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• S17. Native Links: The Surprising History of Our First People in Golf

  • When
    07/30/2024
  •  
    3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    In Person - Kennedy 112 at Assumption University
  • Spaces left
    60

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  This course meets 1 time. 

  This course will revolve around the findings of Dr Wagner's investigations that are published in Native Links, an entertaining and insightful narrative makes the case that, as with the DNA of American history, Indigenous history is a leading strand and that is true for golf as well.

  While many in the golf industry are in a ‘hold’ pattern, even after the surge in outdoor activity during covid, according to Golfweek, “there is one group of builders as bullish as ever on course construction: Native Americans.” With Fee to Trust programs, in successful advocacy, litigation, and lawsuits, with #Land Back, with the revenues from gaming, many tribes have built museums, archives, government centers and—surprise—golf courses. The result is a new generation who harken back to a long history of players and teachers for whom the ancient stick-and-ball game was another way of finding home.

  Native Links, The Surprising History of Our First People in Golf, gathers gripping stories and long-lasting oral histories about our First People in the game of golf. The story begins with Oscar Smith Bunn, A Shinnecock Montauk Native who played in the 1896 and 1899 U.S. Opens. Through Orville Moody’s (Choctaw) triumph in the 69th U.S. Open, to a new generation of players that includes Notah Begay lll and Gabby Lemieux, Native Links makes an engaging case that you cannot tell the story of golf in this country without including our First People.

  Finding the elders or those who knew the elders, and meeting a new generation of Native golfers, the author writes, “I would be smudged, taken for a rat, taught (Arnold Palmer’s) perfect grip, and lose matches to Rod Curl and Steve McDonald among others. Still, all I wanted to do was find a home in these shared stories.” This history is indispensable for all who want to know the whole story.

  

  Born in Paterson, New Jersey, on the ancestral lands of the Lenne Lenapae, an area named Lenapehoking, Dr. Mark Wagner is the fourth child of eight born to Jack and Pat (Coyle) Wagner. From Irish grandparents on their maternal side and German on paternal side, In 2021, as he explored the history of golf and golf architecture, Dr. Mark began to realize there were many firsts among our First People in the ancient club and ball game, a game he has loved since his childhood outings with his family to the Adirondacks. The result of this love of the game is Native Links: The Surprising History of Our First People in Golf, published by Back Nine Press this summer. 

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• S18. Notable Residents of Hope Cemetery

  • When
    08/15/2024
  •  
    3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    In Person - Hope Cemetery 119 Webster St, Worcester, MA
  • Spaces left
    14

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  This course meets 1 time. 

  Come “meet” some of the notable permanent residents of Hope Cemetery and learn about their lives. People and families featured made their home in Worcester in the 18^th-early 20^th centuries and came from a variety of backgrounds. We will also have an opportunity to go inside of a mausoleum.

  
  

  This is an outdoor course involving walking on both paved and potentially uneven ground.  If the weather is not cooperating, the date will be rescheduled. 

  

  Caroline Bigelow is a past State Historian for the Massachusetts Daughters of the American Revolution, and a paraeducator in the Worcester Public Schools. She currently serves on the board for the Friends of Hope Cemetery and leads many of their walking tours.

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