JULY 1967 (joij? (bourse Superintendents OF NEW s^lddociation E N G L A N D Sponsors and administrators of the Lawrence S. Dickenson Scholarship Fund — Awarded yearly to deserving Turf Management Students. Secretary L E O N V. ST. P I E R R E 51 F e n w o o d R o a d L o n g m e a d o w , M a s s . Oi 106 Phone 5 6 7 - 5 5 6 2 Club Affiliation — Educational C o m m i t t e e C h a i r m a n THOMAS CURRAN 37 Parker Street Fitchburg, M a s s . 0 1 4 2 0 Phone 342-9198 Club Affiliation O a k Hill C o u n t r y C l u b WILLIAM ASH 9 Pafton Street N o . Dartmouth, M a s s . 0 2 7 4 7 Phone 9 9 3 - 8 7 6 7 ROBERT G R A N T 2 2 Patricia R o a d Sudbury. M a s s . 0 1 7 7 6 Phone 4 4 3 - 2 6 7 1 Club Affiliation Brae Burn C o u n t r y C l u b NORMAN MUCCIARONE 101 A l b a n R o a d W a b a n , Mass. 02168 Phone 3 3 2 - 3 0 5 6 Club Affiliation Woodland Country Club Golf Committee Chairman — Longmeadow Country Club First Vice-President — A N T H O N Y C A R A N C I JR. 2 2 Hillview Drive N o . Providence, R. I. 0 2 9 0 0 Phone 7 2 3 - 1 6 8 8 Club Affiliation Ledgemont Country Club S e c o n d Vice-President LUCIEN DUVAL 9 R o s e Lane Framingham Center, M a s s . 01701 Phone 8 7 2 - 0 0 0 6 Club Affiliation C h e s t n u t Hill C o u n t r y C l u b Finance C o m m i t t e e C h a i r m a n 1 — N. J. S P E R A N D I O Concord, Mass. 01742 Phone 369-4723 Club Affiliation Concord Country Club — RICHARD C. BLAKE 21 I Sewall Street Boylston, M a s s . 0 1 5 0 5 Phone 8 6 9 - 2 7 3 7 Club Affiliation M t . Pleasant C o u n t r y C l u b PHILIP C A S S I D Y 45 Grosvenor R o a d Needham, Mass. 02192 Phone 4 4 4 - 4 1 2 7 Club Affiliation Weston Golf Club Past President — J O S E P H BUTLER 3 R i d g e w o o d Terrace Beverly, M a s s . 0 1 9 1 5 Phone 9 2 2 - 1 2 6 3 Club Affiliation United S h o e C o u n t r y C l u b — E D W A R D J. M U R P H Y 194 O x b o w R o a d Wayland, Mass. 01778 Phone 3 5 8 - 7 4 1 0 Club Affiliation Lexington C o u n t r y C l u b Newsletter C o m m i t t e e C h a i r m a n DEAN ROBERTSON 2 4 Riverview Drive Newbury, Mass. 01950 Phone 4 6 2 - 4 5 4 0 Club Affiliation Ould Newbury Golf Club — (Gourde Superintendents ^Association JUNE MEETING ARTICLES It was about 90 degrees in the shade and Superintendent Pete Ruby had the Portland Country Club in perfect playing condition. For those of you who did not attend, this was a joint meeting with Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts Superintendents Associations. There was a good turnout from each association, however I feel that more members of Mass. should strive to attend these meetings. Most of us work seven days a week during the growing season and one day off a month certainly would be a benefit to all of us. Take a day off and see how the other fellow lives. Gentlemen, I am running out of articles for the Neivsletter. If you have something to offer why not sent it to me so that all of the members can benefit. I am sure that at least a couple of you have some interesting project going on or something out of the ordinary that you might write about. L~can'r understand why I mail out alnnil' ]"25 .'Vt-h ^ " letters to our members and then only get to see the same few at each monthly meeting. Maybe some of you have some suggestions to interest some of the other Superintendents to attend the monthly meetings. New Applications to be voted on at the next meeting: Joseph Rybka Thorny Lea Golf Course John K. Parker Duxbury Yacht Club William Brennan Bear Hill Golf Club Inserted in the last Newsletter was a list of names and addresses of our members. 1 have received many calls from people telling me that I listed their addresses —wroBg^How-was I -supposed to -kn-e^tha^y-ett-changed jobs and moved? All it takes is a four cent post card to notify me of any change in your mailing address. It is always interesting to walk around at the monthly meetings and listen to the conversations between the Supers. "Hey Dave, how do you like that new low gravity type t r a c t o r ? " or " Y o u know, I'm afraid my old rough mowers will never last the season if we continue to get much more rain." " S a y Jim, do you think that you will ever live long enough to see your course rid of P o a ? " " Y o u know Bill, I've never seen a year as bad as this for hiring help. It seems as chough nobody wants to work on a golf course any more, and if we don't start paying our help a decent wage we won't be able to hire even a high school student for the summer." Tournament results at Portland: Low Gross Dave Barber 78 Low Net Don Estes, Jr. 71 A1 Mellon 71 2nd Low Net B o n Kirkinan T3 73 Ted Murphy NEXT MEETING The next meeting will be our annual SuperintendentChairman Meeting, July 10, 1967. This year it will be held at the Marshfield Country Club. Mel O'Kelly is the Superintendent. Let's all try to notify our chairmen and stress the importance of attending this meeting. Remember, it won't be a success unless you are there with your chairman. Directors' Meeting Regular Meeting Lunch Golf Tournament. 10:00 11:00 12:30 1:30 a.m. a. m. p.m. p.m. Directions to Marshfield: Follow route 128 south to the Marshfield exit (route 139). Head towards Marshfield and at the first set of lights go right. Club is one mile ahead on the right. The August meeting will be on August 7, 1967 at S a m -MitchelFir Easton CoTintry^Club.' In Memory of Joseph Valentine Merion Golf Ciub 1907-1962 On October 7, 1966, the Trustees of The Penn. State University with due deliberation, saw fit to honor the deeds and the memory of Joseph Valentine by proclaiming that the Turfgrass Research Center at Penn State shall be known as T H E J O S E P H V A L E N T I N E T U R F G R A S S R E S E A R C H C E N T E R . The objective is, by honoring the memory of the late J o e Valentine, also to recognize all Golf Course Superintendents. Many will want to participate in the establishment of this Memorial and to have their names permanently inscribed as friends of Golf Course Superintendents. OF All contributions should be sent directly to Box 324, State College, Pennsylvania 16801, and checks should be made out to Joseph Valentine Memorial Fund. PRESIDENT'S M E S S A G E F R O M THE FLAPPER T O THE G O - G O GENERATION GENERATION If you were a greenskeeper in 1924, you remember the weekly Sunday afternoon visits to the greenskeeper's cottage, from the Greens Chairman, at the Sandy Niblick Club. Reginald MacNeish would arrive in a Stutz Bearcat sports car, dressed in his candy striped blazer and white flannel pants. He would almost always find old Henry, the greenskeeper, in the barn feeding (part of the fairway mowing equipment) Jerry and Chumley, who provided the horsepower which was needed to pull the twothree gang Ideal fairway mowing units. Mr. MacNeish came over tell old Henry that he had mowing machine, for cutting down country for ten dollars this Sunday afternoon to located an old sickle bar roughs and a lime sower, apiece. Those were the days when the club house cellar had more stock than the club barn, in the form of bootleg scotch and gin. Forty-three scratching years later, Otto Stahl, the Chairman of the Golf and Ground Committee at the Mossy Brook Country Club, arrived at the Superintendent's office on Monday morning, driving a sleek $7,000 sports model to discuss the labor shortage, some of the existing problems on the golf course, and plans for installing an automatic watering system. Living in the Go-Go generation has many advantages, and those who lived in the Flapper generation had their blessings, too. Leon V. St. Pierre President The going following article to run from time is the first of a series to time, taken from that I am a Human Relations in Supervision handbook, put out by the Boston Edison Co. NEW E N G L A N D KEEPING THE BOSS INFORMED The supervisor should supply his boss with complete and accurate information for the boss to use in making decisions, issuing orders, and reporting up the line in turn to his own boss. A man has to protect his boss from being caught unaware of, and uninformed about, things he holds the responsibility for. The channels of the chain of command exist not only to send orders down from the top to the bottom of an organization, but also to pipe information back up the same lin# ; —- each man to his boss. The boss needs to know, for instance, how work is progressing, what difficulties are being encountered, what improvements are needed, how orders are being carried out, if any actions of management are getting unfavorable reactions at the work level, and if there is any trouble brewing. In order that this channel of communication upward can fulfill its purpose, everyone in the chain of command must recognize those human traits that tend to distort information. There is a natural tendency to keep the boss happy by overemphasizing the good aspects and playing down the unfavorable aspects of a situation. It is just human nature to distort information so as to escape blame — to color up reports so that the boss will think you're on the ball, to filter out anything that might make you look careless, stupid, or unfit for the job. The amount of censoring, filtering, and coloring of information hinges upon the kind of relationship a man has with his boss. If the relationship is one of mutual helpfulness, a man can admit that he made a mistake, that things aren't going too well at the moment, that it looks like trouble ahead and something needs to be done about it. If a supervisor doesn't have to phrase his report in terms of protecting himself, he can send up the channel the kind of information that upper management needs to make its decisions and to formulate its communications in terms of the people who will receive them. Everyone has had the experience of seeing a perfectly good project fall flat and die because the way it was presented didn't appeal to people or because it was introduced at a time when people were too deeply stirred up about something else. A management that knows what people at the bottom level want, and how they think and feel about the things that are part of their work lives, is able to explain its wishes and launch its projects in a way that takes these sentiments into account. FRIENDS OF THE ASSOCIATION Abbott Spray and Farm Equipment Co. Waltham Street Lexington, Massachusetts Dr. Burton R. Anderson Golf Course Architect Turf and Golf Course Consultant Route 5 Augusta, Maine The Clapper Co. 1121 Washington Street West Newton, Massachusetts Geoffrey S. Cornish Golf Course Architect Fiddler's Green Amherst, Massachusetts The Charles C. Hart Seed Co. Wethersfield, Connecticut Fuel Activator Chemical Corp. C. F. Barbour — Regional Director 43000 Prudential Tower Boston, Massachusetts Gaffny Enterprises, Inc. Irrigation Specialists North Main Street Middleton, Massachusetts Grounds Equipment Co., Inc. 383 Boylston Street Newton Centre, Massachusetts Kerr McGee Chemical Corporation P. 0 . Box 790 Waterbury, Connecticut Irrigation Consultants Inc. 251 Harvard Street Brookline, Massachusetts Tom Irwin Co. Bennett Hill Road Rowley, Massachusetts Karandrew Turf Farms, Inc. Sam Mitchell, Sales Representative 18 Old Randolph Street Canton, Massachusetts Johns-Manville Sales Corp. 150 Causeway Street Boston, Massachusetts ^tarcbrnont rrfigatiofrCoT" Larchmont Lane Lexington, Massachusetts J . F. Aveni Lu Soil — Soil Conditioner Minerals & Chemicals Philipp Corp. 25 Concord Street Belmont, Massachusetts Magovern Company, Inc. Lawn Acre Road Windsor Lock, Connecticut New England Engine & Parts Co. Inc. The Pacer Distributor 884 Commonwealth Avenue Boston, Massachusetts Stanley S. Philipkoski Sales Representative Stauffer Chemical Co. 380 Madison Avenue New York, New York Sawtelle Brothers jet. Routes 128 and 62 Danvers, Massachusetts Richey & Clapper, Inc. 28 Rutledge Road Natick, Massachusetts Philip A. Wogan Golf Course Architect 21 Budleigh Avenue Beverly, Massachusetts Wyandotte Chemical Co. 709 Salada Building Boston, Massachusetts D. L. Maher Co. Water Supply Contractors Testwells — Gravel packed wells Byron Jackson Pumps P. O. Box 274 Woburn, Massachusetts Alfco Rokeby Co., Inc. Fertilizers and Chemical Specialties P. O. Box 267 Marietta, Ohio Ken Minasian Scotts 6 Amelia Court N. Providence, R. I. .r A The Kenneth Barrie Company 375 Centre Street Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts —A^ Cb Lawn, Inc.— P. O. Box 436 Wakefield, Mass. Newsletter C o m m i t t e e C h a i r m a n — DEAN ROBERTSON 24 Riverview Drive Newbury, Mass. 01950 Phone 462-4540 Club Affiliation Ould Newbury Golf Club Lb