"TEP
Who actually owned the plans when you were given permission to use them?"
Tom MacWood:
First of all, that's a good question when we were given the permission to use them (for perhaps 4-5 years). It may even still be a good question if a few people wanted to push the point at even this time. Luckily, it seems the few people who would seem to be in some legal position to push that point no longer want to push the point provided those plans are actually protected and preserved long term and that may require a climate controlled atmosphere. As for who gave us permission to use them, Mike Hurzdan did, because he had them when we began to use them.
Secondly, Wayne Morrison had a lot more to do with those plans than I did and one reason was it was Wayne's idea to write a biography on Flynn in the first place. He just asked me to come in on it with him after he began. So how did Wayne come to know where most all the entire career drawing inventory of Flynn's plans was? My understanding is that he probably found out about it from Connie Lagermann (Flynn's daughter) or perhaps Bill Kittleman who at least got some on Merion before we found out about them. (When Flynn died at 55 in 1945 apparently Mrs Flynn gave all his plans to David Gordon's father William Gordon. (William and David were later a father and son design company).
The barn in Bucks County belongs to David Gordon, the son of William Gordon, Flynn's long time primary foreman. Wayne just called David Gordon and apparently Gordon told him at that point that all Flynn's career plans were in his barn in Buck's Co. Before that the only pereson apparently interested in any of them seemed to be Bill Kittleman who only wanted to know about the Merion plans. So essentially all those plans for just about all Flynn's courses and redesigns etc had probably been sitting in that barn for over 55 years completely unanalyzed by anyone as well as basically unprotected because they were in card-board boxes in a big old Pennsylvania barn. In conversations with Gordon, Wayne determined that Gordon had become very interested in preserving those plans and he had offered them to the USGA some years ago but they didn't want them at that time. In the course of those conversations it was determined that Mike Hurzdan had an excellent library and so at that point they were offered to him for preservation's sake. My understanding is that Wayne was instrumental in convincing Gordon to give the plans to Hurzdan because he figured his library and architectural collections in Columbus was so impressive. However, It has been our understanding with all for some years now that at some point all those career plans of Flynn's are headed for the USGA's Museum/Library and the new Arnold Palmer History Center at Far Hills that is brand new, very impressive and completely climate controlled for historic asset preservation. That is what we understood when we both brought them out to Columbus Ohio (returned them) with a member of the Executive Committee of the USGA. We also very much wanted Mike Hurzdan to join our effort in creating the USGA Architecture Archive. As you know, I also personally asked you a number of times to join that USGA Architecture Archive effort but each and every time you found some reason to decline. I find that very interesting indeed if you claim to be as interested in the furtherance of golf architectural understanding as you have constantly claimed on this website. The latter is just one of a number of reasons I frankly don't believe that is your real interest. At this point, and after a number of those offers and entreaties to you to get involved in architectural research with others, I think your primary interest is only to promote Tom MacWood.
"Whatever the case your Kittansett and Concord discoveries should be congratulated,"
Thank you. That's what happens with a golf course if you can show them for the first time that architectural drawings completely match the way their course was first built.
"......its too bad you completely missed the boat on Heartwellville."
Heartwellville was a different situation for us because that was before Flynn came to Merion and Philadelphia and there were no plans in those boxes of Flynn's career inventory for Heartwellville because he probably hadn't even begun to draw architectural plans at that point. The same is somewhat true to some degree with his very first courses in the early teens when he was still working in another capacity at Merion (they were not in those boxes in the barn in Buck's Co). However, we do not feel we missed the boat on Flynn and Heartwellville. Just because you have some different opinion on that does not really concern us because in our experiences with you on a few courses we have never believed or agreed with some of the things you maintain and we still don't. We don't think you made much of a case to convince anyone and we can't see that you will ever to do that with whatever you have claimed to date. What you said about Heartwellville probably isn't much more credible than what you've said about HH Barker routing or designing Merion East!
At the very least it is sort of a laughable, highly speculative, and a highly exaggerated point and assumption.
"Were you aware C&W listed Kittansett as a Flynn design?"
Of course we were but our aim didn't have anything to do with C&W but to do with convincing Kittansett GC that Flynn designed the course not Hood; and that we did.
"Tell us more about Concord, I've never heard of it?"
It's outside Philadelphia and I already told you about it in that the club always thought Ross designed their course but we convinced them Flynn designed it by showing them his drawings for the original design which was how the course was originally built-----essentially just as we did with Kittansett.