11/28/2023 0 Comments Clearview golf course back nine![]() On a piece of cardboard, Powell sketched the plans for what now are sparking greens and fairways that gracefully follow the rise and fall of the local topography. On days when they weren't working their own fields, they would bring their power machinery to Powell's land, helping him to turn and harrow the soil of what had been a run-down dairy farm. So, too, did his new farmer neighbors-all of them white. Two black doctors put up some of the money his brother also helped out. In the end, Powell paid cash for his first parcel of land. Besides, what did it have to do with my credit rating?" "I told him that was none of his business. "The man said to me: `Bill, do you believe in intermarriage?' " Powell said. One banker, though, said a loan might be possible, but he had to ask some qualifying questions. But at every bank Powell went to, the bankers went amnesiac about government-sponsored mortgages-at least for black ex-GI's. government had enacted a GI Bill, which among other things provided home loans to returning veterans. ![]() To say thank you to its soldiers and sailors, the U.S. "I just wanted to walk the fields, seeing fairways and putting greens where buckwheat and soybeans were growing." "When we came out to see this place, the farmer couldn't understand why I wasn't interested in looking at the house," Powell said. That would be a better place to raise kids and to realize a dream he'd brought back from overseas. He took one look and decided they should move to a piece of rural property. ![]() Returning home after V-E Day, Powell found his wife, Marcella, whom he had married before shipping out, living in barracks-like public housing that had been hastily thrown up for blacks brought in to work in local defense industries. "Being over there changed your way of thinking," he said. Those kinds of experiences, Powell recalled, had curative powers. When he wanted to play golf, Powell found that he could go to a British course and find members only too eager to lend him a set of clubs, once they saw what he could do with irons and woods. At Red Cross socials, the English girls would come up to soldiers, black or white, and ask: "Hi, there, GI. Someone, though, forgot to give the locals a similar briefing in the ground rules of American-style racism. Just before their first leave, one of the officers told Powell and his fellow enlisted men to watch their step, since the only women in town were white. He served as a sergeant in an Army transport battalion, all black except for its commanding officers. "I'd win, then look over the crowd for a friendly face, hoping to find a ride home."ĭuring World War II, Powell was stationed in England, an experience as formative as his high-school principal's lecture. ![]() "By 16, I'd hitchhike to junior tournaments around the county, even though white folks weren't always happy to see me," Powell said. A favorite client was a local doctor who began promoting Powell to playing-partner whenever members of his regular foursome weren't available. When his hometown's course opened, he worked as a caddy, helping to put food on his parents' table during those Depression years. ![]()
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