Grand Haven Mens Golf Assoc.

With heartfelt honor and privilege, we announce our Spotlight Golfer for February 2025: Eli Smith. His life story is memorable, if not episodic, with moments of glory, humility, frustration, endurance, constipation, verbosity, egoism, narcissism, Buddhism, and any other "-ism" you would care to add. But don't question him about it since he refused even to write this narrative of himself.

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Eli's story begins in the humble, hardtack surroundings of the wilderness, being born in a dirt-floor log cabin with one window, one door hung on leather hinges, and a primitive stick and mud chimney in Brooklyn, NY. Between the shoe and sock of his britches—made of buckskin, he had the hairiest legs on the Brooklyn frontier.” But the ragged appearance clothed an intellectually ravenous mind.  In this environment, he learned to hunt for game, grow his vegetables, and surround himself with the animals of nature and beyond. At the age of ten, he learned to split rails. At 13, Eli worked from dawn until dark as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill, carrying bobbins to the workers at the looms and earning $1.20 per week, unfortunately, he had no idea what a bobbin was, so....A year later, he was hired as a messenger for a local telegraph company, where he taught himself how to use the equipment and was promoted to telegraph operator. But was promptly fired when it was discovered he was running an illegal gambling operation selling "Latvian Sweepstakes Tickets" to unsuspecting individuals. When he was caught, he was given the option of going to jail or joining the Army, which he eventually did, but his aptitude for things Army-like was skewed when he thought his time in enlistment would be aboard a ship. He was given the option of going to jail once again or becoming an officer in the Army Corps of Engineers, which he selected, and he rose to the rank of Brigadier General in charge of re-engineering the Panama Canal. Still, he got it wrong when digging in Panama City, Florida instead of the Isthmus of Panama! Once again, he was given the option of going to jail or going overseas to fight the French. He selected the latter and assisted Pierre Gustave Eiffel, who was trying to build an ice cream stand in Paris. Eli was not conversant in French and thought he said a phallic symbol and built this tower against all common sense. Once again, he was given the option of jail or going to the Arctic to assist Eskimos in building durable shelters. Eli did this job well; unfortunately, an international crisis began when he introduced heated toilet seats in the igloos. Once again, he was given the option of jail or working as Tournament Director for the Grand Haven Mens Golf Association, and currently, he is managing that role very well, but who knows what the future will bring.

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The moral of the story is that you had better cooperate with Mike Tebbano when he ask's you to be the Spotlight Golfer.