Ellery McClatchy passes into croquet history Mike Orgill, Bob Alman Nov 9, 2011 It's hard to think of American croquet without thinking, also, of the Swopes, Jack Osborn, Chuck Steuber.... and Ellery McClatchy. Ellery is the last of them to pass away, and he is the one who most closely and steadfastly committed himself to the growth and development of USCA croquet for the longest time - for more than 30 years. Especially because he so determinedly stayed in the background whenever possible, for his own good reasons, we need to now make known something approaching the full scope of his contribution to the sport and the people in it. The recollections of many friends in the second half of this tribute story tell of much but not nearly all his public and behind-the-scenes benefactions to many, many people and projects. Mike Orgill begins by piecing together the complete arc of Ellery's steadfast devotion to USCA croquet, beginning in the 70's. William Ellery McClatchy, architect, newspaper heir, croquet player and gentleman farmer, died at his farm in Pope Valley, California on September 27, 2011. He was 86 years old. Ellery was born in Fresno, California, the son of Carlos and Phebe Briggs McClatchy. Carlos McClatchy was the founder and editor of the Fresno Bee and the son of C. K. McClatchy, the owner-editor of the Sacramento Bee. Ellery McClatchy’s grandfather, James McClatchy, a reporter for Horace Greeley in New York, followed his boss's advice and went West, eventually buying part ownership in the Sacramento Bee. Ellery was the last of the fourth generation of the family that founded one of the most prominent American newspaper chains. He played a major part in another dynasty, his passing virtually putting to rest the generation that brought about croquet’s American renaissance. He was a member of the "greatest generation", the cohort that, regardless of social standing, stood up to fight the threat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. He served in the US Army during World War II in New Guinea and the Philippines. During the post-war years he designed and built passive solar houses on the east coast and engaged in boat building, among other interests. He became deeply involved in the family business, serving the McClatchy Corporation as officer and board member for 28 years. With family and friends Ellery played the backyard game as a diversion. Serious croquet first touched him in 1979. Xandra Kayden, a political scientist and activist, gave him a backyard set in 1966 as a housewarming gift. They used it to play in the sand on the beach at Ellery's home on Fire Island, New York. "That was the old game," she told Croquet World, "with lots of cheating and dragging of feet to create a path for the balls to follow." But the croquet bug didn’t take hold of McClatchy until ten years later, and again Kayden was responsible. After taking up the game more seriously while she was at Stanford University, Kayden stayed with Ellery while trying to raise money for a study of the political parties in New York where her ownership of a Jaques croquet set made her something of a figure in the Manhattan croquet scene. While staying with Ellery in 1979 Kayden took McClatchy to a "croquethon" in New York’s Central Park organized by Jack Osborn’s nascent USCA. After that, recalls Kayden, "it was all over." The croquet bug had permanently infected Ellery. He immediately began making plans to blast out the koi pond at his house in upstate New York and put in a croquet court. Meanwhile, Kayden resettled in Boston and established a croquet club. The formation of the USCA had invigorated American croquet, and Kayden was in the thick of it. And so was Ellery. He established an annual tournament at his home in New York's Putnam County. He took many lessons from croquet’s foremost pro, Teddy Prentis. Ellery would tell friends that he took more lessons from Teddy than anyone in history. He began traveling the croquet circuit, competing in as many tournaments as he could. A few years passed and Ellery decided his court just wasn’t good enough. "He blasted out a good part of the hillside," Kayden remembers, "built it up again, and after great personal expense had the most beautiful, smooth and even court I’d ever seen." Now Ellery faced a new problem: recruiting players. He had a magnificent court and few people to play with on a regular basis. And he had a solution: he would drag his friends and associates kicking and screaming into croquet. Maryholt Maxwell was a friend and business associate he had known before the croquet addiction hit. She had a real estate office in downtown Carmel, New York, and Ellery had worked with her to sell a small cottage he had lived in while building his larger estate on the mountain. Ellery had not taken the architectural license exam, but he practiced architecture in Putnam County in a serious way, building passive solar single-family houses. Eventually he, Maxwell, and another friend, Dick Tucker, became partners. Ellery designed, Tucker did the engineering, and Maxwell did the marketing. This partnership was the core of his croquet cohort. For Maxwell and Dick and Martha Tucker croquet was the frivolous backyard game, and they were both reluctant to participate at first. But Ellery insisted, and when he insisted he persisted, and Maxwell and Tucker relented. "He called me to come and play one day," Maxwell remembered, "not asking me -- and I told him that I was presently in horse shows, tennis tournaments, and sailing races in addition to having my office to run, and so I had no interest in learning another sport His response was: Be here at 2:00 PM. I went." Dick and Martha Tucker and Maxwell joined Ellery for endless games on the hilltop court, playing during the day and into the night under the lights. "If you think Ellery was a kind teacher," Maxwell said, "you are mistaken. He was the most demanding coach we ever had. He would tell me to hit the ball to a certain spot on the line (before we knew what stalking meant, or what the line on the top of the mallet was for) and if I was three inches off I had to do it over and over agian until I got it right on the spot." Eventually Ellery’s croquet passion led him away from upstate New York. There was not enough activity or competition in Putnam County. Ellery sold his New York house in 1983 and moved to Palm Beach, Florida, the American croquet center in the early 1980s. The USCA had moved its headquarters from New York to south Florida, where the croquet snowbirds from New York and other northern climes spent their winters. t was not only croquet that brought Ellery to Palm Beach but an entire community to which he could belong and contribute. Ellery was a quiet, private person. He had lived most of his life up to this point away from his native California and had made his own way apart from the family newspaper business. Croquet presented him with something he perhaps had not known he needed: a meaningful structure, a way to organize his life. Once in Palm Beach, Ellery immersed himself in the croquet world, playing in every tournament, building up his grand prix points until he ranked seventh in the country on that scale, even though, he recalled, "not with a very good playing record. There weren’t that many people playing, no handicaps, and early on there was only one flight, double-elimination." Ellery did more than just play; he immersed himself in croquet politics. "You work not only to improve your game but to help out and solve the problems that exist within the game," he said in an interview on the occasion of his induction into the Croquet Foundation Hall of Fame. Just as Ellery moved to Palm Springs the American croquet world was embroiled in an intense controversy. In the forties and fifties a light-hearted rivalry grew up between the Eastern society croquet aficionados and the Hollywood crowd. The East-West split was something of a lark then, but with the formation of the USCA, the split in the eighties became much more consequential. Captain Forest Tucker presided over the Birnam Woods Croquet Club in Santa Barbara, and he played only the British game, loudly decrying "the Osborn dead game." He mentored a bunch of middle-class upstarts out of the Arizona Croquet Club who learned the British game on their own, apart from Osborn's organizational efforts back East. The eastern players were totally unaware of this western contingent until the Arizonans turned up at a national tournament in Central Park. Stan Patmor, Ren Kraft, Rory Kelley and later Jerry Stark were among the leading western lights. The western players were willing to play USCA rules; they just wanted to fully recognize the British game within the national organization Osborn was promoting. This met with resistance from the powers-that-were in the USCA. Osborn labeled them "Western Killers," suggesting they were almost un-American in their insistence on playing a kind of croquet that did not appeal to the East Coast cohort. In an interview in Croquet Magazine Osborn said, "The British game does not appeal to the American psyche." Jack Osborn came to croquet much as Ellery had: his exposure to the game induced a lifelong obsession that changed his life. A "Mad-Man"-like advertising man, Osborn was a member of New York cafe society and habitue of night spots and tony venues all over the Northeast and Florida. Osborn set out to transform American croquet into an elite sport that would attract an upscale demographic, a sport, moreover, with Osborn at its head. To this end he created the USCA and aggressively marketed croquet as "America’s fastest growing sport." Of course it was nothing of the sort, as Osborn had no data to back up his claims, but exact truth doesn’t matter to a master promoter; the only thing that matters is creating enough plausibility to attract media and corporate attention. And attract it Jack Osborn did. As McClatchy settled into Palm Beach, croquet seemed on the verge of becoming the "latest thing." At least that was the picture Osborn was painting. Jack Osborn and his coterie wanted croquet for themselves and for their kind of people. In developing its rules the USCA had consulted with the British croquet association, with help from Nigel Aspinall and John Solomon. But Osborn kept the deadness game that had been played in one form or another at country clubs in Florida and the northeast. Margaret Hull holds their plaque at the PBCC Invitational, January 1994, as they enjoy their success as doubles partners. Bert Myer photo The Arizona boys were having none of it. They had come to croquet independently of Osborn. They wanted to play croquet the British way. The two groups were soon at loggerheads, even though the Arizona boys had seemed to compromise by inaugurating their own major tournament, the Arizona Open, under USCA rules. They still wanted recognition for the international game, something that Jack Osborn was not willing to give. Ellery was the natural mediator to bridge the East-West gap. He associated with both sides, encouraged players of all socio-economic backgrounds to play, and joined tens if not scores of USCA clubs all over America to encourage each one to grow. He worked closely with Osborn, was cultivated and rebuffed many times, and realized that the USCA and the Arizona faction were hopelessly at odds. Ellery's mediations failed, at first. The USCA was turning a blind eye on international croquet. So unbeknownst to Osborn and the East Coast crowd, Ellery suggested that the Arizona boys form their own association, the American Croquet Association. This rival organization would promote international rules in the United States and join the international competitive croquet community. Ellery also supported Xandra Kayden's efforts to encourage collegiate croquet, encouraging her to teach both forms of croquet, on the grounds that the US would not be able to compete internationally without a thorough knowledge of the British game. He also funded Kayden's basic book on both games. "I couldn’t help it," Ellery recalled in an interview. "Some of the people I played with -- like Stan Patmor and the other rebels on the west coast -- had become persona non grata. We had to use the energies of the people in the west, the people that Osborn had alienated. We couldn’t waste these people. They got the international game accepted." Ellery assisted the Arizona faction even though he, like most of the east coast players, preferred the American game. Despite this he encouraged international play by supporting players in international competitions and otherwise greasing the wheels so that America could become a presence on the international croquet stage. The threat of the growing "rebel" organization in the West impelled Osborn to establish USCA-sanctioned competitions for the international game, after all, including a national championship. By preempting the ACA's agenda, Osborn preserved the USCA as the dominant national organization, at the cost of sanctioning the international game. Jack Osborn alternately wooed and rejected Ellery, as he did with many other prominent croquet figures. "The fact is," Ellery recalled, "Jack was not a politician. When he wanted something, he included you, but when he got what he wanted out of you, he didn’t talk to you again. A real politician will come back and stroke you. I didn’t mind because I wanted to help croquet, but it was so obvious." No one knows how many gifts and grants Ellery gave to worthy croquet players and projects, some worthier than others. "I don’t think it’s such a good idea," people have heard him say about one project or another, "but I’m not going to be a dog in the manger." If it was possible a project would benefit croquet, Ellery was there to support it both vocally and financially. Ellery served as the Croquet Foundation's president twice, from 1991-94 and for one year after the death of Don Degnan in 1997. In that position he worked with many other generous individuals whose support has made American croquet possible. One such man was the late Jack McMillin, the first president of the Foundation. Ellery donated $100,000 to the National Croquet Center to acknowledge McMillan’s contribution to croquet in difficult times. McMillin had been recruited by Osborn to form the Foundation, but the two soon clashed when McMillin did not always follow Osborn’s lead. "And in those days," Ellery told his friends, "Jack Osborn could make life difficult for people who didn’t do what he wanted them to do." Ellery felt that McMillin hadn’t gotten his due, and he used his NCC donation to remedy that. llery’s croquet patronage is legendary, but his croquet career did as much for Ellery as it did for American croquet. Surrounded by family and friends at his Sacramento memorial, Xandra Kayden spoke of the impact croquet had on Ellery. "The more engaged in croquet he became," she said, "the more he came into his own as a quiet but strong supporter, mediator and friend to many players around the country and the world. "Building on that experience," Kayden continued, "he also came to play a critical role in his family and the family business as the quiet listener and mediator who could see things from both the inside and the out." After spending many years on the East Coast away from his western roots, Ellery began to transition away from Palm Springs by establishing Ink Grade in 1986, turning a 82-acre site with a small house into garden and croquet paradise on the slope of a mountain in Pope Valley, California, near the Meadowood Resort in the Napa Valley. As Ellery resettled in Northern California, the San Francisco Bay Area was undergoing a croquet resurgence of its own. The driving force was Tom Lufkin, a Hollywood producer turned horticulturalist, residing in Santa Rosa. Tom had a deep croquet lineage, having been involved in the last stages of croquet's Hollywood golden age, having played croquet on Sam Goldwyn's lawn with the likes of Howard Hawks, Gig Young, David Niven and other luminaries. Lufkin played often at the Beverly Hills Croquet Club, and yearned to establish its equivalent in the Bay Area. By 1980 he finally succeeded in planting a club at Stern Grove in San Francisco. Going beyond that success, he was a major factor in persuading Brice Jones to build the courts at Sonoma-Cutrer in Sonoma county, and Bill Harlan to follow suit with the courts at the Meadowood Resort in Napa county. These two venues soon brought croquet luminaries such as Neil Spooner, Damon Bidencope and Jerry Stark to northern California and croquet in America took a quantum leap. Ellery was soon a member of both Sonoma-Cutrer and Meadowood, as well as San Francisco and was a large factor in the sponsorship of croquet at all of these venues. In the late 80s and early 90s, Northern California was the region that supplied most of the players on the USCA'S international teams, as the USCA was invited to join Great Britain, New Zealand, and Australia in the quadrennial MacRobertson Shield team events among croquet's "big four." In this period, many top-ranked players from around the world enjoyed Ellery's hospitality at Ink Grade after their games at Sonoma-Cutrer or Meadowood. Ellery made Ink Grade a quiet yet magnificent refuge imbued with his unerring taste and trademark color palate. With the help of his staff, Edie, Gil, Mikko, Marlee and others, Ink Grade became a croquet paradise and a horticultural showplace. There he proved himself at bottom what he had worked all his life to become: an auteur producing memorial experiences and meaningful environments for his family and friends. The Ink Grade Invitational exemplified Ellery’s gifts and became an historically significant croquet venue. Perhaps American croquet’s most coveted invitation, Ink Grade was a convocation of like-minded and influential croquet players the like of which the croquet world had never seen and will probably never see again. An invitation to Ink Grade ushered you a world of intense croquet competition and warm companionship, an environmental croquet tapestry that only Ellery could weave. Ellery rejected most praise, seeing it as overblown, but in his heart he must have known how special the artistry of his friendship was. Alcohol had been a problem for Ellery in his early adult years and several decades ago he stopped drinking. He developed a fondness for, and a connoisseur's knowledge of bitters with which he would concoct his own special drinks to carry him through cocktail parties and other social occasions. Despite his teetotaling later life, his wine cellars were well-stocked and his numerous guests enjoyed fine wines at the many occasions Ellery hosted. His abandonment of the drinking life showed a side of him that his friends well knew: once Ellery settled on a course his determination and perseverance were adamantine. In his last years Ellery battled emphysema. Since coming back to California he had kept a house in Palm Beach, but by 1991 he had moved permanently to Pope Valley when he could no longer travel by commercial airplane. He also established a base near Mission Hills Country Club in Southern California and helped make it the largest croquet venue in the wes He had been on oxygen since the middle 1990s, but had always gamely competed. In the mid-90s he endured a risky operation that removed his diseased lung tissue. It was a last-ditch effort to prolong his life, and it worked as well as could be expected. He lived on for more than a decade, still mentally sharp and focused, still playing a pivotal role in the affairs of his family business and American croquet. Those last ten years showed something that had resided under the surface of Ellery’s long life: his emotional and physical courage. Despite debilitating illness he pushed through his suffering to engage with his life and his friends. He was still contributingand making things work as his life drew to an end. William Ellery McClatchy was a major factor in American croquet’s endurance into the 21st Century. Other figures will arise to energize croquet; this is the pattern we’ve seen over the last 150 years through croquet's booms and busts. But the croquet world has lost someone who, in our grief, seems irreplaceable. 20 September 2011 Nottingham List Death Announcement by Bob Alman Ellery McClatchy passed away at his mountainside Ink Grade estate in Pope Valley, California, on Tuesday morning, September 20, 2011, at the age of 86. He was found early in the morning by his Mikko, his longtime assistant and chef. He had been taken to a local hospital over the weekend with breathing difficulties which appeared to be eased, so he requested to return home on Monday. His nephew Kevin will handle the funeral arrangements for a family burial in Sacramento. Ellery was the last surviving member of his generation of owners of the largest privately held newspaper chain in America, started and headquartered in Sacramento, California. He was an active member of the McClatchy board to the end of his life, and his wisdom and experience were highly valued by his family and the officers of the McClatchy chain. Although the cause of death has not been officially announced, the immediate issue was emphysema, exacerbated by other medical problems. He had been on oxygen virtually full time for several years, learning to move around his home tethered to plastic tubing with which he had learned to navigate expertly through his personal domains, in both the Northern California house and his winter residence at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage. A risky operation in Orange, California in the nineties which removed nonfunctioning lung tissue in order for new and healthy replacement tissue to grow gave him more than a decade of extra life, enabling him to live in reasonable comfort to the age of 86. When I visited him for a week at his Mission Hills home in February 2011, I was impressed with the way he had organized his life. Even in his condition, he was a most generous and gracious host. He even insisted on throwing a dinner party and asked me to invite whomever I pleased. Mikko and his staff prepared and served a sumptuous feast, which Ellery seemed to enjoy as much as any of the other five people at his table. Ellery McClatchy was my long-time personal friend and patron. He made it possible for me and many others to do what we wanted to do to help build the sport, often insisting that his financial support be held in absolute secrecy. Ellery was a strong pillar in the foundation of the USCA from the early 80's, moving to Palm Beach and helping USCA founder Jack Osborn in countless ways get the unlikely national association off the ground. His help was given not just in the form of financial support but also as wise counsel. He helped Jack Osborn found the Croquet Foundation of America and enlisted its first president, Jack McMillin. Subsequently Ellery himself served two terms as CFA president. As others came and went - often in bitter disputes with Osborn over many issues during the growing pains of the croquet entities - Ellery's support to the sport was constant for more than 30 years, not just to the USCA and the Croquet Foundation of America, but to many individuals and clubs throughout America. The full extent of his charity may never be determined, but I can personally attest to his generosity in helping the San Francisco Croquet Club get well started; and he donated $1,000 to help the Oakland club with its initial equipment stock. He was always willing to donate dinners and other social events for USCA tournaments in both Northern and Southern California. His Ink Grade Invitational was, perhaps, the most elaborate and elegant annual ever seen in the sport - but in the typically relaxed and low-key, understated style that was Ellery's hallmark. When I asked Ellery for a grant to support the further development of the USCA website and Croquet World Online Magazine in 1997, after they were both started and their value was evident, that grant more than paid for essential programing and redesign which positioned them as the best croquet websites in the world at the time. When I moved to West Palm Beach to organize and manage the National Croquet Center in 2000, I called to thank him for all the support he had given me; and he told me he would continue the grant because he liked the work I was doing. This grant was sustained until just a couple of years ago when the rapid decline of newspapers had radically affected his budget, and with apologies, he reluctantly ended the monthly support. There has never been anyone like Ellery McClatchy in the sport of American croquet. He was an original who cannot be replaced.