I was clicking through some archived editions of TurfNet Monthly (on hiatus now) and came across a column I wrote back in 1997.  It seems that Nat Binns, then superintendent at Schuylkill Country Club in Orwigsburg, PA, had phoned me and offered a tidbit from a copy of the SCC newsletter he had found, dated April, 1967.  It was an excerpt from a Paul Harvey broadcast from November, 1966.  See below:

The Year the Grass Died

Any proud homeowner looks with admiration and envy at the lawn-scaped fairways and manicured greens of our beautiful golf courses.  Historically, generations of experience, concentrated agricultural research and money have afforded  our United States most of the worlds most magnificent golf courses until this year.

The summer of 66 will be remembered by golf course superintendents the way San Francisco remembers the quake and Chicago remembers the fire.  For in one torrid, terrible week in early July, 1966 the grass died.

In many states we saw it happen in our yards and in our parks but nowhere was the awful brown blight more conspicuous than on the suddenly hideous pock-marked, brown blotched fairways.

If 1966 was a sample of seasons to come, something must be done.  There is evidence that our summers are becoming more and more sub-tropical, whatever the explanation.  It was desperately hot in June and early July.  The drought, combined with heavy play, gave the grass a considerable beating.  Then the rains came.  Drenching, soaking rains.

And when the hundred-plus heat hit that soaking turf, it was as if the grass got cooked.  Indeed, some golf course superintendents, notably Bob Williams of Bob O'Link near hard-hit Chicago, kept the sprinklers going that muddy morning explaining to confounded club members that he was seeking to cool the air.  Some fretted and some laughed, but his course was spared.  Because many clubs have unfairly blamed their superintendents, let me add that there are other factors in the dramatic rescue of Bob 0'OLink.

America the Beautiful was less the year the grass died.  Maybe, if we mobilize our brainpower, it won't have to happen again.

Paul Harvey, ABC Radio Network, November 23, 1966

Paul Harvey was a Chicago-based radio icon (and avid golfer) who "personalized the radio news with his right-wing opinions, but laced them with his own trademarks: a hypnotic timbre, extended pauses for effect, heart-warming tales of average Americans and folksy observations that evoked the heartland, family values and the old-fashioned plain talk one heard around the dinner table on Sunday" (from his NY Times obituary).

Mr. Harvey got cross-wise with the golf industry in the early '90s for his accusations that golf course superintendents were overusing pesticides, killing birds and — with the release of GCSAA's 1994 Mortality Study — apparently themselves as well. For better or for worse, that very public accusation was one of the catalysts for the "golf and the environment" movement (not the foundation) as we know it today.

Oh, back to the piece quoted above.  Seem like the global warming thing that's trending these days was an issue almost 50 years ago.

For those who never heard him, here's a link to one of his "Rest of the Story" broadcasts entitled "Golfer Bill and Son".

More recently, you might remember the Dodge Ram Trucks commercial aired during this past Super Bowl.  It was excerpted from Paul Harvey's 1978 speech to the Future Farmers of America.