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Elbert Jemison Jr.
Elbert Jemison Jr.
By Ian Thompson
In the last issue of GolfSouth I featured Joe King in this 'Golf Memories' segment. It seemed only natural and fitting to turn to his dear friend Elbert Jemison Jr. for my next profile. This is his story...
Elbert Jemison has rubbed shoulders with the biggest names in golf and played against many of them in his fine amateur career. That's right, he remained an amateur when the vogue is more and more these days to turn professional at the drop of a hat. That's not that he wasn't tempted to join the paid ranks.
His golf career goes back some 65 years and he figures he's won some sort of tournament every year from when he was 15 years old up until 1988. Highlights include winning the State Amateur Championship in back-to-back years - 1957 and 1958, and the same feat in winning the State Senior Amateur in concurrent years - 1976 and 1977. He also played in four U.S. Amateurs, one U.S. Senior Open and one U.S. Senior Amateur. His best finish in the amateur was making it to the fourth round in 1960.
"My mother was an active golfer in state championships and this rubbed off on me," Jemison said. His father didn't play golf, but was involved in selecting the sites for both Mountain Brook Club and the Country Club of Birmingham.
"Golf was a smaller game back then. I used to watch my mother play in ladies events at the old Birmingham Country Club (now Highland Park) when I was six years old."
He attended Ramsey High School and then Sewanee Military Academy. "They had a golf team at Sewanee, but it wasn't very good. Football was my first love though."
In his final year there he was promoted to cadet colonel and battalion commander over 300 similarly-aged young men. He was among five young men offered commissions in the army if they were part of the R.O.T.C., which he was, but he was too young to be commissioned, so he chose to go to the University of Virginia because they had a strong golf team.
However, Pearl Harbor intervened after he'd been at college for just over a year and he was called up after the age to become an officer was dropped from 21 to 20. He started out as an infantry officer, then moved onto to an armored division. He was then picked to be a personal aide to General Edmund Sebree, assistant 35th Infantry Division commander.
"We crossed the Channel to Normandy and I was assigned to an infantry unit involved in the liberation of Le Mans, Orleans and Nancy."
A funny story involves Jemison and an 8-iron he took into battle with him. "It was just short enough to fit into my bedroll and I knew hitting some balls off the deck of the troop ship would be a good diversion.
"General George Patton found out about this months later, and commented 'By God Jemison, if you can kill Germans with that (bleepin) thing, do it!'"
Following his discharge after the war ended, Jemison played golf at the University of Alabama for two years. The former outfielder for the New York Yankees and legendary local golfer Sam Byrd became his teacher and his golf game began to have some notoriety on the local scene. An exhibition he played at Roebuck Golf Club against Ben Hogan stands out from those days.
"Hogan encouraged me to turn professional, but I wanted a back up. I arranged with MacGregor Golf to work for them if I didn't make it, but I decided against turning pro in the end."
His back up turned out to be the insurance business as he has been an agent for Mass Mutual for going on 54 years, still maintaining an office and going to work most every day.
However, this was just the beginning of his ties to professional golf as an administrator, rather than player. He began on the amateur level in the early 1950s as a member of the board of the Alabama Golf Association, twice serving as president. Next came his involvement in the Southern Golf Association.
He was elected in 1970 to the executive board of of the United States Golf Association and served through 1977. In 1975 he was elected treasurer and realized the need to broaden the base of income of the USGA.
"I conceived the Associate Program (now the Members Program) where golfers pay a subscription to receive a USGA journal, bag tag, rules of golf, etc. There are now over 600,000 enrolled members, but I wasn't sure if it would take off in the beginning.
I wanted to launch it with some publicity, so I called Gerald Ford, who was President at the time, and he agreed we could make the announcement at the White House. I also called Arnold Palmer to help, which he did, and we went from there.
I remember joking with Arnold and President Ford that at the time the USGA had spent $21,000 in start-up money and we were the only three members signed up and none of us had paid!"
This money goes towards various research and development projects and helps to fund the 14 tournaments put on by the USGA.
Jemison has traveled to many places to play and officiate golf, with St. Andrews in Scotland standing out as one of the best. In fact he's an overseas member of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, but he hasn't been there since 1988.
"You don't apply for membership of the R & A, in fact you don't even know you're being considered. I was chairman of the amateur status committee when the 1975 Walker Cup was being played at St. Andrews. It must have been then that I was considered. A couple of years later both I and President Ford were asked to join."
One achievement he's naturally proud of is his induction into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 1982. Also the Birmingham Golf Association inducted him into their Hall of Fame 17 years before this.
With a life as storied as his has been, it's no wonder he wrote a book about it.
Wendell Givens, who was on the sports staff of the Birmingham Age-Herald under Bob Phillips in the 1940s and retired in 1986 as assistant managing editor of The Birmingham News, and Jemison penned some fascinating reading in Playback: from hickory nuts to Hall of Fame, which was published in 1997.
Givens is the brother-in-law of the late Charley Boswell, one of Jemison's closest and dearest friends. Jemison devoted a whole chapter to this renowned blind golfer titled 'Unforgettable Charley Boswell.'
"My aim was to write this book primarily for present and future family members. Not as an autobiography, but as an account of events in my life," Jemison said.
However you choose to refer to it, be sure to take a look at this book as it is 20 chapters full of Elbert's stories, his life and times. I recommend it wholeheartedly. The same way I wholeheartedly enjoy my friendship with Elbert Jemison. His mind is sharp as a tack and at 81-years-young he has more stories than anyone I know. And he has been just as great a friend to local golf.
Long may I continue to see him on the golf course.
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