Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/742011
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 49 of Command issued a signal to be played over the Armed Forces Radio to order the beginning of the evacuation of all American troops from Vietnam. The war was over. Our boys were coming home. That signal was Bing Crosby's recording of "White Christmas." n Editor's Note: The Pinehurst Gun Club Bing Crosby traveled to Pinehurst, North Carolina, many times to play golf on the crown jewel of Pinehurst Resort, Donald Ross' Pinehurst No. 2, and to hunt bobwhite quail and shooting clays at the Pinehurst Gun Club. Now, after an absence of a quarter of a century, Pinehurst Gun Club, the oldest resort gun club in America—and for almost a century, one of the top three shooting clubs in the world—is being restored to its rightful home in Pinehurst. The Pinehurst Gun Club became a household word when "America's sweetheart," sharpshooter Annie Oakley, and her husband, Frank Butler, adopted And may all your Christmases be white Bing left England on October 13, 1977, to play golf and hunt partridge in Spain. The next day he was at La Moraleja Golf Course, outside of Madrid, playing a round of 18 holes, despite his doctor's warning not to exceed nine. He was in good spirits, pausing at the ninth hole to sing "Strangers in the Night" to a group of construction workers building a house nearby, who begged him for a song. He had a 13 handicap and lost the round by one stroke. "That was a great game of golf, fellas," he smiled as he and his party headed back to the clubhouse. But about 20 yards away, he suffered a massive heart attack and was dead before he hit the ground. Bing Crosby was 74 years old. It was a fitting way for a golfer who loved the game so well to go out. Tributes poured in from every corner of the globe. Millions wept. But perhaps the finest homage to this great and good and worthy man is this: On April 29, 1975, the eve of the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. Military Chain rare, world-record rainbow runner he caught on 12-pound test. "You gotta keep a hook in the water all the time to catch fish," he said. He called these waters "the biggest bait tank in the world" and the best fishing grounds for striped marlin. He named his fishing boat Maria Francesca after his daughter, Mary Frances. It could go 30 knots and had a flying bridge and twin outrigger rigged for marlin. Bing used flying fish, mullet, or knucklehead for bait. "I've had them [marlin] take a feather," he said. For marlin, he'd bait "two flying fish on 30-pound line, a squid on 20 pound, and a teaser on a light 10-pound line—it depends upon how hungry they are, or eager." In July Bing and his sons, Nathaniel and Harry, flew to Turnberry, Scotland, to play golf and remained on that side of the pond to head to Yorkshire in August to shoot grouse. The rest of the year they played golf. Quite a lot of sport in a relatively short time for a man cresting 70.