Shiv,
You talk about Chick Evans and his memory being shot. I have told this story before, but my first project at KN was a redo of the old (and by then defunct) Edgewater Course on the north side, and turning it into the Robert Black at the corner of Pratt and Western in 78-79. Evans had been a member there for years.
At the grand opening, ,my job was to pick Chick up at his apartment around the corner on Daman Ave. It was a one room efficiency second floor flat he shared with his wife. Both were in their 80's at the time. I was suprised how modest the place was and will never forget that when I picked him up, he had a golf net strung up in the place and his wife was sitting in a chair next to the wall and behind the net while he took practice shots. The bed was a fold up type at the other end of the room.
He was very amiable, and had a few stock one liners (when getting out of the car he told the police officers he "was only playing nine today" and so forth. He did tell a story about putting a Spalding Dot golf ball in the cavity of an old willow tree every year to honor his mother. Since we had re-routed the course from E-W to N-S, there was only a 50% chance that tree was still standing but he wanted to find it. We did and sure enough, when I reached down the hole, I was able to pull out 50 year old Spalding Dots.
So, he was able to remembers some things, although I would tend to agree (from my memory of that day) that he had probably forgotten a lot. Still, he struck me as the prototypical golfing gentleman, even at his advancing age, and it seemed very important to him to be that way.