Golf's Greatest Year
Studs Terkel and golf's greatest year: Like Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, Terkel was a member of the class of 1912
Studs Terkel
Do people produce the times in which they live, or do the events of the times produce the people? Clearly, that's one of those chicken-or-the-egg type arguments, posing an unanswerable but highly ponderable question. The truth, as is usually the case, is found in a synthesis of two extremes.
Someone much smarter than me once observed that we are both the authors and the actors of the human drama. We dance to the tune of the times in which we live, but we also have the option to alter the composition, rewrite the melody line, change the syncopation of the backbeat -- improvise.
Which brings us, in a most circuitous fashion, to the greatest year in professional golf and the rather remarkable Class of 1912. In less than four months -- between Feb. 4 and May 27 of that year -- Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead were born, three men who combined won 198 PGA Tour events and 21 major championships.
That astonishing convergence of talent comes to mind at this time because another member of the Class of 1912, the writer/historian/radio and TV host Studs Terkel, joined the Big Three in reaching the 18th green, dying on Oct. 31 at the age of 96 at his home in Chicago.
Terkel had, to my knowledge, no connection to golf. What Terkel shared with Nelson, Hogan and Snead is that they all rewrote the scripts of their lives, rising from hardscrabble backgrounds to be geniuses in their chosen fields. They also built lives, established career and pioneered their professions in among the most difficult of times this country has faced.
Terkel was a rumpled figure in an ever-present red and white checked shirt with a cigar stuck in a mouth that smiled wryly out from under an unkempt shock of while hair. He raised oral history to an art form because of one extremely simple skill: Terkel listened. And he listened because he was genuinely interested in everyone and he genuinely valued what everyone said, did and felt.
His books told the story of his times. Among his works were "Division Street: America", "Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression", "Working" and "The Good War: An Oral History of World War II", which won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize. The common thread of those works is that they celebrated the innate intelligence, courage and determination of ordinary people.
The coincidence of Nelson, Hogan and Snead all being born in 1912 has long fascinated me. The addition of Terkel made me want to probe the phenomenon further. What other births of note occurred in 1912?
Of course, just to ask to the question is to fly in the face of all Terkel stood for. He would say every birth that year was significant. And he would be correct. But let's surrender to the star system that distorts our priorities and list some other members of the Class of 1912:
Charles Addams, the cartoonist who created The Addams Family for The New Yorker; folksinger Woody Guthrie of "This Land is Your Land" fame; Chuck Jones, the illustrator who brought Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote to life; Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousand of Jews from Nazi extermination in World War II Hungary and painter Jackson Pollack.
A few other people born in 1912 said some things to which Nelson, Hogan, Snead and Terkel would likely find the ring of truth. Garson Kanin, the writer behind a couple of those wonderfully wacky Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn movies, said: "Amateurs hope, professionals work."
Minnie Pearl, the comedian of Grand Ole Opry fame with the price tag dangling from her hat, advised: "Take the back roads instead of the highway." And Gardner Dickinson who, along with 1952 PGA Championship winner Jim Turnesa, is another golfers born in 1912, said: "They say golf is like life, but don't believe them. Golf is more complicated than that."
So let's get back to that chicken-and-egg questions about times producing the people or people producing the times. Consider the times in which Nelson, Hogan, Sneak and Terkel came of age.
They were 17 years old when the stock market crashed in October of 1929. From then until August of 1945, a nearly 16-year span that took them to the age of 33 -- half their adult life -- they endured the Great Depression and World War II.
As we enter our own era of economic uncertainty we should look to the work of Nelson, Hogan and Snead for inspiration and to the work of Terkel for understanding.
Golf's Big Three were exactly the kind of people Terkel celebrated: Ordinary folks doing extraordinary things. Terkel championed the genius in us all; Nelson, Hogan and Snead realized it.
