Guys:
I hear what some say above that it's sad when Dick Wilson's name gets mentioned invariably his alcholism is mentioned too. It is sad, but if we really care about knowing about these men like Dick Wilson and some of the others of the earlier days we should take the good with the bad because all of it was part of the tapestry of their lives.
Many of those guys down there in Southeast Florida in those days were essentially Northeasterners and a lot of New Yorkers. The ones who played a lot, and played well, all knew each other and they all loved Dick Wilson and his work. They actually considered him to be "their architect" and that would obviously explain why they got him to do Pine Tree, to work on Seminole and Gulfstream down there and also to do Deepdale and Meadowbrook in New York and some of his courses in New Jersey. All of those guys knew one another pretty well. It was sort of an enormous cliche in those days.
When Dick died fairly young they tried to turn to his partner Joe Lee but for some reason that never took. Actually the one they gravitated to was Pete but he didn't really do the kind of work on their courses that Dick Wilson did.
I know some of those stories are funny but some are sad too and I've always had sort of mixed emotions telling them.
I loved my Dad unquestionably always, and I sure admired him for his golf but I can't deny there were plenty of problems with both him and his friends and somehow it always seemed to gravitate to something to do with too much drinking. That just seemed to be the way it was back then with that crowd, but they all were colorful that's for sure, and as a kid I liked most all of them immensely.
That kind of culture and life style seems to be pretty much gone now, at least the way it was then, as the world has changed apparently in that way or with that kind of group.
I actually have a theory about those types that ended up in Florida in the early days particularly just after the war when Florida was so young and basically undeveloped. Back then it seemed something like an outpost from the real world (not quite to the degree the Bahamas was then but pretty close). I think most of those guys were sort of what their own society often called, and often even somewhat affectionately, "the bad-boys", the black-sheep of their families, as it were, and because they were they were sort of a band of adventurers.
The ones who were into golf, really into golf, seemed so close, a real bunch of brothers. And I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it sure looked to me like they had a ton of fun together, they really did, perhaps even like we can hardly imagine, even if, it may not have been much fun for most of them most mornings.
Unfortunately, because they did, and the way they did, some of them paid the price for it and paid the price too young. Dick Wilson was one of them, apparently. But I remember how much they liked what he did and I have to think if they liked his stuff that much he had to have been as good as they said he was.