The Golf Gypsy, Will Rogers, and Clint Eastwood

Will Rogers is quoted as saying, 

  “I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf. I have never been depressed enough to take up the game, but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemy.” 

Miami News Records 1931, February 8. 

Rogers had a chance to play golf when he landed his plane due to foggy conditions, in Miami, Oklahoma February 8, 1931.  I gather he'd rather talk to people than play such a frustrating game, even when George L. Coleman Jr.  came to his rescue.

George L. Coleman, Jr. wins Oklahoma State Am. 

Golf has been a frustrating and important part of my life since the day I learned to walk.  My father, the pro, drilled into my head that I should not expect to win if I did not practice. At seventy-six it hurts too much to practice like I know I should, so I am learning to adapt, to adjust, revamp, rethink and accept. Accept that this is my game. (Currently, I am not doing a very good job of that, meaning my game and my acceptance that I now shoot in the 90's.) 

/.Letty Stapp, 1954 Miami Golf and Country Club

This fall, I partnered with Donna to play in the WOGA CUP. It felt like my game faltered with every swing. I played as well as I could, my competitive spirit and ability to laugh did not let me down even when my tee shot on hole 14 hit a tree and came right back to the rough near the tee box, where Donna then had to hit it. Alternate shot means you had better play with someone understanding and who can laugh.  

"I could have spit I was so disappointed in my swing and inability to hit the golf ball more than 140 yards. It truly stunned my ego, which made me laugh to think that I had grown up to be just like the men who quit playing golf because they could no longer play to their great expectations."  Letty

My lower back continues to compress and twist as I age. The fall from the horse at age ten that first broke my tailbone, has been scarred over. Falls are nothing new to me, as I sought adventures across fences that were meant to keep children out. 

In my forties I fell on an ice-covered frozen asphalt road one winter's day when I was walking the dog. It took weeks of feeling bent and in agony to heal. It would take another fall on broken busted asphalt before I found physical therapy and at last some relief from back pain.  

The final blow may have been when I slid off "Stormy" the Buffalo. Luckily, James ran to my rescue and saved me from a broken back, but my tail bone felt too sore to sit on.  

Stormy the Bison, Sandy Springs Farms 

All of which reminds me that I have totally enjoyed my seventy-six years of living and have done my best to par-take in every adventure that has come my way. So, yes, I will go out all used up, but until I do, I still push and workout in hopes of swinging that golf club for one more time, one more month, one more year... 

Wait didn't I say earlier that I am learning to adapt? Yes, I am accepting that I cannot hit the ball as far as I would like, but I can hit my short irons straight down the middle without pain. Adapting and accepting take on many forms as we age. 

Clint Eastwood said, 

"You should never give up on your inner-self." 

Eastwood is ninety-four years old and has to deal with the inevitable aches and pains of age. He doesn't play as much as he used to, although he never stopped. Sometimes he indulges in a couple of holes, "just to take the ashes out of the embers and let the passion for the game crackle once again." 

**Clint Eastwood story

If and when the day comes that my back will no longer support a golf swing, I will turn to my inner child and find a way to playfully enjoy life.

 **footnote 9/28/24 I climbed into the pilot seat of a Boeing CH-47  Chinook ... and another  small plane at the Air Show. I laughed out loud at how difficult simple things had become, like sliding into a small pilot's seat or better yet figuring out how to climb out without falling all over myself. and bruising my legs.  The inner child is still there, but she is growing stiffer with the years. 

The Norse Stars on the Campaign Trail

 October 1952

 A Mystery Ensues. Can you solve it? 

Left to Right: Zierta Foust, Pat Neel, Georganna McBee, Shirley Berry, ?, Nancy Schaff Ferguson, Dorothy Draeger, ?   
The uniforms shown above were each made by Hildreth Patrick, mother of Virginia Lee Wilson and grandmother to Tom Pat and Dr. Bob Wilson. 

How ironic that, during this season of ferocious campaigning for the Presidency, I should be writing about politics that relate to 1952 in my hometown of Miami, Oklahoma and the drill team that made history in 1952 (and later in 1953 with a performance at the Jr. College Rose Bowl).

If it had not been for Nancy Schaff Ferguson, I never would have known this colorful piece of Oklahoma history. Nancy Schaff was a member of the Norse Star drill team in 1952-53. She danced in the precision drill team the first two years of it’s inception under the direction of Virginia Lee Wilson. Nancy’s folks, Bernie and Helen Schaff were also good friends of my parents, Johnie and Helen Stapp.

On a warm August afternoon in Tulsa, Oklahoma this beautiful woman appeared at the desk of the Oklahoma Golf Magazine where I was selling my tribute to golf history “The History of the Miami, Oklahoma Golf and Country Club 1914-1984.”

She introduced herself and our connection with the Miami Golf and Country club. Thirty minutes later she handed me her copy of the LIFE magazine October 27, 1952, with instructions to give it to the Dobson Museum in Miami. There begins our story.

As an original member of this precision drill team for NEO A&M junior college she re

membered the excitement they shared at being asked to perform for the Democratic rally in Oklahoma City for Adlai Stevenson’s visit.

Between 1908 and 1948 Oklahoma voted Democratic for all but two elections. In the late summer and fall of 1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower campaigned heavily throughout the old solid Democratic South in hopes of winning the election.

At this time in history (1952) the eleven states of the old Confederacy were lumped together as “the solid South” with 128 electoral votes for the Democratic party. However, there was a handful of vulnerable states for the Republicans to capture: Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, Texas, and Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama.

In his story, Robert T. Elson writes, "Oklahoma sat on the fringe of the Old South with "Little Dixie" known as the stronghold. The Democrats have remained loyal. The Oklahoma Democrats have energy and wealth on their side. Two Senators, Mike Monroney and Robert S. Kerr both energetically campaigned for Stevenson."

He goes on to write, "Even in 1948 when South Carolina's native son Strom Thurmond was running on the Dixiecrat ticket only 143,000 out of 480,000 registered voters went to the polls in November. But this year the Eisenhower invasion of the South has produced new highs in registration records and promises to bring out masses of new voters.

One voter explained, 'I am sick and tired of my vote being taken for granted. It is time for a change.'  In Ft. Worth 350 women representing 84 towns and cities paid their own way to attend a briefing on how to organize a precinct campaign." 

On November 4, 1952, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower easily defeated Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson. (Southern states voting Republican were Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma.)  

It is lost to history as to who invited the Norse Stars to perform at Stevenson’s speech in Oklahoma City and who renamed them, “Democratic Belles,"  for that occasion? What is known is that our hometown drill team took center stage and kicked those lovely long legs and white boots proudly into the air on an October day in 1952.

Here is what I know:

I have names for five of the women in the first picture but no order:  Shirley Berry, Gearyanna McBee, LaDonna...., Phyllis Berkey, and Nancy Schaff. 

Who might the other young women be?

Who invited the Norse Stars to perform in OKC?

Who changed their name to the "Democratic Belles."? Jordan Boyd from the Dobson Museum shared a photo from the NEO 1952-53 yearbook in which the Norse Stars are marching in the parade and the quote reads "A performance by the Belles of Oklahoma." We are wondering the "Democratic Belles" was used as a particular performance as to be politically generic and no assimilating the college in any way in the naming.