"I have to wonder given the social mores and protocols of the time, if their elevated positions didn't put them in a class where such work would be somehow slightly beneath their attained stature? I ask that mindful of the fact that industry-giants HG Lloyd and Rodman Griscom were also part of the golf committee with Wilson, Toulmin, and Francis, yet it also seems to me that perhaps neither had yet climbed to the preeminent social and/or golf-related status that Lesley and Perrin had already attained.
Could it be that much like a presidential administration, where the overall strategic direction is set at the top level, the detailed tactical work was handled just a notch below, so that the Merion Committee was actually made up of a team of potential heir apparents, but not the top accomplished royalty?"
Mike:
In my opinion, not at all; not in the slightest. Amongst those type of people back then I feel there was a remarkable amount of equalitarianism, certainly amongst themselves and within and through their clubs and its mentality. That in a sense was sort of the ethos of their culture---eg the idea of the gentleman and whatall that meant to them. If there were divisions of who performed various tasks I think the idea was that an entire group of them not sort of overload some important committee or whatever, if you get my drift. Lesley was the Golf Chairman at MCC when MCC moved their course to Ardmore, and this idea can be clearly seen in a few letters of both Hugh Wilson and Alan, his brother. They were both asked to serve on the same committees from time to time whether it was the USGA, the Green Committee of the USGA, Pine Valley, probably Merion and each always said it would not look right if two brothers overloaded the same committee and so they virtually never did serve on the same committee. I think that's the way it was in those club structures and their boards and committees et al. Lesley and Perrin did become powerful men in local and national golf administration but the likes of Lloyd and Griscom were incredibly powerful men in the board scheme of things. As such I think both served a particular purpose on the committees they served on and what they were responsible for on those committees. Lloyd was a truly powerful man in the world of finance and obviously he filled that bill for MCC in spades. Griscom was the best connection to his father's largese with MCC which is very well known.
Why did Hugh Wilson get tapped for that Committee he headed? He probably showed a willingness to do it and they understood that and obviously they felt he had the talent to do the job, despite what some today might think about what they call the fact he was a novice. Crump had to start somewhere too, so did Fownes and Leeds and others like them, and so they just did.
It may not be much different than why they told me or got me to do the Ardrossan project for GMGC----eg I showed the willingness to do it and apparently the president and the board felt I could do it as well as anyone in the club and so they were OK with that without feeling they had to join me in doing it in the way I did. But I had to report to them from time to time just as Wilson and his committee did through Lesley's MCC Golf Committee and to the board. It is also probably instructive that I had to work with our club's lawyer constantly as MCC, Lloyd and Wilson's committee did with MCC's T. DeWitt Cuyler.
Originally, I thought the way Merion went about their move to Ardmore and the structuring of the whole thing was pretty unique but as I look at other clubs like it I see the very same pattern in that particular day and age and ethos/culture.