"How about Howard Toomey and Wm Flynn. Flynn was HS educated from a very modest Irish roots. I don't believe his father could read and write."
And that makes that about as much of a fact as the Man in the Moon!
Re: Strange Bedfellows?
How about Myopia's Boston Brahmin quartet of Herbert Carey Leeds, R.M. Appleton, Thomas Watson Merrill, S.A. Gardner and Willie Campbell? Those four and Willie were such strange bedfellows they apparently had nothing to do with one another in golf course architecture or else they wouldn't admit it! Matter of fact, Myopia itself and Willie Campbell were such strange bedfellows Myopia completely forgot to mention he was ever in bed with them, that he was ever their pro for a single year and that he did any more at Myopia than play in the 1898 US Open at that course!
Well, that's actually not the case. The Myopia history book did say in very glowing terms that some of the very early Scottish and English pros like Campbell were extremely influential in teaching golf and promoting the game and its spirit from abroad over here in the 1890s.