The middle of the week feels different when you spend a Monday watching the Boston Marathon. Congrats to everyone who ran on Monday. My wife ran it for the first time. It was such a thrill to watch her run through Natick and then scurry to Boston to see her make the turn off Hereford St. and onto Boylston St. for that final stretch.

A few quick things before getting to a story about donuts, coffee, and The Great Depression.

• If you have people in your life that you think would love this newsletter, please forward it along to them.

• If you’re looking for some fun competition this golf season, I am hosting two events with Jordan over at Fn3P. We’re calling it the Half Swing Series. The first event is at Butter Brook on May 30. Grab a partner or sign up as a single, and we’ll partner you up! Details and sign up here.

• In some recent newsletters, I wrote about Bobby Jones and Franklin Park, 1938 Masters winner Henry Picard from Plymouth, Mass., and about attending the Masters in 2018.

• If you have something you’d like to see covered in this newsletter, don’t hesitate to email me at [email protected]. I'm always looking for ideas, topics, or questions!

Donuts and Coffee at George Wright: A Story of The Great Depression

Long before the grilled hot dog brought joy to golfers at George Wright, a family sold coffee and donuts in the 1930s as the course was being built.

It’s how Don Forbes’ grandparents kept the house they built in Hyde Park during The Great Depression.

When Donald Ross designed the course in the late 1920s, George Wright was meant to be a private course. The 1920s was a time of opulence, without any sign that the bubble was about to explode and send the country into economic panic.

That panic left George Wright GC in limbo. The work to excavate rocks from the land was costly, making George Wright’s $1 million price tag one of the most expensive courses to build at the time.

Eventually, the course was built after Boston’s DPW purchased it and finished the project. It opened on April 23, 1938. What was a loss for the city’s upper crust became a boon for public golf in the city.

I discovered Don Forbes’ story three years ago. In the afterglow of the first “Double Dip” where I played Franklin Park and George Wright on the same day, one of the guys in the group, Sampson, sent our text chain a screengrab of a George Wright course review

It wasn’t so much a review as a walk down memory lane.

The reviewer wrote that his family sold coffee and donuts to the men building the course during the Great Depression. The money they earned helped them keep their house across the street from George Wright. He added that he caddied at the course in the 1940s. 

The most important bit of information came at the end of the review. The reviewer left his name and email address. 

On a whim, I sent an email to Don Forbes. The review was about a year old, and having done the rough math on his age, I wasn’t sure I would actually hear back from Don. 

I had a response from Don Forbes in my inbox within eight hours. 

He wrote:

​​Sure I love to talk about my time at George Wright. It would be nice to have you visit. But if that is a big problem, I am sure I can do it by email or phone. Think of questions you would like to ask.

He signed off and included his home address. A trusting fellow, to be sure. 

Not only was Don trusting, but he was also responsive. Before I could even respond to his initial email, he wrote another, which was seven paragraphs about growing up in Hyde Park. 

After a few more emails back and forth, we found a time to meet at his house in the Massachusetts suburbs and have lunch with Don and his wife, Diane.

I wasn’t entirely sure what would come from this lunchtime visit with Don and Diane. I was hopeful to hear stories of pre-war golf and the building of the golf course and funny stories about caddying. 

When I met Don, I was struck by his imposing figure. He was tall and broad-shouldered. The human version of George Wright’s clubhouse. He walked with a noticeable limp; his knees give him a hard time. Why wouldn’t they? Don is 88 years old.

The house’s walls were adorned with pictures of family and some of Don’s beloved dogs from the past. Dobermans seemed to be his breed of choice; he lovingly called them his “Dobeys.” When we sat down at the kitchen table, I could tell Don was fixing for some lunch. As promised, Diane took out some sandwiches, and for the most part, they went uneaten for the first hour of my visit. The only thing Don seemed more excited about than the food was to talk about growing up in Hyde Park. 

Don grew up in a house his grandfather built in 1927. His grandparents lived upstairs, and he lived downstairs with his parents and sister. Throughout The Great Depression, they lived in constant fear of losing the house.

His enterprising grandparents found a way to make enough money to keep their house. However, if the value of the house fell below the mortgage, the bank could quickly snatch it up.

As he munched on his sandwich, he told me the story:

Forbes had his own bit of history with the golf course, too. When World War II ended, he started caddying at age 13. He’d carry two bags in the morning and then again in the afternoon.

The caddie fee? $2 a bag and usually a $1 tip.

Don would head home with $10 in his pocket after 36 holes and four bags.

“The bags weren’t the big monsters they are today,” he said.

Sometimes, his pockets might have been a little lighter, as the caddies would kill time with some low-stakes gambling while waiting for loops.

“If I lost twenty cents, it would be a big deal,” Don said with a laugh.

In order to make a bit of extra money, Don had a few other jobs around the course. Some were sanctioned, and one wasn’t.

He would shag golf balls for the pro during lessons in the evening. He’d stand and chase balls down as they were hit.

“I’d use a baseball glove to try and catch them,” Don said.

He’d also work at a small food stand just past the fourth green, where the fifth and seventh tee boxes are. The World War II veterans set that up, and Don remembers them bringing him out there in the morning and picking him up at the end of the day.

The first rendition of a beverage cart.

On the not-so-legal side of things, Don and his friends would sell golf balls they’d find on the course. However, this took money out of the head pro’s pocket, as he did the same thing and depended on that extra bit of income.

A motorcycle cop named Bill Hacket was assigned to the course. He chased them off as they scoured the course for golf balls.

“It was all in fun. He loved chasing us on his motorcycle all over the place. He knew who we were,” Don said.

Monday was caddie day, and Don would go and play the course. Tuesdays were blocked off for women. In Don’s memory, it was the only day he saw women on the course. He wasn’t entirely sure if they weren’t allowed on the other days of the week or if they just preferred to use the time the course provided them.

One stunning memory Don shared involved a caddie dying on the golf course. Charlie Sullivan was struck by a ball on the third hole. His father had been killed in World War II, and Don said he often thought about Charlie’s mother, who lost her husband and then her only child.

I searched for any story about Charlie but couldn’t find anything in old newspapers.

The clubhouse would host dances, and Don collected coats for the attendees. Don and Diane were interested in getting married at George Wright in the 1980s but the course doesn’t have functions there anymore.

In the winter, the course was still a popular place to gather; Don would ice skate on the pond between the 12th and 13th holes. They even flooded the first and second fairways to create a huge ice skating rink in the winter, but the course got too soggy in the springtime, so they flooded the parking lot instead.

A toboggan run was built, too. Don remembers his mom breaking her leg on that toboggan run.

Quite a far cry from the private course that was intended for that land.

Even as Don grew up, George Wright remained in his life.

“During the 70's I worked in Framingham and was staying with my parents. I would get up at the crack of dawn and play nine holes before I went to work. I would stop on the way out to pay and would be waved off. Nice people,” he said.

Living about an hour from Boston starting in the 1980s, Don didn’t get out to George Wright anymore. Golf faded away as a family and work became the priority. He worked on the railroad, which was another interest that was sparked as a child in that house in Hyde Park. He recalled watching the commuter and freight trains from his window.

However, in early 2021, Don took a trip out to the old neighborhood and checked out the golf course.

“My wife and I were treated like royalty. They didn't expect a guy who had caddied there seventy-five years ago to show up,” he said. “It was a great day.”

The head pro, Scott Allen, took them around in a golf cart to show them the course. A walk down memory lane, to be sure.

The trees stood out to Don the most during his visit. He recalled that it was hard to lose a ball back in the 1940s, but that’s not the case anymore at George Wright.

Over the course of my 90-minute visit with Don and Diane, we wandered about in conversation, which was lovely. However, Don would always perk up when the conversation returned to George Wright and the different experiences he had there.

“Having grown up at that golf course, it was a big part of my early teen years,” Don said.

From his Swedish grandmother sterilizing whiskey bottles that his grandfather collected to selling donuts and coffee to shagging golf balls with a baseball glove to caddying for $2 a bag to collecting coats at dances in the regal clubhouse, George Wright certainly shaped Don Forbes' early life.

As I headed home, I was grateful Don and Diane had opened their home to me for the afternoon, filling me with food and stories about a golf course that highlighted a family’s ingenuity in the face of hardship during one of the most trying decades of our country’s history.

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