I hope no one objects to the format, as I began writing this as a news story but now have to move on to something else. Maybe someone else will want to pick it up from here. It's 500 words.. sorry for the bandwidth.
Yes, I know Donald Ross built the golf course even tho it is not mentioned below.
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When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the G.I. Bill of Rights, few Georgians could have foreseen its deep and lasting gifts to America’s war veterans, their children and grandchildren.
And probably none could have conceived that 70 years later, a group that represents disabled Georgia vets, backed by a self-described “venture philanthropist” and friends in state government, would show its gratitude to the New Deal architect and polio sufferer by raising money for a plan that would disassociate the Roosevelt name from part of FDR’s cherished legacy in Warm Springs.
Last year, a Georgia vets group called The Warrior Alliance obtained from the state legislature a ten- year lease on Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course, a nine hole tract built on some of the thousands of acres of rolling, wooded farmland acquired through the years by FDR, who was famously smitten by the Pine Mountain region and its people.
After his death, the Roosevelt lands were deeded to the state, which currently operates FDR State Park, the Little White House and Roosevelt Rehab Center, which is adjacent to the deeply overgrown golf course, dormant now for at least three years.
The legislative measure approving the ten- dollar annual golf course lease identifies the Warrior Alliance as a charity, operating under another non-profit, the Atlanta-based Healthcare Institute for National Renewal and Innovation, or HINRI.
HINRI is among the adviser-laden charity and business enterprises run from the Buckhead home of its founder, Ross Mason, who describes himself variously as a health care consultant, an entrepreneur with banking experience in Moscow, a venture philanthropist, executive director of something called HINRI Labs, and a fellow at the healthcare think tank of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Mason also is listed as a “non profit adviser” to the Warrior Alliance, whose other listed advisers include Greg Schmieg, Executive Director of the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation, which is run by the state and was deeply involved in talks that led to the Warrior Alliance receiving the favorable lease on the Roosevelt golf course. Schmieg was appointed by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal in 2012, around the time those talks are said to have started.
HINRI and The Warrior Alliance are seeking to raise a purported $35 million for a plan to renovate and expand the Roosevelt course at Warm Springs, which they envision as the centerpiece of an untested rehab and job training regime for veterans disabled in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the group’s website, vets would get training in disciplines such as golf course construction, golf course maintenance and course operations, which they then could carry with them back out into the workforce.
As late as Wednesday, the Warrior Alliance’s fundraising website (
www.operationdoubleeagle.org), was touting the group’s intent to strip the Roosevelt name from the golf course beneath a colorful, banner-sized quote attributed to FDR that begins, somewhat incongruously, with a Rooseveltian reference to the “right to life.”
Thursday, the passage that had trumpeted the planned name change disappeared altogether from that prominent slot near the top of the webpage. Farther down, though, the page makes repeated solicitations for pricey memberships to “Warm Springs Golf Club,” asserting, among other things, that donors can “help restore a historical landmark.”