The Eller Chronicles
Vol. IV NO 3.THE ELLER FAMILY ASSOCIATIONAUGUST 1990

 

Harold and Ruth Eller - - - THE FIRST ELLER FAMILY OF GOLF
BY
Gene Pearce

120 Alta Viata Dr., Jackson, Tennessee 38305

Harold and Ruth ELLER

State's 1st family of golf



News Clipping

Ellers' love of game just par for course

By Joe Caldwell
Banner Sports Writer
In 1945, R.L. Magee, service superintendent of the DuPont Plant, went to a 31-year-old plant employee with the offer of a new job. How would the employee like to become golf professional of Old Hickory Country Club, which DuPont owned?

"Good gosh, Mr. Magee," said the employee, "Ten years ago, I would have jumped at the chance. But I'm 31 years old now. I don't know. I'll have to give it some thought."

The employee had no experience as a professional, but he was a good golfer. In fact, he had won the Old Hickory club championship three years in a row. After talking it over with his wife and brother, the employee, Harold Eller, decided to try the new job.

"I guess they wanted to get rid of me because I won the club championship three years in a row, so they decided to make me go to work out there," Eller, 75, said recently, laughing.

By the time he retired from Old Hickory in 1979, Eller had become one of the most respected club professionals in Tennessee. He and wife Ruth and their children, Beverly, Judy, Richard and Mike, are the state's First Family of Golf.

Judy (Mrs. Gordon Street of Chattanooga), 49, was inducted into the state's Sports Hall of Fame in 1980. Richard, 42, was inducted into Memphis State University's Sports Hall of Fame last summer. And Beverly (Mrs. Gene Pearce of Jackson), 53, will be inducted into her hometown's sports hall of fame Thursday.

That leaves Mike, 39, as the only one of the four children not yet in a hall of fame. But he takes it good-naturedly.

"I'm thinking of starting a Hermitage Golf Course Hall of Fame and electing myself the first member," he says, smile.

Mike, who is director of golf at Hermitage and at Stonebridge Golf Course in Memphis, the two courses owned by Nashville businessman Ray Danner, will be one of the host professionals next week when the third annual LPGA Sara Lee Classic is played at Hermitage. And Wednesday (May 2) will be an especially exciting day for him.

That is when his parents will be honored at Harold and Ruth Eller Senior Citizens Day at the Sara Lee Classic. All senior citizens 62 years or older will be admitted free that day to the first round of the tournament's pro-am competition.

"I'm so proud because they've done a lot for golf in the state. It was their whole life," Mike says. "Dad was such a great professional . . . so honest . . . such a great teacher. I would have regretted it if I had not gotten to work for him."

After graduating from the University of Alabama (where he played on the golf team) in 1972, Mike tried his hand outside the sport.

"I sold insurance for three years and I was miserable," he says. In 1975, he went to work for his dad in the pro shop. When Harold retired, Mike head professional at Old Hickory until he resigned in March 1985 to begin construction on the Hermitage course.

Growing up in the Eller household was not your typical family a setting.
"They say families don't eat together anymore. Well, we did," Ruth Eller recalls. "I never had a child that slept late. They all got up early, so breakfast was the meal at our house.

"And I wouldn't let them eat dinner until their daddy got home. Him being a golf professional, sometimes he didn't get home until 8:30 at night. I remember Beverly once saying, 'Mania, when I get married, I'm going to eat supper at 6:30 every nigh!'

"Around the breakfast table and dinner table, they had something they could all talk about, and that was golf," Ruth says.

"That and basketball," Mike recalls. "Richard and Judy were also good basketball players, so we'd either talk golf or basketball whatever season It happened to be."

Because a golf professional's busiest time is In the summer, the Ellers never got to take a vacation as a family. When Harold got his two weeks off In the winter, the children were in school.

"We never had a vacation where all of us were together at the same time," Richard recalls. "Oh, we might have had one a long time ago but Mike and I were too young to remember."

They were supposed to have their first family vacation with all members playing golf together last month at Hilton Head, S.C. But this was put on hold when Richard got involved in the reconstruction of the greens at Lebanon Golf and Country Club.

Richard, who lives in Franklin, and partner Harold Jackson have a golf course construction company, Golf Course Enterprises. They have also been building a new course in Mt. Juliet, but that course's owner, Charles Rowlett, has run into financial trouble. The construction has ceased while Rowlett seeks a buyer for the property

"We're still going to take that family vacation sometime this year at some golf resort," Richard says.

"I don't think the whole family,, has ever been on a course playing golf at the same time," he continued. "We've lived on 'em (courses) and worked on ~'em, but never played on 'em at the same time.

"In fact, I don't think I've ever seen Mom and Dad play golf together. As a professional, he always bad his games and she was busy taking care of the kids."

Ruth's personal claim to golf-playing fame was that she won the Old Hickory woman's club championship in 1953 "I guess a lot of the good players were sick that day," she says, laughing.

Her proudest accomplishment is having started the state's junior golf program.

None of the Eller children feels he or she missed out on anything because of the dominance golf had in their lives.

"It was the only thing we knew. The golf course was our backyard," Richard says. "We lived on the 16th fairway (at Old Hickory) I probably saw Dad more than most kids see their dad. I spent all day working with him. I liked the outside part of the business, like working on the course, and Mike liked the inside part - the pro shop and stuff.”

"It was a great atmosphere," Mike recalls. "Richard and I would wake up in the morning, tee off on No. 17 and play around to No. 16. That's the way we started our day. Then we'd go shag balls or caddy.

"I wish more kids could grow up around a golf course. It's a great environment. It was like having a 150 acre plantation."

"Judy took her first step on the putting green at Old Hickory," Ruth says. "I guess we were lucky that the people at Old Hickory didn't mind having children, playing golf there. Ours grew up on the golf course."

"They never forced golf on us, they always left it up to us," Richard says. But he also remembers the time he got interested in Little League baseball

"I was 8 or 9 years old and I was playing Little League and hadn't played golf in six or seven weeks," he says. "Dad came to me and said, 'If you're not going to play golf, there is a member at the club who wants to buy your clubs for his son.'

"The next day I was out there on the practice tee hitting balls. I don't think Dad would ever have sold my clubs, but I didn't want to take the he adds, smiling.

When I was growing up, Judy was winning everything and her name was. in the newspaper all the time. I didn't practice and play striving to beat Judy, but I wanted to succeed in golf like she did.

"Whatever sport she was playing, Judy was one of the greatest competitors I have ever seen” he says.

Ruth remembers Once when her daughters were young and they wound up playing against each other in the first flight of the Nashville Women's Golf Association match-play tournament.

"They were coming up to the 18th fairway at Belle Meade and both of them were about to cry because they knew one of them had to lose," she says.
Judy won.

"Before you ask the question, I'll tell you: Between Judy and me, Judy was the better golfer . . . She always was," Beverly says,

Judy says: "At the time, I didn't realize what a competitive person I was but I can remember when I was 7 or 8 years old lying down on the grow one time to see who was away.

"I also remember the first tournament Beverly and I played in. I was 9, and Daddy said playing in the City would be good experience for us Beverly was excited about it, but I just said, 'Why should I? I can't win anything.' I didn't want to play if I couldn't win.

"But I wound up playing my aunt (Laura) in the finals of the consolation bracket I beat her and won a silver dish. It was the first thing I ever won playing golf," she says.

"If we hadn't taken up golf, we would never have seen our father," Beverly says. "Dad never knew a day off when he was a pro. He worked seven days a week.

"That's not the way it is for a pro nowadays. People don't maw now how much work the pros put in back then. Pros have their days off now and have time to spend with their kids. Times have changed. But we had a good time growing up," she says.

Beverly's two sons, Barry and Ray, are professionals. Barry is head pro at Royal Oak Country Club in Greenwood, Ind., and Ray is an assistant pro at Stones River in Murfreesboro.

I sometimes wondered if Judy ever felt like she was missing out on anything as a child,” Ruth says. "But we were at one of my Junior tournaments recently and she said, 'Weren't those good days, Mama?'”

"I have often told my children that if I had it to do all over again, I can't think of anything I would do differently. It was wonderful,” Judy says.

"I don't think I missed out on anything growing up, unless it was dating a little" she adds "I remember one time this boy asked me for a date and Daddy wouldn't let me go out because I was playing in a the next day."

Harold became Interested in golf when as a youngster he used to caddy at Oakland Hills Golf Course in Brooklyn, Mich. He won a caddy tournament there at age 14. He moved to Nashville While in high school

He became one of the top teaching pros in this area. His children are living proof that the game can be taught successfully.

"You can teach golf at any age from the youngest all the way up," he says. "But the older you get, the harder it is for the muscles to function like you want them to. Early in life, they do what you want them to.

Being the pro and the greens superintendent, I worked from daylight to dark. I guess if my children hadn't taken up golf they would never have seen much of me."

Now retired, Harold and Ruth spend the winter months at their home wi Wellington Fla., and the rest of the year in Nashville.

One of their favorites in the Sara Lee Classic will be LPGA Hall-of-Famer JoAnne Carner. She and Judy have been close friends since they were teen-age amateurs on the U.S. Juniors team in 1956.

"I couldn't afford to run back and forth from Seattle to compete in the Juniors, so Harold and Ruth let me stay with them," Carner explains from her home in Palm Beach, Fla. "Judy and I struck up a friendship right off the bat, and we have been friends ever since. Harold and Ruth are like parents to me.

“Harold helped me with my first U.S. Women's Open, you know,” she adds. “In 1971, I stopped by Nashville to see them a week or two before the Open was in Erie, Pa., I was hitting the ball absolutely awful. Harold told me three things to do.

"I remembered two of them, and to this day, I don't remember what No. 3 was and neither does Harold,” she laughs. “But I won by eight shots, and I hit the ball longer off the tee than I ever hit it in my life. I hit one drive 310 yards and hit another one 295 yards uphill.

“That's the way Harold is. He has always helped everyone in the area and never taken anything for It. I think it's wonderful that citizens day at the Sara Lee is honoring them," Carner says.

The honor caught Harold and Ruth by surprise. "It was something I certainly didn't expect,” Harold says. We're honored. At least it means we haven't been forgotten.”

Judy sums it up best.

"I can't think of two nicer senior citizens to it name it after," she says.


( It is possible that I have the pieces of this article mis-arranged a bit. They were a bit out of order and I attempted to reorder them. [ADE] )


HAROLD ELLER (September 24, 1914), age 75, resides six months at Old Coach Rd., Hermitage, TN 37076 615 883-6931 and six months at 180 Pleasantwood Dr., Wellington, FL 33414 407 793-7681, member of the P.G.A.; head golf professional and green superintend~ent at Old Hickory Golf Club from 1945 until his retirement in 1979; named Professional of the Year by the Southeastern chapter of the P.G.A. in 1962; Harold Eller Trophy annually given to the winner of the Tennessee P.G.A. Assistant's Championship.

RUTH ELLER (August 6, 1917), age 72, resides with her husband, Harold Eller; founder and director of the Tennessee Junior Golf Association; served for 19 years as a committeewoman for the United States Golf Association, Ruth Eller Trophy annually given to the winner of the Tennessee Junior Girls' Championship.

BEVERLY ELLER PEARCE (June 12, 1936), age 53, resides with her husband. Gene. at 120 Alta Vista Dr., Jackson, TN 38305 901 422-4318; daughter of Harold and Ruth Eller; mother of Barry, age 30, and Ray. age 25; won the Tennessee Women's Senior Championship in 1987 and 1988; finished second in Women's Seniors in 1989; has won a total of 26 club championships, seven at Old Hickory Golf Club, Old Hickory, TN, one at Woodland Hills Country Club, Jackson, TN, and 18 at Jackson Golf & Country Club, Jackson, TN; director of the Tennessee Junior Golf Association; president-elect of the Women's Tennessee Golf Association; to be elected to Jackson-Madison County Sports Hall of Fame, April 26, 1990.

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 JUDY ELLER STREET (August 24, 1940), age 49, resides with her husband, Gordon P. Street, Jr., at 1649 Minnekahda Rd., Chattanooga, TN 37405 615 265-0295; daughter of Harold and Ruth Eller; mother of four children, Mrs. Lorie Mallchok, age 26, Gordon III, age 25, Elizabeth Anne, age 20, and Miriam, age 19; one of the greatest high school athletes in Tennessee history, scored 2,027 points in 92 basketball games in four seasons for an average of 22 points per game; won Tennessee Women's State Amateur seven times; won U.S.G.A. Junior Girls twice; won Women's Southern twice and was runner-up twice; won National Women's Intercollegiate; scored the deciding points as the youngest member of 1960 U. S. Curtis Cup team that defeated Great Britain and Ireland; won three matches in the 1960 British Women's Amateur; named to the International ~Churchmen's Sports Hall of Fame; selected to the 1962 U. S. Curtis Cup team, but did not compete because she was pregnant; named to the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame; named to the University of Miami (FL) Sports Hall of Fame; honored along with Lew Oehmig, Polly Boyd, Betty Rowland Probasco, and Dr. Cary Middlecoff by the Honors Course in Chattanooga for as a group having won a total of 29 Tennessee amateur golf championships; named by Golf Digest Tennessee's greatest woman golfer; director of the Tennessee Junior Golf Association; plays golf very rarely, currently one of Chattanooga's best tennis players; also won Women's State Skeet shooting championship the only time she competed.

RICHARD ELLER (January 2, 1947). age 43. resides with his wife, Jami, at 332 Riverbend Dr., Franklin, TN 37064 615 794-9706; son of Harold and Ruth Eller, father of Ben, age 21, Eliza, age 16, and Kelsey. age 1; won Missouri Valley Conference Championship as a member of the golf team at Memphis State University; won Tennessee Open twice; member of the ~P.G.A.; former assistant golf professional at Old Hickory Country Club, Old Hickory, TN; former head golf professional at Hermitage Woods Golf Club, Hermitage, TN. Wolf Run Golf Club, Murfreesboro, TN, Nashboro Village Golf Club, Nashville, and Forrest Crossing Golf Course, Franklin, TN; member of the Castle Heights Military Academy Sports Hall of Fame; member of the Memphis State University Sports Hall of Fame; Tennessee P.G.A. Player of the Year in 1979; Tennessee P.G.A. Merchandizer of the Year in 1982 and 1983; five-time qualifier for the National Club Pro Championship; competitor in the Tennessee Cup Matches for the past 16 years; presently involved in golf course construction.

MIKE ELLER (August 17, 1950). age 39, resides with his wife, Barbara, at 310 Brandywine Dr., Old Hickory, TN 615 847-4198; son of Harold and Ruth Eller; father of Ashley, age 14. and Drew, age 11; graduate of the University of Alabama, member of the P.G.A.; former assistant and later head golf professional at Old Hickory Country Club, Old Hickory, TN, 1983 recipient of the Tennessee P.G.A.'s Horton Smith Award; 1986 Tennessee P.G.A. Professional of the Year; currently co-owner and golf director at Hermitage Golf Course, Old Hickory, TN, site of the L.P.G.A. Sara Lee Classic, and Stonebridge Golf Course, Memphis, TN; former president of the Tennessee chapter of the P.G.A.; named a committeeman by the United States Golf Association in 1990.

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 BARRY PEARCE (September 31, 1959, age 30, single, resides 7271 Queen Mary Courts, Apt. F, Indianapolis, IN 46227 317 782-9960, son of Gene and Beverly Pearce; played golf at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville; member of the P.G.A.; former assistant golf professional at Nashboro Village Golf Club, Nashville, TN, Lexington Country Club, Lexington, KY. and Meridian Hills Country Club, Indianapolis, IN; former head golf professional at Old Oakland Country Club, Indianapolis, IN; currently head golf Professional at River Oak Country Club, Greenwood, IN; as amateur teamed to win Tennessee State Four-Ball; as professional teamed to win Kentucky Pro-Assistants Championship and Kentucky Pro-Pro Championship.

RAY PEARCE (May 27, 1964), age 26, resides with his wife, Connie, at 1106 East Rye Court, Murfreesboro, TN 37129 615 896-5750; son of Gene and Beverly Pearce; father of Elaine, age 3, and Davis, age l; All-State in football and basketball and finished second in the Tennessee high school golf tournament at Did Hickory Academy in Jackson; played football and golf at Memphis State University and the University of Tennessee at Martini won the Gulf South Conference Championship as a member of the UT Martin team; member of the P.G.A.; assistant golf professional at Stones River Country Club. Murfreesboro, TN; completed Business School 11 in February and expects to receive his Class A card soon, won the Tennessee P.G.A. Assistant's Championship in 1988 and 1989' attempted to qualify last two years for the P.G.A. Tour; won the 1988 Ping Open at Oak Ridge and several other Nashville area events.

GENE PEARCE (February 10, 1937), age 53, resides with his wife, Beverly; member of original founding board of Capital City Golf Association, Tennessee's largest, in Nashville; former director and green chairman of Jackson Golf & Country Club; director of Tennessee Golf Association and since 1980.

CONNIE PEARCE (January 26, 1966), age ~2q. resides with her husband, Ray, and their two children, Elaine, age 3. and Davis, age l, has Just begun to play golf; is the secretary for Dick Horton, the executive secretary for the Tennessee Golf Association and the Tennessee chapter of the P.G.A.

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BIBLE RECORDS - VOLUME 5B, P. 247-248



Capital Publishing Company, 8105 MacArthur Boulevard, Cabin John, Maryland 20818

Alexander Siceloff of Davidson Co. (N.C.), son of Airhart & Elizabeth Siceloff, b. 12-25-1809, d. 11-1-1895, m. Eliza Wyer, b. 10-8-1812, d. 10-2-1872.
Issue:
Siceloff, Adaline, b. 5-19-1832, d. 4-18-1862, 2nd wife of E.D.C. Harris.
"Mary (Polly), b. 9-7-1833, d. 8-12-1921, m. John A. ELLER, son of George & Mary Yokley ELLER.
"Joseph B., b. 10-27-1836, d. 11-19-1898, m. Laura Mock, b. 10-23-1840, d. 8-25-1906.
"John.
"Elizabeth, b. 1844, d. 1916, m. Samuel ELLER, son of George & Mary Yokely ELLER, b. 1838, d. 1922.
"Columbus m. Martha Pledger.
"Augusta, m. George Hauser.
"Janet, b. 4-18-1851, d. 8-3-1920, 2nd wife of John C. Thomas, b. 6-13-1842, d. 10-30-1918.
"Edward L., b. 4-8-1854, d. 4-20-1909, m. 2-8-1876 Julia Mock, dau. of John Madison Mock & wife Louzena Chadwick Mock. Lauzena Chadwick Mock was dau. of John & Elizabeth Lowe Chadwick.
"Julia Mock, b.


George ELLER of Davidson Co. (N.C.), b. 3-1-1792, d. 7-20-1869, m. Mary Yokely, b. 3-22-1795, d. 11-27-1871.