I've been seeing the trailers for the new movie on golfing great Bobby Jones lately, and the ads remind me of an unfinished project I've been tinkering with since the spring of 2002 (to those of you who noticed that my first edit of this said 1902, no, I'm not over a hundred years old). That was when I attended the opening of the Atlanta Preservation Center's new offices in the foundation of the ruins of the Lemuel P. Grant mansion in Grant Park. The Center had chosen the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bobby Jones as the opening day of the offices. Despite the fact that I'd lived near that building for fifty years it was the first I'd heard that he was born in Grant Park, in the Grant Mansion.
So I began putting together an article about Bobby Jones's deep roots in southeast Atlanta. Jones was born in Grant Park, learned to play golf at East Lake (and was deeply involved in East Lake Country Club throughout the peak of his career), and is buried in Oakland Cemetery also in the Grant Park neighborhood. I still haven't finished this article, and have since began pulling together info on other sports figures with connections to southeast Atlanta (New York Giants great Bill Terry, 50's Washington Redskins star "Long John" Carson, and boxer Evander Holyfield).
Whether I finish the article on Jones or any of the other three articles remains to be seen, but I've started a photo album with shots of Jones's birthplace and grave site. I'll add some East Lake photos later.
