The end of an institution
Destroyed by fire in 1988, the Uniontown Country Club mansion lingers in the imagination: its simple white grandeur suggesting a certain Long Island estate, the golf course itself a lush sweep of lawn; its twinkling illumination on summer nights insinuating fireworks popping like corks, cocktails and couples cooing and cuddling beneath a ripe moon.
Jay Gatsby, Uniontown turns its lonely eyes to you.
It will be lonelier yet after tomorrow, when the Country Club closes its doors. Is it goodbye to all that for good?
I hope not for both my sake and the community’s.
Since shedding its privacy label several years ago and becoming semi-public, “The Club,” as I facetiously and haughtily refer to it to friends, has assumed a regular spot on the Folmar-Duritsa golfing cavalcade, a circuit that includes me and stretches from Duck Hollow to Champions Lake and Rocky Gap.
As for the impact on the community, as an out-of-town friend said to me, after learning that the last ball was about to be teed up, “That’s quite a blow to a town, losing its country club.”
Quite.
I recall the late Ron Nehls telling me of the day Arnold Palmer played a round of golf there, and of watching Palmer drive on number five, the long par five that starts near Derrick Avenue and finishes up near Leith, and of looking on in wonder as the ball sailed out of sight past the far slope in the fairway.
“I thought the ball would never come down,” Ron said.
I think of that nearly every time I step to the tee on five.
The Country Club opened in 1908, when the town was sassy with coal money. James Semans, whose father was in business with coal land magnate J.V. Thompson, once spoke to me of the young people dances at the club in the uproarious 1920s.
These dances were decorous affairs, like Dr. Semans himself, a high-toned individual when I knew and admired him, and I don’t suspect his outlook on life changed much over the years. He was a man of a certain dignity and probity.
“I loved to fox trot” — that’s a dance — “I loved the slower dances, too,” James Semans told me. He was a tall, thin young man. Think of Jimmy Stewart. He would have looked perfect in a tuxedo or in a cutaway and tails. People dressed up — I mean really dressed up — in those days.
Gatsby seems always to intrude in these stories: I imagined hot young flappers, made rubbery by renegade whiskey, being whisked into parked flibbers for some serious necking.
Dr. Semans let it be known that only a few of the boys and girls “went all the way.” Mostly, it seems, they danced, and then danced some more. It wasn’t unusual for the partying to last until three or four in the morning at someone’s house, after the Country Club had gone dark following a late dinner.
The ’20s were in many ways golf’s salad years, a fact reflected at the Country Club.
The summer of 1924 featured a team from Nemacolin Country Club taking on a Club team with newspaper editor O’Neill Kennedy, Charles Boyle, Dr. George Evans and Thomas Semans. Edwin Semans won the Club championship that summer, shooting a round of 66.
Jimmy Semans’ mother won the women’s putting championship a few days later.
Around this time professional golfer Walter Hagen played a round at the Club, after which he performed some trick shots.
Back to today: Between the Club’s 6th tee and 16th green, tucked into some bushes, is a small memorial in honor of “Doctor Robert Peters.”
Up the hill some ways is the 14th tee, where a flat square stone pays tribute to Anne Strawn Abel. Carved in the stone is the fading outline of a golf cart and two clover leaves.
The view from the 14th just about takes your breath away. Down the hill is the green, tucked and ready. Beyond is the town. To the right the mountains. Ancient trees, some perhaps dating from the first summer of play, are everywhere.
It’s nearly perfect.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.