In the 35-year history of Cornerstone Schools, its most impactful fundraising event took place at the first annual Turning Point Invitational in 2004 at the Country Club of Detroit in Grosse Pointe Farms.
The event celebrated the 50th anniversary of golf legend Arnold Palmer winning the 1954 U.S. Amateur Championship at the course and raised more than $6 million for Cornerstone Schools, a group of charter schools in Detroit. Proceeds from the invitational led to the establishment of the Arnold Palmer Education Fund and supported a handful of other children’s programs.
At the largest gathering ever of U.S. Amateur golf champions, 24 other past winners paid homage to Palmer, one of the players who popularized golf. The list included Phil Mickelson, Mark O’Meara, and Lanny Wadkins.
For the 2004 invitational, each former champion played with four amateurs who paid $25,000 each to compete in the best ball tournament, while gallery tickets sold for $1,500 each. The night before, a $500-per-ticket black tie dinner honoring Palmer was held at the club.
The event came about after Cornerstone co-founder and past CEO Clark Durant and former Ford Motor Co. CEO and Chairman Harold “Red” Poling traveled to Palmer’s home in Latrobe, Pa., to make a pitch for the honorary tournament.
“I told him, ‘We want to honor your 50th anniversary of the U.S. Amateur Championship, but the truth is we want to create turning points in the lives of children,’ ” recalls Durant, former director of the private management group at Munder Capital Management, an investment firm in Bloomfield Hills.
“Palmer raised his index finger, went to his bookcase, and pulled out a book that he gave to me titled, ‘The Turning Point: The 54th Amateur Championship of the United States Golf Association, Winner Arnold Palmer.’
“He said, ‘That was the turning point of my life and if my coming will help the turning point for those kids, I will come for free. I’ll come a day early and we can have a big dinner that will raise more money and I’ll visit one of your schools’ — which he did.”
Established in 1897, the Country Club of Detroit, the oldest private golf club in the Detroit area, first hosted the U.S. Amateur Golf Championship in 1915, when Robert Gardner won it.
For the 1954 championship, held at the Grosse Pointe Farms club, some 200 top-ranked American amateurs ranging from 18-year-old Rex Baxter to 64-year-old Charles “Chick” Evans, who won the first of his two U.S. Amateur championships 20 years before Baxter was born, competed.
Joining the field was 24-year-old paint salesman Arnold Palmer, seven months from serving in the U.S. Coast Guard.
It was reported at the time that brothers Henry Ford II and William Clay Ford Sr., some of the club’s most avid golfers, bought 1,000 tickets and distributed them to Ford employees.
The second issue of the then-new magazine, Sports Illustrated, featured a preview of the tournament penned by legendary writer Herbert Warren Wind. The scribe went on to summarize the results in the magazine’s fourth issue, reporting that the dark horse Palmer rallied and upset former British Amateur Champion Robert Sweeney, 1-up over 36 holes.
Fifty years later, one of the participants at the Turning Point Invitational in 2004 was 1981 U.S. Amateur and 1983 Walker Cup champion and former pro player Nathaniel Crosby, the seventh child of legendary singer Bing Crosby. From 1978 to 1985, Nathaniel hosted the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach.
“The 2004 Turning Point Invitational was a fantastic event, and it was a great honor to be a part of it,” says Crosby, 64. His wife, Sheila, is the daughter of the late Raymond Biggs, a longtime member of the Country Club of Detroit.
“There were a lot of incredible champions there from different generations and my caddie that day was my son, Nathaniel Jr., who was 14 or 15 at the time,” Crosby says.
“When I started 5-over through three holes, he was ready to put a brown bag over his head,” he adds with a laugh. “He was like the caddie of shame. I may have shot 80, I think. I’m a huge fan of what Clark Durant is doing and what he has accomplished with Cornerstone Schools.”
Two weeks after winning the ’81 U.S. Amateur, Crosby recalls a special moment with Palmer when the two had lockers near each other at another tournament.
“We were the only two there and he put his hands on my shoulders and said: ‘Congratulations, that’s as good as it gets. My U.S. Amateur win was the most special moment of any moment I’ve ever had in golf, so relish it and enjoy it.’ That was very cool.”
This year, the annual Turning Point Invitational and dinner, held at the Country Club of Detroit in September, wasn’t a fundraiser; rather, according to Durant, it was a way of saying thank you to generous donors while also serving as a platform to discuss Cornerstone’s new literacy initiative.
Seven threesomes each had sports broadcaster Mike Tirico and Fred Ridley, chairman of Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament, who won the U.S. Amateur 50 years ago, walk with them for three holes. Nearly 70 invited guests, meanwhile, attended the dinner.
