"Here are couple of interesting tid bits you may or may not know.
While residing in Berkeley Hunter lived in the former home of John Galen Howard, the famous Bay Area Arts & Crafts architect and one-time professor at Cal. The home was (and is) on Ridge Rd, the epicenter of the Bay area A&C movement and the Hillside Club.
Its well known Hunter retired to Montecito, but did you know that Max Behr and Joshua Crane also lived in Montecito in the 1940s?"
Tom MacWood:
No, I did not know any of that. It's always interesting to know about those little details of the lives of men like Hunter, Behr and Crane. I didn't say I was an expert on Hunter so why did you imply I said that? All I said is what you mentioned earlier about him I've known for years, and that it would be nice if you could tell me something I didn't know about him. Is it really possible that you could think that's in someway insulting??
It certainly has occured to me that some or many might consider Robert Hunter to be basically just one of those "amateur/sportsmen" who had money (by marriage) and just sort of dabbled in golf course architecture amongst other things. I don't buy that in the slightest. I don't believe anyone could consider Hunter something like that if they've bothered to really read and appreciate "The Links". It just might be the best put-together and clearest-thinking book on golf architecture and golf architectural philosophy out there.
I also don't buy a categorizing of a man like Hunter who was someone who was "conflicted" in some way, as you did above, simply because he changed his politics or philosophy about something like social engineering.
To me it just may be one of the clearest expressions of intelligence, honesty and clear thinking that he did something like that having seen life from both sides through his life and times. It has definitely not escaped my attention that you seem to think when someone really changes their tune on something that they must be selling out or compromising their principles or conflicted in some way. That seems to me to be just a bit of a myopic way of automatically looking at people.
"PS: Unfortunately my father is not living and unable to ask him about Mr. Weber."
I'm sorry to hear that. Either is mine. I don't know whether I can promise it but perhaps I could somehow arrange for you to speak to Arthur Weber even if he is in his nineties. That man and his mind is simply remarkable--just remarkable in the things he gets into and to think he was a physcist on the Manhattan Project.
By the way, have you ever actually seen Max Behr's house that's essentially across the street from Golf House? Of course Behr lived there some decades before the USGA moved to Far Hills which is pretty ironic if one thinks about it.
Again that kind of detail about the houses those people lived in and the details of their lives is interesting stuff and it certainly seems to be to you when you discover it. Max Behr married a gal whose father was very rich and apparently owned all that land around Golf House. Her maiden name was something like Schlie or Schlee. She died young and they say Max took off for the coast pretty depressed for a radical change of life's scenery.
I once asked my own mother if she hadn't married my dad if there was anyone else on the horizon, and she told me Van Schlie was dying to marry her but she didn't want to do it and she waited for my dad. I believe from a Google search that Van Schlie was Behr's wife's direct relative. Had my mom married him, just think, I'd be related to Max by marriage!
But when I tell you some details like that your automatic response is always I must be living in a Holiday Inn Express or something. The point is what works for one should work for all. It's about time you start to see things that way, don't you think? When you come up with some seemingly trivial detail about any of those people and their lives or houses or friends or relatives or whatever you tend to treat it as a big deal but when I come up with things like that you just dismiss it. That has always interested me about you and I think others on here feel the same way. But it looks like you've trained your "student" Moriarty even better as he's more dismissive of others than even you are! But together you two are quite the team!
