EULOGY - FOR A GOLF COURSE
We’ve all become way too familiar with news of a golf course closure. Though inevitable, I learned this morning of another planned closure that hit close to home.
The club I grew up at, where I learned the game from my father, taught my sons the game, won and lost club championships, made friends and some foes, went to weddings and bar-mitzvahs and spent many idle hours shooting the breeze in the pro shop, on the patio or in the bar, Blue Ridge Country Club in Harrisburg, PA will be shutting its doors in favor of mixed development at the end of the 2017 season. It’s where I made my first par, first birdie, broke 100, 90, 80 and 70 for the first time and where my boys (pictured above-2008) experienced many of the same thrills. The club had been on “life support” for a number of years.
Though we relocated and I left the club 7 years ago, I suspected this day was coming, back in 2008 when club leadership first decided against investing in improvements to the club and again a few years later when the impact of the great recession, poor leadership and management and declining levels of service precipitated the sale of the club to a developer. Blue Ridge as we knew it died peacefully after an extended illness.