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Wednesday, November 12, 2003 KOMO weatherman breaks down race barrier at Seattle Golf Club It was beautiful. Silvery Sunday morning light laced the greens of Seattle Golf Club as a bald eagle swept in for breakfast. Oh, the eagle was a handsome enough. But the beauty part was the sight of the lone figure on the fairway. Steve Pool, KOMO/4's popular longtime weathercaster and Seattle Golf Club's newest member, enjoying a solitary round Pool is the first African American member since Seattle Golf Club began in 1900. Hard to believe it didn't happen decades ago. If a racial barrier falls on a forest-lined private golf course, and the club doesn't talk about it, does it still make a sound? Even if it's just the genteel and satisfying plop of a ball rolling quietly into the cup? Seattle Golf Club does not comment, I was politely told when I called to ask if the club indeed had admitted its first black member. "We can't discuss membership issues at all," golf pro Doug Doxsie said amiably. He wouldn't, couldn't even confirm or deny whether the club includes women, members of any particular ethnic or religious group, or anything else about them. "These guys are the kings of the universe and they don't want their names or anything about membership issues discussed," he said. Private isn't just an adjective, it's an action verb at the verdant and venerable club just north of the Seattle city line in Shoreline and adjacent to The Highlands, perhaps the city's most exclusive neighborhood where even the addresses are unlisted. It's true that, inside the gates of Seattle's historic Broadmoor Golf and Country Club and at younger exclusive clubs such as Aldarra in Fall City and Tournament Players Course at Snoqualmie, discretion and collared shirts are required. But nowhere is privacy guarded quite so dearly as it is at SGC. "I'm sorry, but I can't confirm or deny anything about our membership," general manager Wade Esvelt told me yesterday. He would see if a member of the board might give me a call, but no one did. Still, there's nothing in the rules that precludes an individual member from saying that he "belongs," and Pool exuberantly confirmed that, yes, he does. Talk about your breath of fresh air. Pool, who is widely known as one of Seattle's most likable and easygoing TV personalities and for his tireless civic involvement, was just as pleased and as candid as you might expect him to be. You don't apply, you have to be invited to join Seattle Golf Club. And Pool was -- by a couple of members whom he met serving on the board of Seattle's Museum of Flight -- cell phone billionaire Bruce McCaw and Bill Rex, director of Prudential Securities. Pool started out as a volunteer at the museum but soon found himself on the board of trustees with the likes of Bill Boeing and John Fluke. "These are some really high-end people and I just kind of took it as a learning experience for myself," Pool said. "A chance to know and work with some guys who have done some really amazing things." And that chance, plus a darned nice place to play golf, are the reasons Pool decided to join SGC, too -- after consulting his parents, that is. "They said 'go for it, it's good and you deserve it. You've done a wonderful job in the community,' " Poole said. "They didn't see it as a token thing." Then he took his wife and daughters -- ages 2 and 5 -- to the club and their yes vote sealed the deal. Of course, even muffled by the sound of softly closing doors and hushed "no comments," there is no denying the moment of being the first African American in such a storied enclave. Pool does not see himself as some kind of crusading pioneer. "I just happen to enjoy the game. I don't want to make more of it than it is, but I do see it as a low-level metaphor for life," he said. Golf is a game of individual honor. You call penalties on yourself and there is a code of behavior, he explained. And a club like SGC looks for "good guys who are achievers in the community and who understand that moral code," Pool said. Still, there is a positive message of acceptance here, even if one has to whisper. Pool's entry into a private club is no equivalent to Jackie Robinson joining the majors, but it does take a certain quiet courage -- a feeling of confidence and comfort inside one's own skin -- to say, "Yes, thanks. I'll be first." "I think it shows others that, if you do a good job and accomplish certain things, you don't have to be Michael Jordan to have a whole range of opportunities open up for you," Pool said. It's inevitable if amazingly late that the last of the barriers seem to be softly falling, one by one, on the thick greens and cushy carpets of private America. Who knows? Women may be invited to join the Augusta National, next thing we know. In all of the schools and civic organizations where Pool speaks to kids, the faces reflect the global nature of a changing world, a world in which all organizations, including golf clubs, are being energized by infusions of diversity. Why not SGC? And then, there's the fact that it's a cool place to play golf. "I was invited out to play a round first with some other members before I joined," Pool said. "I told them 'Kind of a nice, rustic place you've got here.' But I was thinking. 'OK. This will do.' It didn't hit me until later that it was a kind of audition." He'll never know the machinations that may have gone on internally before he was approved, Pool said, admitting he'd have loved to have been a fly on that wall. "But, on Sunday, it was just so great to be out there, walking around in the quiet," Pool said. "Just watching that American eagle." source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/paynter/147822_paynter12.html
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