The Life Of Mary Lena Faulk

The Life of Mary Lena Faulk

By Will Watt (nephew)
(Note: The text below was presented at the Slides Of March lecture series at the Thomas County Museum of History in March 2015 by Will Watt).

There is a story about every one of our lives. The one I have chosen to present has been in my mind since I was probably five years-old, for that is about when my first recollections of her begin. I am a nephew of Mary Lena Faulk. She and my mother, Jane, were sisters.

She was born in Chipley, Florida, Washington County, on April 15, 1926, to John Hughey and Kate Alford Faulk. She had three brothers and a sister. A small town in the Florida panhandle, named for railroad promoter, Colonel William Dudley Chipley. The area was discovered by Spanish settlers and the Spanish mission of San Carlos was located in Washington County in the 1600s. Washington County experienced a significant raid during the Civil War and local home guards were captured in a small, but tragic battle. Falling Waters State Park, home to the tallest waterfall in the state, is located in Washington County. But during her early years there, turpentine was a big business and her father was involved in it.

The family lived comfortably in a house at 774 Main Street. There was a basketball court in the front yard and a tennis court in the side yard. Mary Lena’s job was taking care of the chickens…”We had a whole flock of Rhode Island Reds and it was my job to go out every day and gather the eggs,” she said. Tennis was her first love and I have had more than one person tell me how great of a tennis player she was. In fact, at age 12, she was the Chipley city champion and tennis was the big thing in her life until the family moved to Thomasville, Georgia.

Her father picked up golf in 1925 and Mary Lena’s beginnings in the game of golf came when my grandfather gave her a cut down Walter Hagen 5 iron for her 10th birthday in 1936. “It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” she said. “I went out that day to hit golf balls. There was a 9-hole course in Chipley that opened in 1929, called Falling Waters Golf Course. It was several miles from her home and instead of trying to get to the course initially, she would hit balls in the alley behind her house… eventually putting a ball through a neighbor’s window. When she was 11, Grandaddy let her caddy for him at Falling Waters and before long she began play there as well. As luck would have it, as her first tournament prize, she won a shaving kit for winning the 5th Flight consolation.

Well, the curiosity of this course was so much that I had to go play it. I looked it up on a golf review website and it got great reviews and I was planning my trip to Chipley to play the same course on which Mary Lena learned to play the game…when I explored the write-up about the course further and found that it actually had closed down around 2009.

Mary Lena was 14 when the family moved to Thomasville and lived first in what has been for the past number of years, the John Houser home, which was located at 903 North Dawson Street. Grandaddy then built a home at 1034 East Washington Street, which is also the house where I grew up. Grandaddy owned the Faulk Chevrolet dealership on South Broad Street which is where The Plaza Restaurant currently sits.

She continued to play both golf and tennis while attending Thomasville High School. Transferring to Thomasville High School she did not sit on the sidelines and just try to blend in. Thanks to her classmate and my cousin, George Watt, I was able to view his senior yearbook, The Pines, and get a feel for what high school life was like in the early 1940s. She joined The Pines yearbook staff her senior year and joined the Tri-Hi-Y her junior and senior years. She was president of the Athletic Association her senior year. She was the junior class president in 42-43 and her senior class president in 43-44. A senior favorite, she was named ‘Friendliest and ‘Most Courteous.’ Now that’s making an impact and shows great leadership ability.

For a number of years, golf was just a fun game to Mary Lena who played with my Grandmother and Grandfather. Grandaddy eventually took Mary Lena to Glen Arven Country Club pro, John Walter, for a lesson. From the beginning, Mr. Walter saw great potential in her…but he also noticed that she was not yet completely dedicated to the game.

After high school, Mary Lena went to Ward Belmont College in Nashville, Tennessee. She put her clubs away for the two years of school, but was active in track and field sports and basketball. When she returned home from college, she began to get serious about what John Walter had told her. She now began to practice golf with a purpose.

In 1946, she won her first of 3 consecutive Georgia State Women’s Amateur Championships. In 1947, the Georgia State Title tournament was played at Glen Arven where Mary Lena won it for the second time. In 1950, she was the medalist at the Women’s Southern Amateur. In 1949 and 1950, Mary Lena won the Tallahassee Women’s Invitational played at Capital City Country Club.

During this time, golf was her focus. Travelling to tournaments and building her game, she was being tested against better and better competition. Amateur golf was a really big deal in those days and she resisted turning pro.

She decided to join up with some other ladies and play what became known as the Florida Orange Blossom Circuit, which featured a dozen tournaments from January to March and took advantage of the warm golfing climate that Florida offered. Although she didn’t win any of the first few tournaments she entered, she did catch the eye of a reporter from the Miami Herald who wanted to interview her. He said, “Miss Faulk has the smoothest swing I’ve seen and with added distance, she’ll be as good as the best.” In fact, her nickname among the ladies on the tour was, “The sweet swinger from Georgia.”

In 1951, she found the winner’s circle at the Florida East Coast Women’s Golf Tournament in St. Augustine, where she beat one of her chief rivals and future Hall of Famer, Betsy Rawls, enroute to the title. During this time she was competing as an amateur regularly against the great Babe Zaharias. The Babe was a larger than life figure in women's golf. She was married to former pro wrestler from the 1930s George Zaharias. Ed Kelly of the Thomasville Times-Enterprise, was invited to lunch with Babe and George during one of Babe’s visits here. He wrote a great story for the paper with a headline which read, ‘Mary Lena To Hit Top Babe Predicts Here.’ And she did soon after the announcement by winning the tournament at Fort Smith, Arkansas, after taking four matches for the win.

In 1952, she teamed up with Don Bisplinghoff, a 17 year-old future University of Florida star who captured the US Junior Championship the same year, to play in the Orlando Mixed Two-Ball Tournament. Mary Lena knew what she was doing as she and Bisplinghoff defeated Future LPGA Hall of Famer Louise Suggs and PGA regular Tony Penna. In the next match they met ‘Slammin Sammy Snead’ and his partner. Mary Lena and Don matched Snead’s team birdie-for-birdie and were victorious before losing in the semifinals.

In 1952, Glen Arven Country Club extended a Life Membership to her for her accomplishments thus far. On September 10th of that year, the Glen Arven Ladies Golf Association held the ‘Mary Lena Faulk Women’s Pro-Am Invitational Golf Tournament.’ Betsy Rawls was the tournament favorite to win and had racked up nearly $14,000 in earnings that year. The event was attended by 700 and Betsy Rawls did take home the first place prize money of..…$375!

In June of ’53, she travelled across the Atlantic to the southern coast of Wales to play in the British Ladies Amateur Championship at Royal Porthcawl Golf Club. She would be the only challenger from America that year and lost in the semi-finals.

Her goal in 1953 was to win the Women’s National Amateur that September at the Rhode Island Country Club in Providence, Rhode Island. She denied the rumors that she was going to turn pro that year and said, “For the present time, I don’t have any plans about turning pro. All I want to do right now is to see if I can’t be a better amateur.” However, she did go on to say, “I don’t see why someday I might not become a professional. I love golf and enjoy playing so why shouldn’t I combine business with pleasure. But that is in the future and right now, I am thinking about the present.”

She tuned up for the ’53 amateur by winning the Annual Point Judith Invitational in Narragansett the week prior. The newspapers touted Mary Lena as a strong favorite to win. However…….she lost her golf clubs. Her clubs were shipped back from Britain by ship while she flew home. She quickly got in touch with friend, Peggy Kirk, and borrowed a set of irons. She added a set of woods she had long before put away. Finding a putter in the garage at the house her set was complete. Keep in mind this is not the set she had been playing with the last few years when she was gaining all of her experience and winning a good bit. In the finals, a crowd of 8,000 watched the 36 hole match in the 95 degree heat. Her win against Polly Riley that day earned her an automatic birth on the prestigious 1954 Curtis Cup team. She was the 5th Georgian to win the title.

When she returned to Thomasville, a parade was held in her honor. Leading the parade were two Thomasville motorcycle police, two Georgia State trooper cars and the Thomasville High School band. Mayor Frank Eidson presented Mary Lena with a proclamation declaring it ‘Mary Lena Faulk Day.’ She was also presented the key to the City.

Warren Mays, Jr., of Thomasville won the Glen Arven club championship at age 16. I spoke with Mr. Mays about six weeks ago. He played many rounds with Mary Lena. His father was a teaching pro and when she would come through Thomasville she would often call his father and ask him to play with her and offer any improvement/tips to her during their round. Mr. Mays said, “Mary Lena was always such a sweet person… one of the nicest women. Never ever had nothing but nice things to say about others.”

Glen Arven held a special dinner honoring Mary Lena’s achievement. LPGA golfer Peggy Kirk Bell interrupted her honeymoon to fly from Ohio to attend. She is the one who loaned Mary Lena the irons she used to win the Amateur. Always modest, during her speech, Mary Lena said: “I got the breaks and Polly Riley was in the much tougher half of the draw. She had to beat most of the best golfers in the tournament. She had to play three Curtis Cuppers and the Canadian Amateur champion. I am just lucky that I didn’t have to play the opponents Polly did because I doubt if I would have even reached the finals.”

Incidentally, Mary Lena returned to defend her Women’s Amateur title in 1954, but lost in the semifinals to Mickey Wright.

By this time she had won three straight Georgia State Women’s Championships, played on the Curtis Cup team and won the U.S. Amateur. She had accomplished about all she could at the amateur level and it was time to make a move. She said, “When I told my mother that I wanted to play golf professionally, she said, “No.” But my Dad said, “Go.” She then borrowed $500 from her mother to get started.

1956, in what most of us in this room couldn’t fathom for most of our lives, she travelled to Havana, Cuba, to play in the Havana Cuba Open, and came in 2nd. That was three years before the Castro regime and Havana must have really been something then. She won her first individual title at the Kansas City Open along with $900.

One of her biggest mistakes as a pro was her just trying to help someone out. Tour newcomer Mickey Wright, who beat Mary Lena in the 1954 US Women’s Amateur, was struggling with her putting early in her tour career. Mary Lena gave her a Bulls Eye putter and told her to stick with it and don’t change like everyone likes to do. And boy did Mickey Wright stay with it! After receiving the putter, she won 81 of her 82 pro tournaments and made it into the Hall of Fame! The putter is now in the Mickey Wright section of the USGA museum.

One of the highlights for me in doing research for this presentation was a chance encounter with an LPGA golfing legend. I started wondering who among her fellow players might still be around? I Googled Mickey Wright’s address and got a hit for what looked like might be her address in Port St. Lucie, Florida. I typed up a letter and in it asked for any remembrances of Mary Lena and if she had time to e-mail me or telephone me, I gave her both contacts. Just 3 days later, I was sitting at the computer working on some slides for this talk and up pops an e-mail from Mickey Wright. Now you have to understand that I have read and known about the great Mickey Wright and been in awe of her record for most of my life and had only seen her in photographs and read about her in the LPGA players guide… I opened it up and I want to read it for you now:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dear Will,

Thank you for introducing yourself to me. I enjoyed your letter very much. I considered Mary Lena one of my very best friends. She came up here many times from Delray Beach to talk golf and hit a few balls.

When I first came on tour in 1955 I was a terrible putter and Mary Lena was one of the best on tour. She sort of took me under her wing and gave me the old Bullseye putter in 1956. She told me to stick with that putter and not to be changing, as most people do. She said, "it's never the putter's fault". Well, I used it the rest of my career, and it was very good to me. It now rests in the USGA Museum in the "Mickey Wright Room" in Far Hills, NJ, and the whole golf world knows your Aunt gave it to me.

Mary Lena had a wonderful, graceful golf swing. I used to love being paired with her to watch her lovely rhythm in hopes it would rub off on me. She was, in two words, a true Southern Lady; soft spoken and always very polite. She was an excellent teacher. My friend, Peggy Wilson and I, visited with her out in Colorado Springs where she was teaching at the Broadmoor. Everyone loved her out there. She really seemed to love teaching. We were very saddened by her passing in 1995. We last visited with her in 1994. We also knew her brother Gus. Bought a car from him back in the 70's up in Titusville. What a nice man he was. "Nice" seemed to run in the Faulk family. It was a pleasure and honor to be a friend of Mary Lena's. Know you will do a fine job with your talk on her life.

Again, thank you for writing. All the best to you.

Kindest regards, Mickey Wright

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

At some point during this time she took lessons from one of the foremost coaches of his time, Harvey Penick. He had nice words to say about her. He would eventually coach Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite.

In 1961, during 17 days in June, she won 3 straight events, including what was then a major tournament, The Western Open, held at the Belle Meade Country Club in Nashville, Tennessee, home of Ward-Belmont, where she had attended school. Her winnings for those three tournaments totaled a then-staggering $3,360!

There were some perks with being successful on the LPGA tour. This is a picture of the unveiling of the Mary Lena Faulk Synchrodyned Spalding Top Flite clubs. Pictured with her is Glen Arven Pro John Walter. I learned to play using a set of these clubs.

She had a certain ‘cool factor’ that she had among her nieces and nephews. She bought a brand-new 1963 Corvette, what is now the very rare split rear window version.

In her career she won 12 titles and finished second 16 times. In 1964, at the St. Pete Open, she noticed a sharp pain in her back. “I had a pinched nerve,” she said. “The doctors told me I could have an operation or I would probably have to change careers. I was 39 when I quit playing and I have no regrets. I loved the competition. When you’re competing you get to show what you can do. Even to this day, I miss playing in tournaments just because I miss the competition,” she added.

Retirement found her teaching golf at the prestigious Broadmoor Golf Club in Colorado Springs, for 16 summers. I visited her there in 1981, and I still remember walking around the club with her and everyone speaking to her. They loved her. She spent 13 winters at the Ben Sutton Golf School in Florida and also taught at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York.

She lived in Delray Beach in a very modest one story concrete block house with no air conditioning and the windows open all the time. She loved to make pots and cups on her potters wheel. It was fascinating for me to watch her spin that wheel and use her hands to turn a block of raw clay into a beautiful creation. On one visit to Del Ray, I remember making a baseball glove out of clay, putting glaze on it and then putting it in the kiln to set. I also remember mowing her grass for her with her electric lawn mower…I had never seen one before.

In 1993, she became the 6th woman to be inducted into the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame. Shirley Spork, an original founder of the tour said, “I played on tour with Mary Lena. She had one of the most rhythmic swings on tour. She was a swinger of the club-head, not a hitter of the ball like Babe was. The Babe attacked the ball, but Mary Lena was a classic swinger.

LPGA Hall of Famer, the late Betty Jameson, was a great friend and said, “I met Mary Lena when she came out to play in some of our tournaments,” she said. “Mary Lena had a beautiful swing. I remember she invited me to go with her to Thomasville, and we played Glen Arven. I met John Walter and was impressed that he had the same tempo in his swing that Mary Lena had. I finally knew where that came from.” About two years ago, I bought one of the Historical Society’s DVDs that had the old promotional videos of Thomasville from the 50s. In one segment, the DVD covered Glen Arven and in it was footage of Mary Lena putting and then teeing off on #10. It was the first time I had ever seen her swing as she would always just coach me when she came to town, but I never saw her swing. Tonight I have the video clip to show you. You will see the putting scene first and I then have that brief clip of her teeing off on #10 in full speed, half speed and then slow speed. For the golfers in the audience tonight, I want you to notice how far back her back swing goes and then you will see that smooth follow-through that everyone spoke of. (Play Video Now)

I do have a puzzling part of her history. She returned from Ward Belmont, but apparently spent some time at Florida State as she was named to the Florida State Athletic Hall of Fame in 1949 along with several other women golfers. I also found an FSU sports publication that mentions her name again. I also remember riding with her down to the Seminole Golf Course in Tallahassee where her name appeared on an outside display of FSU golf greats, but I checked with the Seminole Course recently and the board is no longer up.

Her coach, Harvey Penick, used to keep handwritten notes about his thoughts on golf on some loose papers. Someone finally talked him into putting them into book form, which he did and it became famous among golfers. He asked several of his former students to write introductions including Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw, Mickey Wright and Mary Lena.

On her way from teaching at the Broadmoor or Westchester Country Club and heading back to Del Ray, she would always come through Thomasville and all of us cousins would be so excited to see her and I can remember just begging her, “Please stay with us!” And she would always politely decline and say she would just stay at the Holiday Inn, which she did. Fiercely independent, she remained single her entire life.

Mary Lena lost her battle with cancer on August 5, 1995, so 20 years ago this year. We held her memorial service at Glen Arven. The club had two rows of carts lined up to lead us from the clubhouse to the 8th green where the memorial service was held. We then got in the carts and rode over to the 6th green where she had asked me specifically to spread her ashes on the backside of the green. She chose this spot before she died saying if you turned around you could see the most holes from that one spot. In all my years of playing Glen Arven, I never realized that until I did just that. I looked up and there they were. I could see # green, #4, #5, #6, # 11 to my left and in the distance, #7 and even #2 fairway.

I share her love of Glen Arven and of golf to this day. My father also cut down a 5 iron for me when I was just 5 years old. I was later given a set of Mary Lena Faulk Spalding Top-Flite clubs. I am not a member of Glen Arven so I cherish the times when I get to play there. I think of my Aunt Mary Lena each time I am out there.

She never met a stranger and was kind to all. May we all strive to live a similar life of kindness and friendliness to all we meet, just as she did.

-End-

The Life Of Mary Lena Faulk

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Mary Lena With A Former US Amateur Winner (left)

Mary Lena, Mother & Father and Nieces Kay & Ivey

Mary Lena Faulk's Mother Addressing Crowd At Mary Lena Faulk Celebration

Mary Lena Faulk With City Proclamation

Mary Lena Faulk Day Celebration At City Hall

'Mary Lena Faulk Day' Parade-Thomaville, GA

Faulk Family In Car With Trophy

In Car With Trophy Before 'Mary Lena Faulk Day' Parade

At Home With Trophy And Family

Mary Lena With Trophy At Her Parent's Home

Nieces Ivey Faulk and Kay Watt With Amateur Trophy

Mary Lena after winning the 1953 US Women's Amateur

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The Faulk Family With Mary Lena

Mary Lena Congratulating Opponent

An Evening Out

Mary Lena Running The Camera

At WJAR-TV Station

Trophy Time

Mary Lena (right) and Oppenent

Thursday, September 1, 2011

The Life Of Mary Lena Faulk (Text Version)