Tom Mac and Willie Dow,
I too am awfully interested in the relationship Toomey had with Flynn. Unfortunately, at this stage in researching the golf courses and agronomy work of William Flynn, there is not much known about Howard Toomey. I did manage to locate a USGA Green Section article that Toomey wrote in 1927 concerning the grass strain used at Marble Hall, but that is about it. We are trying to locate family members of both Toomey and Hugh and Alan Wilson to see if there are any archival or anecdotal materials to fill in the very large gaps in the historical record. There may be some leads coming from members at Merion regarding the Wilsons at any rate.
As for Toomey, we know he was trained as a civil engineer (helpful in some of the more ambitious projects such as Indian Creek) and that he worked at Merion Cricket Club and came over to the new golf Merion East course sometime during its construction. Hugh Wilson encouraged Flynn and Toomey to form a partnership, probably after Wilson knew that his own partnership plans with Flynn were not going to happen due to Wilson's ill health that lead to his untimely death in 1925. We just don't know at this point if Toomey was involved in any design work or simply put the plans into action.
It would seem that Toomey worked with Flynn from 1924 (Marble Hall) to about 1931. This coincided with some of Flynn's very best work. It remains to be seen what role Toomey played, one of many mysteries that needs to be addressed.
Tom Paul noted in a different thread the interesting relationship Flynn had with Toomey and postulated on the reasons for engineers and architects to form partnerships. Flynn was cost conscious and wanted to build courses efficiently and in such a way as to enable them to be maintained in order to keep future costs down. Certainly a trained engineer would have helped tremendously in such an effort.
According to C+W, Toomey was not involved in the following Flynn designs:
Hartwellville (1911)
CC Harrisburg, Doylestown CC (1916)
Lancaster CC (1920)
Atlantic City, Cascades, Cherry Hills (1923)
Pocantico Hills (1935)
Plymouth, NC (1937)
I know that Toomey was 12 years older than Flynn, probably one reason why the firm was called "Toomey and Flynn" and not "Flynn and Toomey." Toomey died 12 or 13 years prior to Flynn, sometime after Shinnecock was completed. It will be a priority to find out more about this successful partnership.