Editor’s note: Effective in January, the longtime weekly discussion group led by Fort Worth businessman and regular Business Press contributor Don Woodard will lose its meeting space at Colonial Country Club due to the club’s ongoing and extensive renovation project. Although Woodard and his wife Wanda have arranged for members of the group, known as Country Club Friends, to hold informal monthly gatherings for lunch, its regular weekly meetings will end with the final meeting of 2014 on Tuesday, Dec. 30. This letter is Don Woodard’s farewell ode to Country Club Friends.
In mulling over the possibility that the ten year old organization known as Country Club Friends might be displaced by the impending extensive reconstruction at Colonial Country Club, the memorable tribute to the Constitution by Senator Daniel Webster came welling up in my mind.
Webster was concerned by the calls for secession in the 1850s that after his death culminated in the Civil War. In his famous March 7, 1850, speech he rose in the Senate and said: “Mr. President: I shall speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American and a member of the Senate of the United States.” In his speech he asked, “Who shall reconstruct the fabric of a demolished Government?”
I borrow from Webster:
But who shall reconstruct the fabric of a demolished Country Club Friends? Who shall rear again its well proportioned columns of civility and friendship, Democrats, Republicans, Tea Party, Liberals and Conservatives?
No, if these columns fall, they will be raised not again. Like the Coliseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful and melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them than ever were shed over the monuments to Greece and Rome, for they will be monuments of a more glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw, the edifice of “Think it possible you might be mistaken,” the Cromwellian mantra of Country Club Friends at beautiful white columned Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas!
Never let it be forgot That once there was a spot, For one brief shining moment Known as Colonial Camelot.
Don Woodard Fort Worth
