Bob:
You've got some fine questions there, and they need to be asked at this point by someone like you. Wayne and I sure aren't getting any answers! I've asked them of Tom MacWood about a hundred times and so has Wayne but as you well know he won't answer us. Now it's about his "ducks" being slightly out of line or some other horse-sh..., or the latest is he just wants more time to write this article properly---and that's definitely understandable!
The truth about this issue now, in my opinion, is Tom MacWood has obviously completetly committed himself to this story about being able to PROVE that Crump committed suicide.
But that rumor of the suicide has been around for years--I heard about it 30 years ago.
Paul Turner just said it's a huge scoop/story! In my opinion, it would be but only if Tom MacWood or someone can actually prove that Crump did committ suicide. Nobody has bothered to try to do that all these years that I know of.
GeoffShac told me years ago that he thought Crump committed suicide. When I asked him recently why he felt that way he said because he thought he read the mention of it by Peter Dobereinner in an article he found some time ago in the Ralph Miller Library in LA. He said he felt Dobereinner was a very creditable source and so there must be something to it.
Having heard that Crump suicide rumor decades ago the obvious question was why. Most answered because they felt Crump may have become depressed or perhaps he drank and also became depressed. Some like TommyN said recently he felt or he's heard Crump was broke. I heard that too years ago but have never seen any indication of it. That probably wouldn't be very difficult to run down.
I talked to one of my friends at PV about that yesterday and he said he'd heard that rumor of depression or whatnot but just considered it a unproven story at this point. Crump was apparently a most beloved man with a huge personable but rather laid back personality. One can see from everything written about him before and after his death that appeared the case. One must assume that a man who was capable of collecting all those famous golfers and architects around him for basically no cost had to be pretty special somehow. Crump was apparently known to give people exceptional credit for things they recommended to him during PV's creation even things he never did in the end, although he clearly acted as if he considered them such as Travis's very public mention that Crump had agreed to let him create a reverse routing and sequence on the course. He appears to have been so accomodating that way.
I've often wondered if it is reasonable to assume that he used that tactic to some degree as a way of promoting interest in the course since being apparently not being egotistical and not a proprietary person about the course he may've understood that was a great way to promote it. And anyone who reads the records of others during his long-term creation of the course can see he was massively admired towards the end compared obviously to when he started. He knew he was a rank amateur in the beginning but it was clearly all his dream----the whole damn thing---the entire idea of it and clearly he wanted to do it his way. He owned the place too. And Crump obviously did have a nice jesting sense of humor.
And he did it his way in the end just as Carr and Smith and Tilly said. One needs to appreciate how much he was there between 1912 and 1918---first appaently in a tent and then his cottage by the 5th. It does seem sort of excessive, driven, maybe even weird and that may be why some wonder if he was mentally OK in the end. He didn't live there all the time, he did have a huge expensive house in Merchantville NJ. Just the other day I spoke with a member whose grandfather bought Crump's house after Crump died.
But nothing I've ever heard of points to depression or alchoholism or anything like that. He was an ebullient man---there's a cute story about him on the street in front of his house the day before he died. But suicides are odd--sometimes there's absolutely no indication of it happening and sometimes no know reason why afterwords.
Obviously Tom MacWood thinks it would be a big scoop or story if he could prove his suicide. Certainly Paul Turner does. If Tom MacWood can prove it then obvoiusly anyone could have at any time all these years. All they'd have had to do is call Merchantville NJ. The particulars of his death are right there logged in an old log book!!! No one did that clearly because they didn't see the point of it! Tom MacWood actually told me that he's able to do this because he's such a good researcher. He actually told Wayne and me that if we wanted to look into this that Wayne should do it because I'm not capable of getting that information out of a person like that. Tom actually told us that!
What would the point of it be? Well, MacWood and Turner are on this agenda of Colt as we well know now. At first they said that Crump's suicide caused the club to go into a defensive mode of some kind and that effected the club's perception of what Colt did there. It minimized it, in fact, as Crump became glorified, presumably for what he did there. But why the club would glorify him because he blew his brains out rather than died suddenly of poison to the brain is beyond me---beyond us. I guess Tom will try to make the case that since he actually killed himself and sort of laid his body on a bier of PVGC they all felt guilty or sorry they didn't protect him or something like that.
Does that make any sense to you BoB? It sure doesn't to me or Wayne or anyone I know at PVGC.
Tom MacWood told me he told that man in Merchantville he was a expert researcher/writer and that's the reason the man told him he had proof about Crump's death although it was illegal to be telling him that. I guess Tom thinks he charmed that info out of him.
Now the man tells a different version of what he knows to us and he claims he has no idea why this man in Ohio is telling us he said such a thing. Of course Tom claims the man is obviously nervous that he said something illegal like that and is just covering his tracks with us or continuing to perpetuate this massive decades long glorification of Crump or something like that.
Tom MacWood was very upset with me for violating a confidence in his source and that I could injure the man. I told Tom that the man ran the township offices and part of his job was to answer a question like this. I merely dialed information and got him. It had nothing to do with finding out about him from Tom MacWood.
So, I don't know! Some think that Tom MacWood is basically just trying to make a name for himself as an expert researcher/writer. Just today I saw an email from him where he continues to get on us for personally attacking him. We just told him there's nothing personal here at all---we're just maintaining our right to say on here that he and his information is wrong if we think it is.
But let him write the article and we can see what he says. A few days ago he wrote that he might "angle" this article to have the theme of an expert researcher/writer doing his expert resarching and writing, how he does it and how in this case how he had to do it under duress! What was his duress? I guess he'll say it was me and Wayne personally attacking him while all we're trying to do is get him to answer our questions about the things he's said on here and to us.
I don't really know what the hell he thinks he's doing with an article but let's wait and see. Maybe he wants to write an article on the actual creation of PVGC and who did what.
If he wants to do that I practically gave him the entire blueprint of it yesterday but I took a lot of it off this morning. I hope he read it!