They were young men, most not long returned from fighting the Germans and Japanese. As members of the Cape Girardeau Jaycees in the early 1950s, they fueled a successful campaign to build a new swimming pool at Capaha Park and led them to undertake a project no civic organization would dare try in 2003.

The Jaycees built the public a golf course with their own hands.

The population of Cape Girardeau then was only about 22,000. That included more than 100 Jaycees plus their wives, who also worked hard on their projects. "When you're young almost anything is possible," said Leonard Vogel, a salesman who worked on the project.

Norman Robert, a salesman who was chairman of the Jaycees golf committee, climbed on a Caterpillar tractor to move dirt. Insurance agent Luther Hahs operated a trencher that dug water lines and graded fairways with his son, David, on his lap. Dentists, lawyers and other volunteers pieced together water pipes. Businessman Martin Hecht pulled together the $12,000 in financing needed to lease and fashion the 65 acres of farmland on Perryville Road into a nine-hole course.

Five hundred people attended the opening of the Jaycee Public Golf Course on May 15, 1955, including LPGA pro Marilynn Smith. A season pass was $36.

A season pass is now $385, and between 25,000 and 32,000 rounds are played each year.

The Jaycees leased the course to private individuals before signing a lease with the city in 1977. In 1978, a new crop of Jaycees burned the $24,000 note on the property to celebrate their ownership. The city officially took possession of the course in a ceremony last week. It will retain the name Jaycee Municipal Golf Course.

Two reasons

The Jaycees built the course for two reasons, said Bill Kiehne, who worked on the project. He and most are golfers at the time belonged to the Cape Girardeau Country Club, which had greens made of sand. Golf horticulture was in its infancy, and almost every course in the region had sand greens. Grass greens were difficult and expensive to maintain.

But golfers wanted to play on grass. The Jaycees installed the area's first grass greens. Other courses soon followed the Jaycees' lead.

The other compelling reason for building the course was to give average people a place to play. At the time, all the golf clubs in the region were private.

The Jaycees originally leased the 65 acres from farmer Wilbert Huttig, who became the greenskeeper. His wife operated the concession stand.

St. Louisan Art Linkeogel, who owned a golf nursery company, designed the course with plenty of suggestions from Jaycees.

"It was architecture by committee," said Robert.

"We pretty well built the course on the land as it lay, around the rocks," Kiehne said. "Early, there were lots and lots of rock, so we didn't attempt to move them."

Max Stovall, who had an excavating business, brought in two dump trucks and other machinery every Friday afternoon, and the volunteers continued working all day Saturday and Sunday. Contractors R.B. Potashnick and Burton Gerhardt contributed more equipment. The Cape Girardeau Special Road District helped out.

Hahs, now 84, has not yet lived down getting the trencher stuck in the ditch he just dug.

Peat from Advance

The peat moss needed to top the greens originally was shipped by rail, but Stovall found peat moss on a farm near Advance, Mo., saving half the cost and lots of unloading.

The Jaycees received a state award and a national award for their golf course project.

The Jaycees eventually acted on their option to buy more land to add another nine holes. The original nine holes remained basically the same when the course expanded to 18 in 1974, although the numbers and order in which they were played changed for some of the holes.

The course provided an opportunity for many who weren't members of private clubs to learn the game.

"You either belonged at Kimbeland or the country club or you played at Jaycees. That was it," said Mike Uhls, a golf teacher who owns Heartland Golf Academy in Cape Girardeau.

Uhls learned playing at the course in 1967 when he was 13 years old. Summer mornings his mother dropped him off before going to work and picked him up at sundown. He learned by playing as many as 54 holes a day with older golfers who were on some of the great Central High School teams of the era. Between rounds they hit shag balls down by the third hole.

They walked the course. Golf carts were still rare.

Uhls also worked at the course, plugging greens or mowing for the lessee, Charlie Weber. "Whatever needed to be done," he said.

The greens were watered by hooking up a hose and a sprinkler.

The course did not accept tee times. Golfers dropped a ball in a steel tube when they arrived. Their group could tee off when their ball reached the end of the tube.

Current golf course manager Sabrina Tate says the course has changed from those early days "in every way possible. ... They didn't have the equipment we have today," she said.

"They barely had the resources."

This year, the course added or is adding bunkers and moguls, or humps, on three of its easiest holes. Two more holes, 13 and 17, will get bunkers and moguls next year.

At $12.10 for a weekend round of golf, it remains one of the best bargains in the world of golf.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182