Retirement is supposed to be a time for relaxation and activities like playing golf.
While Frank Dobie has been doing plenty of both since he retired in 2020 after 60 years as a superintendent, he is still busy serving the industry that has given him so much.
As far back as 1999, more than 20 years before his retirement, Dobie began creating a system for collecting and cataloging biographies of golf course superintendents throughout the Northern Ohio GCSA chapter and elsewhere. Although Dobie, 84, considers the job a labor of love, make no mistake it is first and foremost labor.
"I have 146 in various stages. Some gave me a little; some gave me a lot," Dobie said. "Some individuals just are not willing to talk about themselves. They don't want to blow their own horn. Some think they haven't done much, and some say they're just too busy."
Dobie graduated in Penn State's second-ever class to go through what then was the school's new two-year turf program launched in 1957 by Joe Duich, Ph.D. He became a superintendent in 1960 and four years later was named superintendent and general manager at Sharon Golf Club in northeast Ohio, a job he held until his retirement four years ago.
Capturing the history of these people is important. My mind hasn't changed on that. Superintendents belong in golf's history.
Throughout the duration of his career he was and remains active in several other capacities. He has been president of The Musser International Turfgrass Foundation that promotes turfgrass management as a profession. He also oversees the Joseph M. Duich Scholarship, which operates under the Musser Foundation, and each year recognizes a doctoral student in turfgrass studies. He was named the recipient of the 2022 USGA Green Section Award — two years after he retired.
Dobie sees recording the history of Northern Ohio chapter superintendents as just another way to serve his profession.
"If you turn on any sports program, commentators refer to all sorts of figures and statistics," he said. "It doesn't matter if it's golf, football, baseball or tennis; the sports media has been compiling history for years. Every rookie has his history recorded on his first at-bat, but no one is doing this for superintendents who prepare these courses for their enjoyment, and that's a shame. It galls me, and that's why I started doing this."
In hopes of collecting personal and professional accomplishments of other Penn State graduates as well as fellow superintendents in the Northern Ohio chapter, Dobie developed a questionnaire that superintendents can populate with their professional history. The questionnaire continues to undergo change in hopes of producing better information and making it easier for superintendents to respond.
He recalls speaking at a conference and seeing only five hands shoot up when he asked if anyone in the audience of superintendents recognized the name Eberhard Steiniger, the longtime superintendent at Pine Valley. Recording the history of greenkeeping, Dobie believes, also can be an educational resource for other superintendents.
"It's hard to know where we're going when we don't know where we've been," he said. "There are so many things we can learn from each other.
"I'm the self-appointed historian of the northern Ohio chapter, and I'm really pushing for superintendents to write in. I did mine first to see how it would work, and I've changed the format and added some things as time went on. How difficult is it to write a bio?"
Among those who have responded to Dobie's plea for biographical information is Ross Miller, CGCS, director of agronomy at the Country Club of Detroit, and a 2004 Penn State graduate.
"I think keeping records/archives like this is an often-overlooked important item that can be useful for resources on a number of fronts: Bounce ideas off of other counterparts that you know dealt with a similar challenge as you, reconnect with classmates, make connections/network with various generations of turf alumni to allow them to gain additional mentorship than the course/GCS they are currently working for," Miller said. "I also did this out of respect for Frank, as this is a large undertaking to try to build a database like this, and I respect the digging in on the challenge."
Dobie not only would like to get better participation from within the Northern Ohio chapter, he would like to see other chapters take on such a project, as well. His ultimate goal is to kickstart a movement that leads to a superintendent's hall of fame, and you cannot nominate someone for induction into any hall of fame if you don't know what they've accomplished.
"Capturing the history of these people is important," Dobie said. "My mind hasn't changed on that. Superintendents belong in golf's history."