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If I recall correctly, after you stopped screaming at me...I asked you if I'm a fraud and liar for claiming Crump killed himself, what would I be if in fact it turned out he did kill himself...after stammering a while, you said an excellent reasearcher. My memory is pretty good."
Tom MacWood:
Please try not to flatter yourself over the discovery that Crump shot himself. That Crump may have shot himself was a story that had been extant around PVGC from the beginning. Anyone who knew anything about the club knew of that story. The mention of that by me is all over this website for the last few years. I heard that story perhaps 30 years ago when I came to Philadelphia and got to know PV. I heard that story again from GeoffShac perhaps 7-8 years ago. He even mentioned back then that he may write about it someday. I asked him why he'd want to do that and he said just to write about a complex and interesting man's life other than the golf course he was so well known for.
When you and I got into a heated discussion about Crump's death it emanated from your contention that PVGC (and Philadelphia golf in fact) was in some combined conspiracy to glorify Crump to minimize Harry Colt. You know damn well that's what you and Paul Turner were trying to at first float on here, Tom MacWood.
When you mentioned on here that Crump committed suicide all I asked you (as did Wayne) was if you could prove that. You said you could and when we constantly asked you how it began that ridiculous run-around with you and those offiicials at the Merchantville township office during which you accused me of ruining one of those officials live's and reputations by revealing any contact with him.
The man was defiinitely not some reporter's secret source of classified information that required confidentiality. He's there for anyone to ask information of about Merchantville and any of its history including the circumstances of Crump's death. He was more than a little annoyed that you never even bothered to explain to him why you were asking him about Crump and his death. If you even considered writing about that you at least owed him the ethicial explanation that you may write about it. You never did that according to him.
When I asked you during that phone call what it was you planned to write about you told me you planned to write an essay about how an expert researcher/writer was harrased by writing about such a subject. And if you deny now saying that to me on the phone you really are a liar.
The next thing I know you wrote an essay about Crump's personal life and family history and the legend created by and around him as a result of what he did at PVGC. This is and was the very thing the club and those that know about Crump and PVGC have always felt about him. There was little to no mention in your essay about the glorification of Crump by PV to minimize Colt or any campaign on the part of PV to cover up the fact of his suicide for some odd agenda---the very things you'd been implying on this site previously. Isn't it interesting that you changed the theme of your essay so much. I wonder why that was.
I think your Crump article was very intereting and as I've said it probably will be an important additon to the history of the club now.
But one really does need to ask something about your essay about Crump's suicide, something that I've hestitated to ask henceforth. And that is why did you write it? Did it have anything to do with the architeture of PVGC, the kind of subject we deal with on this website? Did it try to explain why he committed suicide? Not really. Did it say anything we didn't already know about what Crump did there or what Colt did there that I hadn't already said on this website numerous times. No it didn't.
So why did you write it? Was it to prove that you could research and find the truth of the circumstances of his death? Was it to show GOLFCLUBATLAS that you could do it and prove that you're a great researcher? I asked some of my friends down there who are most closely connected to PVGC why no one ever bothered to take the time and make the effort to find out the truth of the circumstances of Crump's death when the rumor of a suicide had been around for almost 90 years.
Their consensus response was why would anyone do that. The truth is we and all his friends knew he died suddenly and tragically whether it was from poison to the brain or a bullet to the brain. He was loved for who he was and respected for what he did for PVGC and what he accomplished there. How and why he died always seemed to all of us like a subject that should be just left with Crump at his death.
During the heated discussion with you over PVGC and if you could prove Crump's suicide I thought about petitioning the state and/or locality for his DC myself. I even went so far as to discuss with Merchantville and the state of NJ what I had to do if I wanted his DC. Then I asked myself why I'd do such a thing. What was the purpose of it? I asked myself why all those people from PV and others had never thought to do that before. I asked myself why, even knowing of the rumor of his suicide for the last thirty years, the thought to actually investigate if he actually had shot himself had never occured to me to try to do.
In the end I decided that to pursue the circumstances of Crump's untimely death would serve no positive purpose at all except for those who have an odd curiosity about that kind of thing.
Nevertheless, as I've said before, I think your essey was interesting although I can't really understand why you went to the lengths you did to prove that the 90 year old rumor was true except to say that you could actually prove it. Anyone could have done that in the last 90 years. That no one tried probably said a great deal about PVGC and particularly George Crump.