Remembering Frank Chirkinian and My Massive Heart Attack

Editor’s note: John Derr was a CBS-TV golf announcer from 1958 to 1973. Derr answered to the man known as the father of televised golf, Frank Chirkinian, who died last week after a long battle with lung cancer.

By John Derr
Special to ARMCHAIR GOLF

I KNEW FRANK CHIRKINIAN WELL. Frank was one of a kind. He was a genius in many ways. Rough, gruff, with a warm spot, lightly hidden in his chest. For some reason, I did not receive as many “yells” from him as the others, but I got my share. Maybe he liked them better than he did me.

When I was in Greensboro, North Carolina, doing the Greater Greensboro Open, I had chest pains early one morning. My own appraisal of the discomfort was I had indigestion, even though I was sweating and feeling pain. CBS colleague Ray Scott called Frank to my motel room. Frank immediately told Ray to call for an ambulance to get me to the hospital.

I resisted, saying, “No. It’s indigestion. I ate fish at the Press dinner last night.”

Frank said, bellowing, “Be quiet. I am calling the shots on this show. You are on the way to the hospital. Relax. Be quiet.”

At 7:47 a.m., I was at Cone Hospital and being sedated.

At 11 a.m., I was feeling better and asked to be released to CBS rehearsal.

At 11:10 a.m., Dr. Townsend said, “You must stay a few more hours. You did indeed have an infarction [heart attack]—not indigestion.”

Reluctantly, Townsend and Chirkinian kept me against my will.

At 1:14 p.m., two hours later, I had the big boy, a blowout job.

At 1:18 p.m., the nurses activated the “blue alert” call.

At 1:33 p.m., Dr. Townsend arrived, only to learn an earlier responder had determined further treatment was not useful and ordered the coverage of my body.

Nurse Nancy Fulton noted these times. She was the nurse who asked permission to do sternum massage. Back then CPR was a primitive thought, not yet endorsed. She did it herself.

A year later, Dr. Townsend confirmed I had had an out-of-body experience. And if Chirkinian had not over-ruled my preference, who knows?

I guess you could say Frank was another friend who was good to me. In my life, he was a shining star. He was a self-proclaimed hero, but we all agreed. Frank was just Frank, and that was good enough for me.

John Derr is an award-winning golf journalist who covered 62 Masters and the author of My Place at the Table. He lives in Pinehurst, North Carolina.

Old-Time Tour Pro Dragged Putter Behind Car

By John Derr
Special to ARMCHAIR GOLF

AT THE PGA CHAMPIONSHIP in Louisville, won by Jim Turnesa, the morning of the first round, I arrived at Big Springs Country Club in the car with Sam Snead. He parked in the first open parking space. As he got out he noticed the car parked beside him was the courtesy car assigned to Tommy Bolt, who arrived in the club parking lot at about the same time.

Snead said he’d have to move our car to another place, several rows over, because if Bolt lost, he would gun his speeding car when leaving the lot. Chances are he would spray gravel and rocks from the unpaved lot, on any cars parked near him, according to Snead. And he did.

At the same PGA championship at Big Springs when another one of the top players (I hesitate to name him, for I am not sure and he may still be around), I was standing in the parking lot when the caddy dropped the pro’s bag of clubs in the car trunk. The player opened the trunk, took out his putter and what looked like the belt from his trousers. He secured the belt around the putter shaft, then tied the putter, head down, on the bumper of his car and zoomed onto the street.

Sparks from the errant putter, as it bounced along, looked like a Fourth of July celebration. He raced down the road, after saying to no one in particular, “I guess that’ll take care of the little bastard.”

Sam and I were the only people within earshot, so I guess he was talking primarily to his putter, a farewell of sorts.

I wish I could positively recall the pro, but I wouldn’t want to pin it on the wrong man, though others may have done the same.

John Derr is an award-winning golf journalist who covered 62 Masters and the author of My Place at the Table. He lives in Pinehurst, North Carolina.

‘My Place at the Table’ by John Derr

I’M CONVINCED THAT JOHN DERR has more golf (and other) stories than any person I’ve encountered. The 92-year-old sports commentator has included many of them in a new volume titled My Place at the Table: Stories of Golf and Life. The introduction is penned by bestselling author James Dodson.

I came to know John through a mutual acquaintance a few years ago. Since then he has shared a handful of his memories with me. Beginning in 1935, John covered 62 Masters as a print and broadcast journalist, including the first 16 that were covered by CBS-TV.

(Photo: John Derr interviews Ben Hogan
for CBS Radio.)

In 2007, John won the prestigious Masters Major Achievement Award. I asked him at the time what it was like to cover the Masters in those earlier days.

“Exacting, frustrating, very rewarding,” John said. “I always felt fortunate to be there, seeing the play, and it was my pleasure to try to let others share my joy through my description. I was heard by many, but I always tried to put myself in the position of being a reporter for a shut-in who could not be there in person. I was telling him or her what was happening—that one person.

“My job was reporting it fairly and honestly, even though some of the golfers were especially good and close friends. As a reporter you must be neutral. You are no longer a cheering fan. Communications were critical in the early days, both for a writer and especially for a broadcaster early on. But we found a way to do it.”

When John said that some of the golfers were his friends, he was referring to men like Ben Hogan and Sam Snead. John walked every step with Hogan at Carnoustie in 1953 when the golf legend won the only British Open he ever entered. “John Derr is one of the few people I would trust to get the story right and report it as it happened,” Hogan said. Snead commented that Derr “could be counted on to get to the heart of the story.”

If you glance at the list of people John knew and covered through the years, it reads like a who’s who of the 20th century. John covered far more than golf. His reporting and life travels allowed him to cross paths with—ready?—Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, Albert Einstein, Byron Nelson, Grace Kelly, Presidents Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower, Joe DiMaggio, Billy Graham, Mahatma Gandhi, Babe Zaharias, Bing Crosby, Rocky Marciano, Edward Murrow, Jack Dempsey, Richard Nixon, Henry Ford and every important golfer from Jones to Woods not already mentioned.

I have to admit that it boggles my mind.

“Just color me lucky,” John writes in the prologue of My Place at the Table. His memory and pen are still agile. The 100 or so stories in the book are told with clarity and a kind of offhanded charm that make the reader feel like that “one person” who is privy to an amazing little tale.

Available from Pinehurst Shop

You can’t get this book anywhere, or at Amazon—at least not yet. My Place at the Table is available at the Old Sport Gallery & Bookshop in Pinehurst, North Carolina, where John resides and still enjoys a game of golf with friends. You can contact the shop at (910) 295-9775 or oldsport@nc.rr.com.

More info:
Derr’s New Book Is By Far His Best (The Pilot)

−The Armchair Golfer