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PRIMETIME of your life FREE | VOLUME 4 • ISSUE NO. 9 | SEPTEMBER 2015 Interesting features for our 50+ audience

Rafe Botts

Swinging into history By Lucinda Sue Crosby For PrimeTime of Your Life

J

ackie Robinson. Charlie Sifford. Althea Gibson. Jack Johnson. Sports lovers know these names, shimmering in an aura of Civil Rights, the equality of all people, the pursuit of excellence and America’s obsession with the proven mighty. Sports trivia is heavily sprinkled with First, Biggest and Most, whether horse or human, giant concrete arena, tended grasslands or dirt track. It’s a field on which measurable merit is the great equalizer.

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I’d like to introduce you to such a trailblazer, Rafe Richard Botts, the second African American to earn a spot on the PGA tour. Born in D.C. in 1937 to parents Gladys and Horace Botts, Sr., Rafe was the sixth of 11 children. At 10, he realized that having a little “walking around” money meant earning it himself. He tried the bowling alley. “Not too appealing,” Rafe said, “and so loud.” There was, however, a nine-hole, segregated golf course in Washington, named after John Mercer Langston, first dean of Howard University Law and Virginia’s first African American Congressman. Rafe showed up knowing zilch about the game and since the bags were bigger than he, he was set to shagging range balls, earning a quarter for 30 minute’s work. Pretty good,

Rafe Richard Botts, the second African American to earn a spot on the PGA tour considering his father only made $30 a week. Soon enough, this eager youngster worked up to caddy, commanding the princely sum of 50 cents per round. In 1950, one of his regular players gave him a “beat up old club.” He then rescued errant balls from the weeds and began eagle-eyeing some of the better players, hoping to reproduce what he saw. By 1953, he was shooting par regularly. During this period, boxing great Joe Louis and United Golf Association (UGA) pro Ted Rhodes played the Langston course a few times. When Ted offered Rafe a five dollar tip,

Rafe took notice. Struck by the way Rhodes carried himself, how he dressed, how he spoke, not to mention the five dollar tip, Rafe decided to become a professional golfer.

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He might as well have been reaching for the moon … First he had to finish high school, like he promised momma, but all the while he was playing in any local tournaments that would have him, achieving some success. He also continued caddying at Langston for leading members of WashContinued on page 8

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