America's first black country club was a home its members lost in the victories of integration.

by Larry Londino

WHEN his competitive days drew to a close, John Shippen did not disappear as a leader in the game of golf. His participation in the development of Shady Rest Golf and Country Club, a symbol of black achievement, offered the evolving black middle class a social and economic institution with access to activities not associated with a minority community.

The story of Shady Rest begins at the Westfield Country Club, which was established in 1900. The course featured a nine-hole layout north of the Westfield train line in Scotch Plains, N.J. On either side of the club was an African-American community of small homes. The residents would routinely cut across the course to get to the train line or to socialize.

Over a period of years, a "right of travel" evolved which later affected the legal rights of the all-white private club. In 1921, when Westfield members considered plans to expand to 18 holes, this legal condition undoubtedly affected their decision.

They chose, instead, to sell the club and merge with the Cranford Golf Club to form Echo Lake Country Club in Springfield. The former Westfield club was mortgaged to the Progressive Realty Company, created by a group of prominent blacks, and became Shady Rest, considered to be the first African-American golf club in the United States.

There were other black-owned or operated clubs, but none other combined golf with the clubhouse, restaurant, lockers, tennis courts, horseback riding, skeet shooting, croquet and social activities that were generally associated with country clubs of the era. Shady Rest was run by and for blacks, and became an important social and economic institution in the New York metropolitan area.

"You could bring your families here, and the kids had a place to play and run around," former member Sam Cuyler explained. "Your wife could sit out there on the porch with friends and play cards while we were playing golf. And then after golf they had a bar, they had a restaurant, and if you wanted to stay overnight you could dance."

In 1925, the first National Colored Golf Championship was held at Shady Rest. This championship was organized by a group formed earlier that year in Washington, D.C., called the United States Colored Golfers Association. The group's first president was B.C. Gordon, president of Shady Rest. Two years later the group was renamed the United Golfers Association, an organization that served as the governing body of black golf until desegregation opened many public courses.

A fight for control of Shady Rest erupted in 1925 over mismanagement of the club's finances, between forces representing a New York contingent headed by Henry Parker and a local group from New Jersey. The local group managed to vote out the New York slate of officers, but the New Yorkers were reinstated after the election was challenged in court.

It was rumored that Parker and another New York member, John E. Nail, left Shady Rest along with money collected to pay off the mortgage, leaving the club in substantial debt. It was at that point that William Willis Sr. assumed control of Shady Rest.

Willis ran Shady Rest for the remainder of its history. In many ways he represented the struggle of blacks entering the mainstream of middle-class America. The owner of a taxicab business, Willis's vision and financial skill allowed Shady Rest to prosper until it became the property of the township of Scotch Plains in the early 1930s.

"People just kept putting obstacles in his way, saying that the place was closed, that they were going out of business," said his son, Willis Jr. "So to counter that, every week he would have a name band come in out of New York. He worked with Joe Glaser and Cab Calloway, all the name bands."

Throughout the shifts in control of Shady Rest, one enduring presence was Shippen. He came to the club in 1932 after a distinguished and historic career as a player, as well as serving as superintendent at some of the most exclusive clubs on the East Coast. Many of Shady Rest's members were unaware of Shippen's playing record until after he died. They were shocked when ABC began its telecast of the 1986 Open at Shinnecock Hills with the tale of Shippen's participation in 1896. For years those same members had recalled the influence he had on them as kids.

"Anybody who wanted to come over and caddie was free to do so," recalled Earl Nettingham, a former Shady Rest member. "And everybody liked Ship, everybody took an interest in him, and he took an interest in the kids. In the beginning we called him Mr. Shippen, but he made it a point to call him Ship. We would follow him around, caddie for him, and when he was working on the greens we would go out and help him."

Shady Rest came to an end in 1963, when the gentlemen's handshake between Willis and the township came to an end. Shady Rest became the Scotch Hills Country Club and was opened to the public.

istorians view the change with mixed emotions. While the end of Shady Rest is linked to the rise in integration in public facilities in the 1960s, there is ambivalence over the inevitable deterioration of black institutions.

"We tend to think of integration in positive terms," said Dr. Jeffrey Sammons of New York University. "[But] new generations will not have the kind of rapport, relationship, endearment to a black institution as would those who came up in a segregated, exclusionary era."

Shady Rest provided a forum for some of the most prominent blacks of the 1930s, from all spheres of influence -- Althea Gibson, Ella Fitzgerald, W.E.B. DuBois -- and boasted a membership of working-class men and women and their families.

"There was no other place around here like this," recalled Cuyler. "This was the one and only. And I don't think there will be another club like Shady Rest."