A Plot to Save the Course

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Dear readers, we've chronicled many tales of club politics, membership scandals, and tournament controversies, but occasionally we uncover a story so audacious it seems plucked from fiction. Today, we examine how a desperate Midwestern club, faced with extinction via eminent domain, employed a solution that was equal parts macabre brilliance and legal sleight-of-hand - a strategy that would forever change the nature of their property in ways no member could have anticipated.

The year was 1908, and the Great Northern Continental Railroad was cutting an iron path across the Midwest with the inevitability of progress and the full backing of state eminent domain laws. Railroad barons had transformed from the previous century's heroes into the new century's villains, particularly in the eyes of one establishment we'll call Lakeshore Country Club, situated on prime rolling terrain just outside a major Midwestern industrial center.

Founded in 1896 by a collection of the city's business elite, Lakeshore was more than just eighteen holes and a clubhouse. It represented a peaceful respite from the smokestacks and stockyards that had built members' fortunes. The course itself wasn't particularly noteworthy - a pleasant if unremarkable routing with views of its namesake lake - but it was the membership's sanctuary.

When club president Mortimer Caldwell received the certified letter from Great Northern Continental in the spring of 1908, the news spread through the membership faster than a speeding bullet. The railroad had filed eminent domain proceedings to claim a 150-yard-wide corridor directly through the heart of the property - a swath that would render holes 3 through 7 unplayable and effectively bisect the club's land.

"The meeting that night nearly came to blows," recounted longtime member Edwin Sheffield in a 1952 club history. "Half the board wanted to fight it out in court, while the other half was ready to concede defeat and find new grounds. The law was crystal clear - railroads had eminent domain rights that superseded almost all private interests."

Almost all.

It was during this contentious board meeting that Dr. Theodore Morris - "Dr. Death" to his friends for his morbid sense of humor as much as his profession as the city's most prominent mortician - quietly posed a question that would change the club's destiny.

"What about a cemetery?" he asked. "Railroads can't claim cemetery grounds."

The room fell silent as the implications sank in. Cemeteries were indeed protected from eminent domain claims under state law, a rare carve-out meant to respect the sanctity of the dead and prevent the ghoulish prospect of disinterring bodies for commercial interest.

"But we're not a cemetery," someone finally protested.

Dr. Morris's smile, as described by those present, would have made Machiavelli proud. "Not yet."

What transpired over the next seventy-two hours remains something of a legend in Midwestern club lore. The official club minutes from this period are conspicuously missing, but through interviews with descendants of original members and private correspondence later made public, we can piece together the remarkable operation.

Working with surgical efficiency, a select committee of five members - including Dr. Morris and club founder Phillip Wainwright, who owned a monument company - executed what one participant later called "a moonlight renovation."

On three consecutive nights, workers from Dr. Morris's mortuary and Wainwright's monument works arrived after dark. They installed twenty-three granite headstones in a neat row along what is now the left rough of the 5th hole - precisely in the path of the proposed rail line. Each stone bore a name, birth date, death date, and appropriately solemn epitaph.

The question that has tantalized club historians for generations: Were there actually bodies buried there?

The official club position has always been that the graves were merely symbolic - a legal fiction designed to trigger cemetery protections. But contemporaneous letters suggest a more unsettling possibility.

"M has provided six recently unclaimed from City Hospital," wrote Wainwright in a coded note to Caldwell. "No kin to raise concerns. W providing additional four from County. All paperwork properly filed with office of records."

When club officials presented the railroad's lawyers with documentation showing that the disputed land contained a registered cemetery with at least ten occupied graves (complete with death certificates, burial permits, and a cemetery charter hastily approved by a sympathetic county official), the reaction was reportedly a mixture of disbelief and reluctant admiration.

The railroad's primary attorney, a Harvard man named Harrison Blackwood, allegedly told Caldwell: "This is either the most disgraceful abuse of the law I've ever witnessed or the most brilliant. I'm not yet sure which."

What followed was a legal chess match that lasted nearly eight months. The railroad challenged the cemetery's legitimacy, only to be stymied by seemingly impeccable paperwork. They proposed moving the graves at company expense, but were countered with affidavits from "relatives" of the deceased (hastily recruited from the club's caddie yard and kitchen staff) who objected on religious grounds.

In April 1909, Great Northern Continental officially abandoned its claim and rerouted its line three miles south - a costly diversion that added significant expense to the project but avoided what was becoming a public relations nightmare.

The victory was complete, but came with an unexpected consequence: Lakeshore Country Club was now, legally speaking, the caretaker of a cemetery. This required maintaining the graves in perpetuity and filing annual reports with the county cemetery commission.

"It's a small price to pay," Caldwell reportedly told the membership at their 1909 annual meeting. "Consider it a hazard more meaningful than any bunker."

The headstones remain to this day, now weathered by over a century of Midwestern seasons. Modern members have embraced this peculiar feature of their course. The club pro gives new members a special orientation on proper etiquette when playing near "the Residents," as they're affectionately known.

"If your ball lands among the stones, you may take free relief no nearer the hole," noted a 1998 revision to the local rules. "Please remove your cap when passing the markers, regardless of your score on the previous hole."

As for whether those graves actually contain bodies? The club has resisted all suggestions of ground-penetrating radar or other modern investigative techniques. Some questions, they maintain, are better left unanswered. Current club president Charlotte Wainwright (great-granddaughter of monument maker Phillip) diplomatically offers only: "Every hazard on a golf course has its purpose. Ours simply has a more interesting story than most."

And so, dear readers, we leave you with this final word of advice: In golf as in life, when conventional remedies fail, sometimes salvation lies six feet under. The next time you face an impossible situation, remember that Lakeshore's members didn't just think outside the box - they thought beneath it.

Poll Question

Last Week's Poll Result

Would you belong to a club that would have a person like you as a member?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🧠 Absolutely. I’m exactly the kind of member any club would be lucky to have.

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍸 Maybe... if they kept the riff-raff out. I'd join - but only if they had standards (like me).

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⛳ Probably not. If they’re letting me in too easily, it’s a bad sign.

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏚️ No way. A club desperate enough to take me isn't a club I want to belong to.

Looks like our members are less self-depreciating like Groucho Marx and more self-assured like Clark Gable. Thanks to everyone who voted - and no matter which side of the joke you’re on, you’re in good company!