Unsolved mysteries

[TEPaul]

Hugh I. Wilson was a most attractive and seemingly healthy and good looking man but he was just one of those unfortunate people who was never well for long. Something like the physical ailments that seemingly always beset the short life of JFK (who in my opinion Hugh Wilson both looked and seemed remarkably like), the same was true of Hugh Wilson.

This was certainly not something that was not known at least by those closest to him including his older brother Alan. It is not hard to see through those "agronomy letters" how solicitous Alan always was of Hugh's general health.

Alan frequently warned people off from asking Hugh to do things because he clearly felt Hugh would try to do them and he would get sick from it which he very often did.

Towards the end of January or early Feb 1925 apparently Hugh was playing cards and he just went straight down hill and died suddenly of I think just general physical problems or shut down.

Hugh's last letter to Piper and Oakley in the end of January 1925, who had also become solicitous of his health, merely said: "I expect to be better but at the moment I feel like a boiled owl", and very soon after that he was gone.

He died at 45, coincidently about the same age as young president John Kennedy who he reminded me so much of it's just spooky.

I feel that both those men shared a remarkably unquenchable curiosity about anything they became involved with and both men seemed to be going a mile-a-minute through life probably because they both felt somewhere in their bones that their run was inevitably to be a short one and in both cases it was.

[TEPaul]

You reviewed and approved an essay that explains that Hugh Wilson was such a novice that Macdonald and Whigam had to have routed Merion East for him and his committee but yet you don't know much of anything about Hugh Wilson or his life and times, do you Tom MacWood? And you still call yourself an expert researcher who can determine the gist of the things that surround the histories of these clubs and courses from afar without ever going to any of these places and these subjects? Your last question is just another great example of how and why your method will never really work very well.

[Thomas MacWood]

Towards the end of January or early Feb 1925 apparently Hugh was playing cards and he just went straight down hill and died suddenly of I think just general physical problems or shut down.

Did he have a bad hand?

Hugh's last letter to Piper and Oakley in the end of January 1925, who had also become solicitous of his health, merely said: "I expect to be better but at the moment I feel like a boiled owl", and very soon after that he was gone.

Boiled owl syndrome? Could he have contracted it in Argentina? Or perhaps too much red meat in his diet.

[TEPaul]

As you know, I love humor on here, Tom MacWood, but it's pretty clear why that's about all you can do or offer now. Anything at all that avoids coming to grips with the errors of the way you've looked at Wilson and Merion and Crump and Pine Valley, right? 

The point is you're just one of those history "no-can-doists" professor Loewen talks about. You don't really have the feel for that time and architects like Crump or Wilson. You can't understand how they could've done the things they did do and were given credit for so your inclination is to somehow find someone who must have done it for them like Colt at Pine Valley or Macdonald at Merion or the oddest one of all----your apparent contribution to Moriarty's essay---H.H. Barker!! 

That last one was probably the most complete non-event ever attached to a golf course, but it sure didn't stop you from trying to float it.   

[Thomas MacWood]

TE
Will you and Wayne be addressing who all was participating in the card game? I have a strong suspicion Barker, Macdonald & Whigham may have been involved. 

[TEPaul]

Tom:

I do get a chuckle out of most of that stuff but in the end it is wasting time.

So let me ask you something, and I hope you can find some way to actually answer it, for a change, with something other than just another question response.

My question to you is this----you really do feel, don't you, that in the case of Hugh Wilson at Merion East and Crump at Pine Valley that they had to have been given far more help from a Colt or a Macdonald (or even the most improbable of all H.H. Barker ) than the histories of either club have ever admitted?

I think that very thing has always been part of your dilemma and I think it is very much Moriarty's----ie you simply cannot imagine and consequently cannot believe that men like those two could have done all the things they've been given credit for doing. And because neither of you can understand that or believe it, you instinctively have to find someone who you think could have done it for them.

That is why I've called you that professor Loewen term----a "No-Can-Doist."

[Kirk Gill]

I think that very thing has always been part of your dilemma and I think it is very much Moriarty's----ie you simply cannot imagine and consequently cannot believe that men like those two could have done all the things they've been given credit for doing. And because neither of you can understand that or believe it, you instinctively have to find someone who you think could have done it for them.

That is why I've called you that professor Loewen term----a "No-Can-Doist."

The initial portion of Tom MacWood's "Beyond Old Tom" essay deals with amateur architects who seem to me to be very much the same kind of person as Hugh Wilson - talented golfers all, men of many interests whose passion for golf led them to create golf courses.

Mr. MacWood - would you put Hugh Wilson in the same category as Purves or Blyth?

[Thomas MacWood]

The initial portion of Tom MacWood's "Beyond Old Tom" essay deals with amateur architects who seem to me to be very much the same kind of person as Hugh Wilson - talented golfers all, men of many interests whose passion for golf led them to create golf courses.

Mr. MacWood - would you put Hugh Wilson in the same category as Purves or Blyth?

Yes. I'd put Wilson in the same catagory as Blyth or Purves or Pa Jackson or Komyo Otani.

[Mike_Cirba]

Yes. I'd put Wilson in the same catagory as Blyth or Purves or Pa Jackson or Komyo Otani.

Kornholio, who?

[Mike_Cirba]

Man...I think I've figured out that adding a cartoon to a thread is an immediate thread-killer.

That cartoon with Smithers in bed as Whigham dreaming about Charles Macdonald floating into his window (played by Mr. Burns) killed that one Merion thread the other day, and I see this one from earlier has stopped this one cold.

I think I may have discovered something much more valuable to this site than David Moriarty's IMO piece!   

[TEPaul]

The cartoon and the joke were great Mike, it's just that you didn't tell it right!   

[Rich Goodale]

I think we've all finally learned something we can agree upon in all of these Merion threads, and it is that if we ever start feeling like a boiled owl we should get to the doctor or an emergency room quickly.