Tom MacWood:
By what you are saying about Moriarty's research, I'm only trying to understand why he apparently thinks he's entitled to see any material that some of us have seen from Merion. It's pretty hard to miss he seems to feel entitled to it or perhaps you haven't read any of these threads. A number of contributors on here are trying to figure out as well why he seems to feel this way, and I suspect Merion may be as well.
As far as what you said about discrediting me or anything I did regarding Pine Valley, I can't imagine what you're talking about.
My issue with you back then, and Wayne's issue about Crump's suicide was that if you were going to suggest that on here that you prove it. Eventually you did prove it, but the way you went about that was something I did not at all agree with and I still don't.
You both:
1. Duped a township official into discussing this without first telling him why you were interested in the subject. The man was completely furious with you for doing that and there is no way under the sun you can avoid that fact or dismiss it, not back then, not now, not ever. Of course, you can just continue to shirk your own responsiblity for that by trying to blame it on me somehow but that won't ever work and that township official is there to support that fact.
2. You did not even have the decency to get in touch with Pine Valley at all about your intentions to write about the suicide of the man that created the place----not with anyone there, not with John Ott or anyone to do with Pine Valley. The only reason he knew anything of it is through me, and he did read GOLFCLUBATLAS.com. But you never even spoke to him about it before it was emailed to him which I helped both of you arrange. You spoke to noone there and I've always thought that was very much the wrong way to go about it.
But really the most ludicrous thing of all is that last post of yours where you continue to criticize me while telling this website what a pleasant surprise it was that John Ott got in touch with you and asked you to come to Pine Valley.
Again, you've never been here and you know none of these people. I do. They are my years long friends. Has it really somehow escaped you all these years that John Ott, the Mayor of Pine Valley, who lived alongside the 9th fairway of Pine Valley for about thirty seven years before he died suddenly last fall, was one of my very best friends, and certainly one of my best friends in golf since I came here over thirty five years ago? We had a whole lot of experiences together in golf over those decades and in the last ten years or so it was just strengthened when I developed this interest in architecture, particularly Pine Valley's, and helped him develop his own interest in it far more than he ever had before and certainly including all the historic architectural details of Pine Valley.
John Ott posted on here a few times over the years but whenever he read this site, particularly if it was about Pine Valley, he was always on the phone with me about it. After you wrote that essay, and sent it to John Ott which I helped to arrange, I told you I thought it was a very good essay the way you treated the subject and that I said that is on a number of posts on here from back then. I feel from our rather unfortunate experiences in that whole thing that your mind was changed from writing about it in a way that explained Crump was being glorified in some attempt to minimize Colt. That attitude of yours is also very evident on the threads on the back pages of this website. You even threatened to write and essay about a researcher being beset upon by a bunch of maniacs out to stop him. Do you deny you said that to me?
But the point is John Ott never did anything with anyone from this website without speaking to me about it. That was our arrangement with this website. Ask anyone about that. Ask Tommy Nacarrato. He called me up and asked me if I thought he should invite you to Pine Valley and I told him of course he should--why not? He said he would do it but only if I came down and played with you with him.
It is mindboggling to me that you just don't seem to get any of this, or else you just conveniently dismiss it and for what really?
You had an open invitation and for whatever your reasons you never acted on it. You just let it slide and now it's gone and so is John. I sit here in my office surrounded by some of his framed aerial photos of Pine Valley which he loved so much and loved to analyze with me so much and which we got from the Hagley went I introduced him to that resource. I sit here in my office surrounded by most of John's silverware and glassware he won over the years in tournaments at Pine Valley, particularly his medalist silver plate for the Crump Cup. For that reason and other reasons a day can't go by when I don't think of him and all that we did together.
But yet you continue to criticize me and make fun of my life and interests to do with golf and architecture here, never understanding what that connection to you with a John Ott was really about. In your on-going snobbish and arrogant attitude about your research ability you even make fun of my own life and my family's in a world once surrounded by A/C architecture and that time and place. You poke fun at it calling it some "Holliday Inn Express" mentality.
I've never even understood the significance of my own family in some of these things until perhaps a decade ago and some of it was discovered through my interest in the history of golf course architecture and all the ancillary things that entailed. I admit I'm very proud of what I've found out about them and about it all and it fairly disgusts me that someone like you who doesn't even have the motivation to come and see it and understands it continues to insult me and my own family's history.
Someone on one of these posts said; "WE GET IT, you don't like each other". They were talking about you and Moriarty and me, I guess. They're right, I think the both of you are pretty despicable in the way you've treated this town, the memory of people in golf from this town, and some of the current members of some of these clubs, and others who love the architecture of this area.
But I'm the eternal optimist---maybe one of these days that insulting, immature and arrogant attitude of the two of you will change and then things can be different someday. I guess we'll have to just wait and see about that, but not until, that's for sure!