Editor’s note: In the global golfing community, Renee Powell is a well-known pioneer and advocate for the game and inclusion. Her hard work continues to be honored, with the Charlie Bartlett Award (presented in April at the Masters any other year) being the latest recognition for her “unselfish contributions to the betterment of society.” This is the first in a three-part series from the Canton Repository of the USA Today Network on Powell and her efforts to continue the legacy of her family.
As 2020 runs out with no British Open for the first time since World War II, and as fresh waves of golf-world love pour onto her home course in Ohio, Renee Powell keeps Scotland with her.
“You see your name on a building at St. Andrews … a university that is more than 600 years old … in the home of golf?” she said, searching for words. “What does that mean? I’m still trying to figure out even who I am.”
Who is Renee Powell?
For many, she’s a pioneer in golf as a player who now serves as one of the game’s great advocates for inclusion. Countless awards and honors have been bestowed upon the one-time golf prodigy from East Canton.
In 2015, Royal and Ancient Golf Club welcomed Powell and six others as its first female members. In 2018, the University of St. Andrews (founded in 1413) opened Renee Powell Hall as a sequel to presenting her an honorary doctor of laws degree 10 years earlier.
“The Powell name is there in St. Andrews,” she said. “Without my mom and dad and my whole family making sacrifices …
“My life has seemed to me … normal. When I go outside, I know it’s not normal. To have my name connected to the place where golf all started? People don’t even know me here.”
“Here” is Clearview Golf Club, which is in East Canton, Ohio, if you are going by mailing address and is two miles southeast of the center of town, where the land opens up in Osnaburg Township, if you get technical.
Golf icons know her
The American Society of Golf Course Architects recently found its way to Clearview to present Powell with the Donald Ross Award. Ross is Mount Rushmore material in golf course architecture, his hundreds of creations include Brookside and Congress Lake in Stark County.
Themes of awards tie together Powell’s life story. Golfer. Historic figure. Ambassador. Crusader. At 74, working hard and getting better.
Jan Bel Jan, representing the Society, said, “Renee is on the leading edge of inclusivity in everything, not just golf. As a human being, she is out there for humanity to be together.
“More people need to know her story.”
Golf icons such as Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus know her story, and the story of her family, pretty well. So do many others at the upper levels of golf around the world.
It’s a story, though, that resonates beyond golf and continues to impact any who come in contact with Powell.
Powell is the PGA pro at Clearview, which her father, William J. (Bill) Powell, converted from a dairy farm into the first U.S. course designed, built and owned by an African American.
“I didn’t build this course for recognition,” Bill Powell said in his 2000 autobiography, “Clearview: America’s Course.” “It was a labor of love. Golf is a part of society and I wanted to be included. I want you to be included, too.”
It was tough love, full of toil on every level. In a 1996 interview with The Associated Press, he said, “I wouldn’t do it again. It took a toll on my family, that’s all. It isn’t worth it. I could have done anything to take care of my family. I chose this, and I stuck with it, that was all. I’m not a quitter.”
A decade after Bill Powell died, Renee Powell’s eyes say, “It was worth it, daddy. Thank you.”
Deepening roots
As Clearview nears its 75th year, one person might suppose the course looks the same passersby as it ever did. Another might assert that it grows ever-deepening roots in the soil of America.
Bill lived long enough to join Renee in Scotland for the presentation of her honorary doctorate in 2008. Unable to play (he was 91 then), he was able to hit some putts at “The Royal and Ancient.” He rode in a cart to watch his daughter play St. Andrews’ Old Course.
Bill helped turn Renee into a tremendous golfer in the first part of her life. She has spent recent decades turning attention to Bill’s broader legacy.
There is joy in her face when she interacts with disabled women’s military veterans who use Clearview as a therapeutic tool. She has taught golf to innumerable people from all walks of life.
Another honor
In February, before the COVID-19 floodgates opened, she was named the 2020 winner of the Charlie Bartlett Award, based on her “unselfish contributions to the betterment of society.” The award is acknowledged at The Masters. Woods and Nicklaus are past recipients. Powell was to have accepted it on April 8, in Augusta, a day before the Masters’ was originally scheduled to start.
Renee uses Clearview as her base for a schedule that normally includes frequent flying but this year is full of Zoom time.
Her brother Larry is Clearview’s longtime superintendent. Larry began mowing fairways when he was 8, and had become an expert at maintaining greens by 1978, when the course expanded from nine holes to 18.
Renee is the public figure. This traces to her emerging as a world-class golfer when Blacks waged private struggles amid national storms over race. She spent 13 years on the LPGA Tour and earned widespread respect for her ability to diagnose situations and talk to people.
This note from Nicklaus showed up at the ceremony in Scotland where she became a “Royal and Ancient” member:
“I know how honored and proud you must feel to not only to be the first female golfer and only the third American golfer (coincidentally all Buckeyes!) to do so. Renee, you are an inspiration to all who know you.”
The Tiger Woods Foundation endowed scholarships in the names of Renee’s parents, Bill and Marcella, that were presented to 20 youths across 10 years.
So, the golf world knows the Powells. Perhaps there is a little hyperbole in Renee saying, “People don’t even know me here.” There is some truth in those words, as well.
Getting to know Renee
Is it fair to say Stark County knows her story, but not really? The question was among the reasons we requested an in-depth interview with Powell. She said yes and was more than gracious with her time, talking for three hours until the sun was going down and the last players had finished their rounds on the course.
The interview also coincided with the political and social unrest that has marked the year. It was conducted before the recent expiration of her 18-month term on the PGA’s board of directors. She was in the middle of a long discussion about how the PGA should participate in the national reaction to the George Floyd tragedy.
The PGA produced a statement, in advance of The PGA Championship that wound up launching the 2020 season, reflecting the eight minutes and 46 seconds prosecutors calculate as the time police pinned Floyd to the ground before he died.
An excerpt:
“As part of ongoing efforts to amplify the voices and efforts underway to end racial and social injustice, the TOUR has set aside an 8:46 a.m. tee time that will feature no players … as 8:46 has become a universal symbol for the racial injustice faced by the Black community.”
It was arranged for Powell to create a 60-second perspective to be spotted into telecasts of the 2020 PGA Championship tournament. For the record, she was deeply disturbed by the Floyd tragedy and talks at length about why. For the purposes of her 60-second national TV spot, she spent it all on Clearview.
Our interview began with no set time. A while in, seeming amused, Renee asked what we were up to. We replied that the Powell family story has been told by The Canton Repository more than a few times, but perhaps never in great detail. We were shooting for her “life story.”
We conversed from socially distanced golf carts while players finished afternoon rounds. At one point, we got to the obvious question of where she grew up.
“Right there,” she said, turning to a place in the middle of the golf course. “Right there in that house.”
Family legacy
She was born the year Bill Powell started building the course.
Bill was born in Alabama in 1916, the grandson of former Alabama slaves. His family relocated to Minerva when he was 3.
He began playing golf at age 9 at Minerva’s Edgewater Golf Course. He got a job at the course and learned things that would help him make Clearview.
Bill was a teenager when he organized and captained Minerva High School’s first golf team. Competitive and athletic, he played for an unbeaten Minerva football team, but golf was his game, and he took it with him to Wilberforce College.
He was well into his 20s when he served in Europe during World War II in the U.S. Army Air Forces. He earned the rank of technical sergeant in the U.S. 8th Air Force Truck Battalion. As circumstances allowed, he played some of the old courses when stationed in Scotland.
Home from the war, married and starting a family, Bill acted on his dream to build a golf course free from discrimination. He was dismayed to discover African Americans, even veterans, had trouble getting loans, even a GI loan.
He worked for The Timken Company, but wasn’t close to having the money to make a golf course. He formed an “investment group.” One area Black doctor put up a third of the needed funds. Another area Black doctor put up another third. Bill’s brother Berry mortgaged his house so Bill could cover the other third.
The farmland he bought on Lincoln Street was seven miles west of Edgewater.
Renee talks of that time with a sense of wonder. The sunsets on that ground where Bill exercised body, mind and soul while hand-seeding the tilled dirt in the hilly solitude must have been powerful.
Clearview opened in 1948, 13 years before the PGA dropped its “Caucasion-only clause” and Charlie Sifford got a Tour card.
In 1948, the Powells were a long way from the PGA of America Hall of Fame (Bill and Renee both are in now). It would be another 27 years before Lee Elder became the first Black man to play in the Masters.
Renee’s backyard literally was the golf course.
“My first memories are standing out there on the No. 1 tee and hitting the ball toward the creek,” she said, gazing at the spot. “I didn’t know what it was about. I probably didn’t even appreciate what it was about when I grew up and was on Tour.”
She had a club in her hands not long after learning to walk.
“Daddy taught me how to play,” she said.
TOMORROW: Renee Powell came home crying one time too many and changed grade schools. Then she had a Rosa Parks moment on the bus at her next school.
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