miner and the wife of a coal miner,” she says in a voice tinged with pride and humility. Circumstances improved when her husband, Sam, was promoted to mine foreman. They were able to buy a house which, as it happened, financed their ticket out when, in 1982, Bonnie, Sam and their two small children migrated to Durham. Money from selling that house enabled them to purchase half ownership in a dingy motel, where the family lived in one room. “We slept on a bunk bed, Sam and I on the bottom, the kids on the top,” Bonnie recalls. Eventually they demolished “El Roach-O” and built a four-story hotel.

Business was good. They were ambitious. A guest told them about Pinehurst Motor Lodge, a likely fixer-upper on U.S. 1. They bought it and moved in 1990 to a three-bedroom ranch near Pine Needles.

“I think back on those years — we worked so hard all we thought about was survival . . .  but we were happy,” Bonnie says, wistfully.

Happy but not content, as least not residentially. Along the way, Bonnie had become a Realtor. Perhaps she wanted to wipe out the West Virginia two-in-a-bed image. “I’ve always had a long-term vision. I’m not afraid of dollar signs. All you really need is common sense.”

The vision changed when Sam suffered a stroke. “He wanted to be in the (Pinehurst) village,” Bonnie says. She bought a house that had been divided into three apartments, restored and renovated it, lived there for a while, then sold the now-desirable property. Sam still preferred the village: “There was this house behind us built in the 1880s that was vacant, with water damage and termites, but my son saw possibilities, so we bought it.” Bonnie and her son/business partner Sammy were learning the value of historic buildings. She then purchased the Pennsylvania Avenue property with the plan to rent the ground floor, now Wolcott’s, and create an apartment for them upstairs. “I said I’d put in a lift and an elevator but couldn’t convince Sam.”

Sam died in 2011, leaving Bonnie alone in their Pinehurst home.  “I’m a businessperson. I look at the bottom line. When I see a six-bedroom four-bathroom house I see dollar signs going out the door.”

So out the door she went — a successful young widow with ideas. She would fall back on plans to live over Wolcott’s in a veritable bird’s nest embraced by trees.

Although 160 West Pennsylvania Ave. looks like a residence, it was built in 1890 as Powell Furniture and Undertakers’ housing with a furniture showroom, casket storage and funeral director John Powell’s office — “vital commercial components of a growing health resort town,” according to information provided by the Moore County Historical Association.  However, citizens complained that “Powell’s open wagon rumbling down the streets with a casket (occupied) in full view set nerves a-jangling.”

The premises became Salem Dress Shop and, later, as Bonnie recalls, a lamp business.

But even after the Wolcott renovation the top two floors remained a shambles.

Bonnie rolls her eyes: “Everything had to be torn out. We had to install beams (to keep the third floor from falling).” This gave her the opportunity to create a lifestyle-friendly design yet “like it would have been,” with wide, plain woodwork, simple panel doors and high ceilings, some clad in unpainted tin. She did leave the original heart pine floors, although a 4-inch slope necessitated propping the downwind legs of her massive refectory table on blocks.

Once completed a whiff of antiquity lingered while everything else shouted “Now.”

Bonnie gravitates to bright colors in zingy combinations, especially lime green (on walls and a double-wide chaise) and turquoise (living room love seats). Area rugs are summery, splashy patterns. Add hot pink and violet to the third floor suite devoted to her three young granddaughters, who love staying downtown with “Mee-Maw.”

“We walk to the park and eat at the Ice Cream Parlor,” Bonnie says. She credits daughter Christa Gilder for décor advice including paintings, some by local artists, that continue her palette. Christa, given carte blanche, says, “My mother is very picky, but she trusts me. We like the same things.” Bonnie has perfected painting interesting old furniture with turquoise chalk enamel, then “distressing” the finish for a mod look.

“I was tired of antiques, from the houses in Pinehurst,” Bonnie says, although she chose a dark wood for the kitchen island to contrast with vanilla cabinetry — also a dark sleigh bed and case pieces in the master bedroom, which has soothing gray walls heightened by her signature turquoise in the bathroom.

Bonnie’s floor plan also surprises. A flight of 29 wide, steep steps inside the front door, 31 in a newly constructed back entrance lead directly into the kitchen, with the master suite a few steps beyond. Visitors must pass through the kitchen to reach the dining area, which flows into the living room with bay windows and original Juliet balcony. Bonnie sits there rarely, preferring the spacious terrace created by installing a roof over Wolcott’s screened porch. Leafy branches shield it from street view and noise. Here, she grills burgers while the grandbabies play in a sandbox.

Space beneath the staircase to the third floor has been fitted out as pantry and laundry.

“I have everything I need,” in only 1,500 square feet, Bonnie says.

That third floor is a paradise for her little princesses. Bonnie painted a school desk she found in the attic bright colors and refinished a rocker. The girls have bikes, a doll house, a giant bathroom and beds enough for sleepovers. From Mee-Maw’s home base they can smell the pizza, hear the trains and music, watch the parades, skip to the library, farmers’ market and playground.

McPeake’s project (which won a Southern Pines beautification award) implements trends that began in large cities and have finally reached small-town downtowns: urban renewal/redevelopment that concentrates people and services, reducing transportation time and costs. Her office is a 60 second walk from her home. The practice of “living over the store” has been glamorized by the owners of Casino Guitars on Broad Street. New-construction lofts, duplexes and townhouses suit retirees as well as young families. And people with the means and desire to repurpose classic buildings ensure their future.

Every ballad has a refrain. Bonnie’s might be “Keep movin’.”

“I don’t sit still,” she says. “I’m always doing something. I was up till midnight spraying a light fixture.” In fact, Bonnie suggests that getting there was more than half the fun; in business, rising from a West Virginia mining town to corporate headquarters and, likewise, from a crumbling casket showroom to a vibrant townie pad.

“I can still see what it looked like,” Bonnie says, scanning the results. “The exciting part is remembering how bad it was . . .  and look at it now.”  PS

Uncle Bert, The Armless Elocutionist

By Scott Sheffield

Albert Livingston Stevens was technically my great-great-uncle. But to me, he was simply Uncle Bert. From the first time I could remember family gatherings for Thanksgiving or Christmas, Uncle Bert and his wife, my Aunt Mabel, were there. I remember every Christmas, they would give me two silver dollars in a small white box with a cotton lining. For the entire time I knew Uncle Bert and Aunt Mabel, they lived in Southern Pines, and when I addressed my thank you notes to them, I always thought, as a boy growing up in plain old northern Virginia, how wonderful a place called Southern Pines must be.

Uncle Bert was already 72 years old when I was born, and by the time I first really noticed him — at the age of 4 or 5 — he was the oldest person I had ever seen. I didn’t quite know what to make of him. He had a wild shock of white hair on top of his head, large brown spots on his face and leathery cheeks etched by deep, wavy lines. But it wasn’t his face or his hair that fascinated me. It was something else.

I never remember seeing Uncle Bert dressed in any attire less formal than a coat and tie, and usually a suit. His appearance in those suits was different from any of the other men in the family who were similarly attired. The right sleeve of his jacket never clothed an arm or revealed a hand. The cuff was always neatly tucked into the waist pocket. A stiff, unmoving black glove extended from the left cuff of his jacket. The glove concealed a wooden prosthetic hand, no doubt state-of-the-art for the 1950s, but it was both scary and intriguing to me at the same time.

Albert, or “Bertie,” as he was known in his younger days, was born on May 15, 1874, lost his father at the age of 5 and was completely orphaned at the age of 10, shuffled from one relative to another. At 14, Bertie landed a job, his first, in the wire and cable department of the Edison Machine Works in his hometown of Schenectady, New York. He liked the job and especially enjoyed those occasions when he would see Thomas Edison who, I later discovered, he described as “a kindly man about whom clung an aura of fame.”

Only weeks into his new job, walking home from work on the New York Central tracks, a common path used by the plant’s workers, he was struck from behind by a locomotive. He fell with his arms outstretched, and as the engine passed over him, it severed his right arm at the shoulder and his left just below the elbow. Miraculously, he survived. Damage to his right shoulder was so severe that it was just sewn up and left to heal. However, his left arm was a different story. Because the engine’s wheels had struck it below the elbow, the doctors were eventually able to fit him with an artificial arm and hand. Instead of having to be fed, he learned how to feed himself. He likewise learned to perform much of his daily routine without assistance, with the obvious exception of tasks like buttoning a shirt or tying his shoes.

Uncle Bert had no intention of leading a homebound life. Funds were raised through civic organizations to pay his hospital bills and fit him with his artificial limb. He continued his education, emphasizing music, and eventually studied at Claverack College, an institution that closed in 1902 but was once attended by Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States. After visiting a brother in Tennessee, Uncle Bert decided to go into “show business,” forming his own vaudeville troupe. Among our family’s memorabilia is a copy of one of the posters advertising the 1896-97 season of the Albert L. Stevens Big Five, on which he is billed as “The Armless Elocutionist, Vocalist, Clog and Jig Dancer.”  In addition to the poster, we have a pair of Uncle Bert’s tap shoes. Other members of the troupe were billed as “Acrobats, Contortionists, Tumblers, High Kickers and Masters of Strength.” Another was described as “Virginia’s Great Violin, Guitar and Banjo Soloist.” Still another performed “Gags, Sidewalk Talk, Songs and Dances” as the “Witty Irish Character.” They traveled at first by horse and buggy and later with a wagon and team. It was a show date that brought him to North Carolina for the first time.

He returned to Schenectady in 1901, where the Edison Company had a job waiting for him. Next, he took a turn at selling, which again brought him to North Carolina, then back to Schenectady, where he started a newsroom business. After he and Aunt Mabel married in 1905, employing a strategy of leasing, then buying, as finances would allow, he gradually became his own version of Conrad Hilton, owning five hotels and apartment houses, including The Livingston, The Myderse, Bachelors Hall, The Seneca and Hotel Foster. He served at least one term as the Fourth Ward supervisor, elected on the Citizens Party ticket. In 1914, he began driving his own automobile, a modified Model T Ford. From April 11 to Dec. 1, he put over 10,000 miles on his new car, including a trip to Washington, D.C. The following year he and Aunt Mable, accompanied by another couple, set out on a transcontinental trip to the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.

“For a long time I thought I could have a car fixed so I could handle it,” he was quoted as saying in the March 1915 issue of Ford Times. “But all my friends, and especially my wife, were very much opposed to my trying to drive. They predicted all kinds of accidents if I ever attempted such a thing.

“I had the emergency brake lever changed so I can operate it with my foot. I have a foot accelerator to feed the gas; electric lights which I turn on or off with my foot; an electric horn which I blow by pushing a button with the side of my knee; spark lever bent so I can advance or retard the spark with my knee; and I crank the engine with my foot. I have a steel U-shaped attachment which clamps on the side of the steering wheel. I place my arm in that and steer very easily. I drive just as steadily and well as most people with two hands and arms, and I think a great deal better than some.”

I had heard the story about how Uncle Bert had outfitted a car to accommodate his disabilities and the trip to California many times, each retelling evoking no less awe than the last. While the actual route of the trip is unknown, a little research led me to believe that the most likely one began on the National Old Trail Road. The newest “highway” of the day was The Lincoln Highway from New York to San Francisco, but the Aug. 21, 1915 Wichita Beacon Journal  (accounts of Uncle Bert’s journey popped up in stories ranging from Salt Lake City to Atlanta to Detroit) mentioned him passing through that city on his way west, putting him on the Old Trail. From Kansas he likely took the Leavenworth and Pike’s Peak Express or the Butterfield Overland to Denver where he could join up with the Lincoln Highway to reach San Francisco. In an Aug. 15, 1915 story from the Los Angeles Tribune he identifies The Lincoln as his route west. “When he told his friends that he was going to take his machine across the continent and traverse the mountains and the deserts, they laughed at him,” the L.A. Tribune went on to say.

From San Francisco he went south to Los Angeles and San Diego, then east on the old Santa Fe Trail to eventually rejoin the Old Trail. A driver traversing any of these roads would normally encounter roadbeds fabricated of dirt, sand and gravel, only occasionally finding a stretch of macadam. Oddly enough there was a section from Wheeling, West Virginia, to Columbus, Ohio, that consisted of brick. However, there was also a stretch through the Rocky Mountains that was devoid of any paving material other than what occurred naturally. An official road guide, published a year after Uncle Bert’s trip, described a journey on The Lincoln Highway as “something of a sporting proposition.” Camping equipment was recommended west of Omaha, Nebraska. Add the fact that filling stations were few and far between and a coast-to-coast trip in those days was a daunting undertaking, its completion simply amazing, especially for a driver without arms.

To fund this project, Uncle Bert apparently solicited sponsors, automotive-related companies such as Kelly-Springfield tires and Red Crown gasoline, for the car was emblazoned front to back with decals. Camping out and — as Uncle Bert suggested in one story — selling postal cards also helped defray the cost. Captions on the back of one of the surviving photos identifies it has having had been taken at Universal City, then a new location for the nascent film industry. Why he stopped there is as unknown as the route, but it may have been that during his vaudeville days, he met or associated with some show folk who went on to appear in movies, and he was simply renewing acquaintances.

This was all part of family history, and so, unfortunately, was what happened at the height of his success. It was at the end of the Roaring 20s and optimism in the country was at an all-time high. Then, the stock market crashed and along with it the national economy. The resulting Great Depression saw billions of dollars in wealth and income evaporate literally overnight. Uncle Bert’s fortunes were no different. He lost everything, all his holdings, except for a resort on Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks, which he had given to Aunt Mabel as a birthday gift. With this property, he began a new upward climb, gradually adding more cottages and a store to the resort.

 

A little over a year ago, going through a box of family memorabilia with my brother, Steve, in Florida, we discovered a photostat of an article clipped from an old newspaper, The Pilot. Much of the information in it was familiar to us, but some was new. At the time, I’d lived in Pinehurst for 12 years. That such a story would appear was unsurprising, since he and Mabel lived in Southern Pines in their later years. The article, however, was incomplete, ending in mid-sentence. There was no byline and no date.  My only hint as to the age of the story was that the accompanying picture showed him as I remembered him when I was very young and mentioned that he was in his 70s.

Since my uncle had been born in 1874, the article must have appeared in the paper between 1944 and 1954. The volumes of those years were archived at the Southern Pines Library. The bindings were in various stages of decay, but all the years I was interested in were there. From the portion of the article that I already had, it was apparent the author’s interest in Uncle Bert was his recent decision to buy the Arlington, described in the article as “a large and well established guest house on North May Street.” The building at 440 N. May is there today.

I decided to begin my search for the original article with the year I was born, 1946. I didn’t find it there, nor was it in 1947. Reading articles from 70 years ago, the news of the day and the news makers, the ads and the entertainment notices, provided a whole new appreciation for this place and those times. Near the end of the 1948 volume, I saw it. I was initially surprised and relieved that the page containing the article was there at all because not every page was. The condition was much better than the copy my photostat apparently came from. The date of the article was Nov. 12, 1948.

During their years in New York, the article relates, Uncle Bert and Aunt Mabel had wintered in the Sandhills many times, and it was only with that thought in mind that they returned here again that year. However, they had sold their resort in New York and Uncle Bert had decided that after his long and eventful career, it was time to retire, with an eye toward settling someplace in the South. “When they drove down to Southern Pines a year ago, it was with no thought of entering business,” says the story. But apparently, Uncle Bert didn’t have it in him to fully retire. They bought the guesthouse and settled here.

The article, detailing his life, concludes, “His is a story of struggle, resourcefulness and inspiration with rewards scattered plentifully along the way. Delighted with Southern Pines, making many friends here, he gives the strong impression that ‘the best is yet to be.’”

After 56 years of marriage, Aunt Mabel died in 1961. Following a couple of years at St. Joseph of the Pines, Uncle Bert passed away at the ripe old age of 89. He lies in Mount Hope Cemetery in the town he loved so much.  PS

Scott Sheffield moved to the Sandhills from Northern Virginia in 2004. He is retired from the federal government, where he served as director of the headquarters contracting office for the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, D.C.

Pinehurst amateur Dick Chapman more than held his own against golf’s professional greats 

By Bill Case

Left to right: Dick Chapman, Frank Stranahan, Ben Hogan and Jimmy Demaret

 

In the first quarter of 1946, young Pinehurst attorney Leland McKeithen confronted a dilemma. The Pinehurst chapter of the Red Cross stood $2,500 short of raising the $7,000 necessary to satisfy the goal for its annual fundraising drive. As chapter president, McKeithen pondered ways of reducing the shortfall. Aware that most community residents and visitors shared a love of all things golf, he considered the prospect of bringing top players to Pinehurst to play an exhibition match at the area’s nonpareil course — Pinehurst No. 2.

But, given Pinehurst’s North and South Open and Amateur tournaments, there were already ample opportunities for Sandhills golf aficionados to observe the game’s best in action. McKeithen needed an angle that would encourage the locals to reach into their pockets. He came up with a version of the David and Goliath theme: Match two top professionals, playing as a team, against two amateurs. Sure, the pros would be heavy favorites, but there were notable amateurs around who on a given day could give the pros a battle.

For a total of $500 contributed by a generous Pinehurst donor, two of golf’s greatest, Jimmy Demaret and the legendary Sam Snead, agreed to partner in the Red Cross exhibition. Though better known for his colorful personality and a wardrobe that ranged in hue from canary yellow to powder blue, Texan Demaret also possessed fabulous shotmaking skills, having captured the 1940 Masters. Snead’s Hall of Fame career was skyrocketing. “Slammin’ Sam” would win six times in ’46, including the Open Championship at St. Andrews. 

The amateurs chosen to oppose the Snead-Demaret juggernaut were Frank Stranahan, 23, and Pinehurst resident Dick Chapman, 35. Both came from privileged backgrounds. Chapman’s father made a fortune as a partner in a Wall Street brokerage firm. His mother also came from wealth, derived from her father, Clarence Geist, whose profitable investments began in utilities but included ownership of the Boca Raton Hotel & Club and the Seaview resort in New Jersey. Stranahan’s father owned the Champion Spark Plug Company in Toledo, Ohio. Both players could afford to compete internationally as amateurs, free of worry they would run out of cash.

In an era when the leading golfers were reluctant to lift anything heavier than a cocktail glass, the muscular Stranahan was a conspicuous exception. A devoted powerlifter, the sometimes-arrogant Frank would chuckle when panting bellhops struggled to lift his luggage loaded down with concealed weights. Quirks aside, Stranahan could play. Fresh from victory in Pinehurst’s North and South Amateur, he certainly qualified as a candidate for the country’s best amateur.

So did Chapman. Having won a slew of important pre-war titles including the New York, Connecticut, and French Amateurs, Chapman became a nationally prominent player after he routed his opponent in the finals of the 1940 U.S. Amateur at his home course, Winged Foot Golf Club. Recently discharged from wartime service as a major in the Army Air Corps, Chapman was poised to resume his pursuit of championship victories.

A Greenwich, Connecticut, native, Chapman had recently acquired a residence in Pinehurst. A month before the exhibition, he along with wife, Eloise, son, Dixie, and daughter Joy, moved into an opulent frame home in the area of McCaskill Road referred to as Millionaire’s Row. Chapman’s roots in the town dated back to his earliest days. His parents were respected members of the town’s Cottage Colony, and he had visited Pinehurst with the family for decades. John Chapman, himself a winner of a national seniors competition, introduced his son to the game, and had Dick competing in Pinehurst Country Club junior tournaments by age 9. Infatuated with golf, Chapman practiced diligently, developing  a classic rhythmic swing. Soon he was taking on all comers in Pinehurst and Connecticut, and also as a player on the Williams College golf team. Encouraged by his game’s rapid maturation, Dick began entering Pinehurst’s prestigious North and South Amateur, held annually on the No. 2 course. Chapman nearly won the event in 1934 at age 22, losing the final match to the perennial champion, his former Pinehurst junior opponent, George Dunlap Jr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dick Chapman with son Dixie, wife Eloise and daughter Joy

 

Thus, many of the 725 spectators who paid a dollar to attend the Red Cross exhibition had known Chapman for years and were pulling for their stylish, debonair friend and his chiseled partner to somehow stage an upset over the Snead-Demaret combo. With all four players well-versed in the nuances of the exhibition’s four-ball format (a match in which two players post their lowest scoring ball on each hole against the lowest scoring ball of two other players), the gallery anticipated a riveting contest. As usual, Demaret stretched the fashion envelope, sporting an outlandishly oversized tam atop his head. Chapman appeared in old-school attire, donning a beautifully tailored V-neck sweater and tie.

It appeared the pros might make short work of the amateurs after Demaret holed a birdie putt on the par-3 sixth to put his team 2 up. But the Chapman-Stranahan team clawed back one of the holes on the seventh. The yelp of a dog on the eighth caused straw-hatted Snead to misfire on a key shot, and the match was all square. After quaffing a pint of milk at the refreshment stand, Chapman struck a brilliant iron shot which left his ball snugly hole-side on the par-3 ninth. His birdie nosed his team in front for the first time.

On the par-5 10th, Snead was presented with an opportunity to even the match, but an animal’s noise again disrupted the Slammer’s concentration. A horse on the adjacent bridle path neighed during Sam’s stroke, and his short putt went awry. After Snead narrowly missed a par putt on the 12th, the amateurs suddenly found themselves 2 up. That was how the match stood until the par-3 15th, where Snead finally caught a break. His birdie putt to win the hole hovered on the lip for over 20 seconds before dropping in. But Chapman and Stranahan still clung to their 1 up lead as the four players arrived at the par-3 17th. After another fine iron, Chapman applied the dagger, calmly draining a curving 20-foot birdie. When Snead failed to convert his birdie, he and Demaret were closed out by the amateurs 2 and 1.

After the match, Dick and Eloise, hosted a cocktail party at their home, which they now called Winter Haven. In addition to Messrs. Demaret, Snead and Stranahan, several other golf notables attended, including PGA Tour manager Fred Corcoran, Golf World founder and editor Bob Harlow, and tour player Toney Penna. Nobody relished a good party attended by entertaining guests more than bon vivant Chapman. It was later said of this personable patrician that he “was like a character out of The Great Gatsby, handsome, charming, wealthy . . . a man who knew his way around a golf course or a cruise ship, or a cocktail party on the lawn of a manor.”

The Red Cross viewed the match a success and scheduled another amateurs vs. pros exhibition on No. 2 for March ’47. In order to maximize revenue, the admission ticket was bumped to $2. Pinehurst, Inc. fronted the pros’ stipends. Chapman and Stranahan again teamed up as the amateur duo but this time they would be facing a team that was arguably the best ever — the incomparable Ben Hogan and his Texas cohort Demaret. They were certainly an odd couple. The poker faced, chain-smoking Hogan hardly uttered a word during play, while the colorful Demaret sunnily wisecracked with the gallery. No player in history spent more time on the range than Bantam Ben. By contrast, the naturally talented Demaret seldom hit balls and could reliably be found at a nightclub after posting his score. But when paired with Hogan in team competitions, Demaret shelved the hijinks. Hogan remarked that when Demaret “played with me, there was no fooling around.” Their disparate approaches  somehow blended  into a yin and yang that made Hogan and Demaret nearly unbeatable in the team competitions prevalent during the 1940s. They had already won six four-ball tournaments together and would later team to win two Ryder Cup matches.

The likelihood of the Chapman-Stranahan team replicating their success in the ’46 Red Cross match against such peerless opponents was further diminished by the fact that Demaret was enjoying his greatest season. He would carry off his second Masters title in April and ultimately emerge as 1947’s leading money winner.  And Hogan, too, was on a roll. After years battling unwelcome hooks which would crop up under pressure and wreck opportunities to win, Ben suddenly became the best ball-striker on the planet. Gone were the devastating hooks.  In their place were exquisitely controlled power fades. The wiry Texan  had apparently solved golf’s eternal puzzle. Everyone in golf speculated what the “Hogan Secret” might be, but he declined to reveal any clues other than to say he had “dug it out of the dirt.”

Gen. George C. Marshall congratulates the players of the 1950 match

 

Chapman and Stranahan possessed no home course advantage over Hogan, whose breakthrough victory had come on No. 2 in the 1940 North and South Open — an event that he won again in ’42 and ’46. Hogan appreciated No. 2’s premium on ball-striking and course management, skills he possessed in abundance.

On a cool March Monday afternoon, Hogan and his wife, Valerie, motored over to the resort from their lodgings at Southern Pines’ Belvedere Hotel.  At the first tee, he was greeted with resounding  applause from 800 enthralled onlookers who jockeyed for a good vantage point to watch the players strike their opening drives. The Chapman-Stranahan team got off to a promising start, going 1 up after both Hogan and Demaret  bogeyed the first hole. But the lead was gone when Demaret drained a tying birdie on the third. The remainder of the front nine featured a marvelous exhibition of shotmaking with neither team gaining an advantage. Chapman in particular was knocking the flags down with his irons. He came within an eyelash of holing his approach on the seventh. But Hogan topped Chapman’s birdie with his own. Finally on the long 10th, the amateurs forged ahead after  Chapman holed a 25-footer for a birdie four. The amateurs built their lead to two holes after both Texans pushed tee shots right at the uphill 13th and failed  to salvage pars.

It appeared  the pros would fall 3 down on the 14th after Stranahan’s second shot nestled within 10 feet of the hole. But Demaret turned the tables, holing a curling 35-footer. After Stranahan missed his tying effort, the pros had trimmed the lead to a single hole. Both sides birdied the 16th after Chapman narrowly missed a putt for eagle following his glorious wood shot onto the well-protected green. On the par-3 17th, Chapman must have encountered a sense of déjà vu while addressing his birdie putt to close out Hogan and Demaret. He had made a similar putt on this very green to beat Snead and Demaret  in the ’46 exhibition. He ended  this match in the same spectacular fashion by stroking his winning  putt straight into the cup. Chapman’s personal score of 69  bested both Hogan and Demaret.

Over cocktails at the post-match shindig hosted at Winter Haven by the Chapmans, Hogan uncharacteristically took Dick aside and imparted advice on the amateur’s swing, “particularly in regard to the position of the left shoulder in making full strokes.” Hogan offered tips to fellow competitors about as often as he hit loose shots, but it seems he felt a kinship toward Chapman as both men shared a nearly messianic desire to perfect  their golf swings. Notwithstanding this camaraderie, Hogan did not go so far as to confide to his all-ears friend his mysterious “secret.”

Another tandem of stars challenged  Chapman and Stranahan in the March 1948 exhibition — Johnny Palmer and Bobby Locke. Palmer, a good old boy from nearby Badin, N.C., had beaten the field in the 1947 Western Open, then considered a major tournament. He would win on tour seven times and play on the Ryder Cup team in ’49, the year he finished in the top eight of the Masters, U.S. Open and the PGA Championship.

Locke was in the midst of an incredible 32-month span in which he would win 11 PGA tour events. The South African became the first non-British foreigner to distinguish himself on the circuit, and many of the American  pros deeply resented his success. It did not help Locke’s likeability that he marched in rather stately fashion to his own drummer. He looked and played in a manner different from other players. Dressed at least 15 years out of fashion in plus fours, white dress shirt and tie, his jowly appearance made him appear far older than his age of 30. He played at a maddeningly slow pace, hooking every shot, including the unerring putts he rapped with an ancient hickory-shafted blade. Bobby Locke would subsequently win four Open Championships.

But the Palmer-Locke team could not compare with the draw of Hogan and Demaret, and the admission price was accordingly cut back to one dollar. Those who paid their way were treated to an exciting nip-and-tuck affair. Thanks to Palmer’s sterling play, the amateurs were unable to gain the upper hand, and there would be no three-peat for Chapman and Stranahan. Chapman did come within 4 inches of a hole-in-one on the sixth hole, and Stranahan, needing to hole a 25-foot putt on the 17th to extend the match, managed to do so. But when the 18th was halved in pars, the professionals took the match 1 up.

Perhaps disappointed with the decreased revenue from the series, the Red Cross elected not to hold the professionals vs. amateurs match in 1949. But Demaret did stop by Pinehurst to bunk  in at the Chapmans’ place in mid-April. Friends Jimmy and Dick shared more than their golf talent. Both were accomplished nightclub singers. Chapman had sung at a hotspot in New York and “crooned lilting songs” during a wintertime gig in 1939 at Pinehurst’s long-gone Club Chalfonte. Owner Karl Andrews then marveled, “Dick is playing golf as well as he sings and you know that’s good.” Now, pleasantly immersed in Pinehurst life, Chapman mostly confined his vocal performances to solos in The Village Chapel’s choir.

Hoping for a reprise of the blockbuster match of ’47, the Red Cross lured Hogan and Demaret back to Pinehurst for another exhibition in 1950. But this time, Chapman would have a different amateur partner — Harvie Ward. The charismatic 23-year-old Tarboro, N.C., native burst onto the national scene after his  sensational victory on No. 2 at the 1948 North and South Amateur. A raucous band of fraternity brothers and fawning co-eds from the University of North Carolina motored down from Chapel Hill to root him on, and they carried the beaming Harvie off the 18th green after he vanquished Frank Stranahan. Harvie followed up that triumph by winning the NCAA individual title in ’49, and would later win the 1952 British Amateur, as well as back-to-back U.S. Amateurs in 1955 and ’56.

Mostly recovered from the horrific crash with a Greyhound bus that nearly cost him his life the previous year, Hogan’s game was rounding into form. He and Demaret would post memorable campaigns in 1950 with Demaret winning his third Masters, and Hogan being named Player of the Year after his historic U.S. Open playoff win at Merion Golf Club. Smarting a bit from their stunning ’47 exhibition loss, both stars (particularly Hogan, who hated losing to amateurs) were eager to turn the tables on Chapman and his new partner. This time the pro team played superbly right out of the gate. A pair of Hogan deuces on the ninth and 15th left the amateurs reeling 2 down. It appeared that Chapman and Ward would be closed out on the long 16th, but Ward “scrambled from trap to roadbed” to halve the hole and keep the match alive.

After nailing his rifle-shot iron to the 17th green, Hogan was sure of his par and certain victory. The amateurs were down to their last bullet — a 60-foot putt by Chapman to extend the match. As Chapman addressed his ball, a sparrow suddenly perched directly on his line to the cup. His concentration broken, Dick stepped aside until the bird flew away. After he took his stance a second time, the bird repositioned itself on the line and, according to the Pinehurst Outlook, ”went into a feathery sort of buck-and-wing.” The exasperated Chapman was forced to back off his putt again. Finally, the sparrow exited for good and Dick rapped his desperation putt. Just then, the fates intervened. A gust of wind blew a dead leaf into the ball, ever slightly redirecting its path right into the hole. Chapman’s electrifying stroke sent the match to the 18th, where  he confronted another last-gasp birdie putt, a 15-footer from the fringe. Chapman holed this one too, and the amateurs implausibly salvaged a halved match.

Gen. George Marshall, national president of the Red Cross, and a seasonal Pinehurst resident, personally congratulated the players on their performances. Marshall presented  mementos to mark the occasion. Though no golfer himself, the architect of Allied victory in World War II and the Marshall Plan that rebuilt war-ravaged Europe often enjoyed attending competitions held at No. 2.

Eight-year-old Dixie Chapman was home when Ben Hogan stopped by the traditional post-match party at Winter Haven. The youngster was thrilled when Mr. Hogan ordered him to grab a club and meet him in the backyard. After observing Dixie’s form, Hogan told father Dick, “His swing’s perfect. Don’t change a thing.” Then, with a conspiratorial air, Ben spirited Dick away from the rest of the guests into the den. After locking the door, Hogan spotted a Bible and removed it from the bookshelf. With a solemnity suggestive of an initiation into a secret society, Hogan exacted from Chapman a promise, sworn on the holy text, that he would tell no one what was about to be revealed. It was the mysterious Hogan Secret. Maybe, given that Hogan later explained to Life magazine that his discovery involved a complicated combination of weakening the grip, pronating the left wrist, cupping it at the top of the swing, and then supinating it on the downswing, it was really several secrets. Others claim Hogan never divulged the true secret or, as Snead believed, there was no secret at all. 

Whatever the case, it appears Hogan’s revelation didn’t satisfy Chapman’s quest for golfing perfection. Something of a mad scientist, he was forever experimenting with new ways to strike a golf ball. Dixie remembers his dad would return from the course exulting, “I’ve got it!” only to move on to some new theory the next day. Chapman’s interest in the swing led him to author numerous magazine articles and a book entitled Golf as I Play It. His study of the game was not confined to its mechanics. He devised a new type of competition, primarily geared to mixed couples, in which each of the partners hit tee shots, and then hit each other’s ball. The best of the  second shots was then selected by the team with that  ball played alternately until holed. “Chapman” competitions (also called “Pinehurst”) are still held most everywhere golf is played.

There was one more Red Cross benefit match played in April 1952 that featured a new professional team. The Red Cross landed boyish Jack Burke, Jr., who had played in the Ryder Cup held at Pinehurst in ’51, and the tempestuous Tommy Bolt, the winner of the final North and South Open, also held in ’51. Burke’s banner year would come in 1956 when he won both the Masters and PGA.  Bolt held his famous temper in check just enough during the 1958 U.S. Open to win his only major. Chapman, having further burnished his stature by winning the 1951 British Amateur, arrived at the exhibition with a new partner in tow — Hobart Manley, Jr., the 1951 North and South Amateur champion. Buoyed by Manley’s twin deuces on holes six and 15 and his scorching-hot putter, the amateurs edged Bolt and Burke 1 up. It was the only one of the five exhibitions in which Chapman’s play was overshadowed by his partner.

Chapman would continue to play great championship golf for another 15 years. He was a member of his third winning Walker Cup team in 1953. He continued to add to his collection of international victories and would compete in 19 Masters tournaments, an amateur record. Dick and Dixie, who today lives at the Country Club of North Carolina, made for a great team in father-son competitions, winning several, including a tournament held near the family’s summer quarters at Oyster Harbors on Cape Cod. Both father and son qualified for the 1958 U.S. Amateur. But Dick’s most treasured golfing achievement occurred that same year on No. 2 where, after over two decades of falling short, he finally won the North and South Amateur at age 47.

Dick enjoyed competing in all sorts of Pinehurst events. Like his father before him, participating in the Tin Whistles’ club championships (he won eight of them)  and he relished pairing with Eloise in  mixed “Chapman” competitions. Eloise died in 1966 and Chapman subsequently married Anne McKee. After a stroke in 1970, Dick’s golf was limited. He died in California in 1978.

Chapman was inducted into the Carolinas Golf Association Hall of Fame in 1986. He is the only player to have  been crowned amateur champion of the United States, Great Britain, France, Canada and Italy, a record bolstered by his remarkable performances in the Red Cross exhibitions. He won three, tied one, and lost one in five team matches against golf’s greatest. Of the seven players Chapman’s teams competed against in the series, all but Johnny Palmer are enshrined in the World Golf Hall of Fame. Collectively, his adversaries won 26 major championships (Hogan and Snead alone accounted for 16) and 199 tournaments on the PGA Tour.

When Dick Chapman passed away, Time eulogized him as the “amateur Ben Hogan.” It is likely Ben considered it a personal compliment to be compared to his genial Pinehurst friend whose intense dedication to golf matched  Hogan’s own.  PS

Pinehurst resident Bill Case is PineStraw’s history man. He can be reached at Bill.Case@thompsonhine.com.