Remembering Dick Donovan

Thanks to reader John for this nice Kevin Stevens story on the passing of Dick Donovan, one of the great collectors and friend of golf authors around the globe.

Comments

[Four-putt]

I have known Dick Donovan as a good friend for over 25 years. He was tireless in helping me acquire many hard-to-find volumes for my library -- both collectible quality and "working" copies. He was also a great resource.

He will be missed. He was one of the good guys.

4p

[lorne rubenstein]

I knew Dick from the early days of the Golf Collectors' Society. He helped me in many ways over the years as I researched articles. The reference works he wrote will endure; they're already standards, in fact. Dick was a gentleman and a gentle man who cared about golf and its literature. It was a pleasure to chat with him about writers and writing, and a privilege to know him.

[Michael Flannery]

Being in Germany, I am sometimes out of touch with North American golf news. To learn only this morning that Dick had passed away was shocking and distressing. I knew him as a generous man with the extraordinary intellectual curiosity required to establish himself as one of golf's most important bibliographers.

His limited edition bibliography, a gift to me at Orlando several years ago,is as cherished as a photo of us together,during the hours we spent each day discussing the origins of the Grand Game and the body of non-English literature that surrounds it on this side of the pond. Dick's interest was total - a low-key but voracious quest to add a new dimension to his already vast knowlege of golf.

His perceptive questions pierced through fog banks surrounding legends, to arrive at the essence of subjects as diverse as Paganica and polo, and their relationship to golf. Hours flew and now years have flown and we never met as planned, to spend a day or two exchanging knowledge or simply swapping lies over a wee dram. May I offer my most sincere condolences to Dick's family and the words of John Donne,as a fitting tribute:


All mankind is of one author, and is one volume;
when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out
of the book, but translated into a better language.

Michael Flannery

[Michael Flannery]

Being in Germany, I am sometimes out of touch with North American golf news. To learn only this morning that Dick had passed away was shocking and distressing. I knew him as a generous man with the extraordinary intellectual curiosity required to establish himself as one of golf's most important bibliographers.

His limited edition bibliography, a gift to me at Orlando several years ago,is as cherished as a photo of us together,during the hours we spent each day discussing the origins of the Grand Game and the body of non-English literature that surrounds it on this side of the pond. Dick's interest was total - a low-key but voracious quest to add a new dimension to his already vast knowlege of golf.

His perceptive questions pierced through fog banks surrounding legends, to arrive at the essence of subjects as diverse as Paganica and polo, and their relationship to golf. Hours flew and now years have flown and we never met as planned, to spend a day or two exchanging knowledge or simply swapping lies over a wee dram. May I offer my most sincere condolences to Dick's family and the words of John Donne,as a fitting tribute:


All mankind is of one author, and is one volume;
when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out
of the book, but translated into a better language.

Michael Flannery