From Riverdale to Pleasant Valley
October 28 - November 3, 2024
By Jay Edwards
An original club member recalls how it all happened
Last weekend one of the biggest sporting events to ever hit Central Arkansas, the Simmons Bank Championship, took place at Pleasant
Valley Country Club. A few weeks before the tournament I became curious as to how Pleasant Valley got started and got lucky when I ran into my old friend Bob Denman during the recent dedication of the Trojan Way at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Bob is a member at PV, and as we talked about the excitement of the upcoming tournament, I asked him if he knew of someone who could tell me a bit of the history of the club and how it all came about. Bob didn’t hesitate about who I needed to visit with and a few days later I was in the home office of Jack Ramer, one of the original members.
Jack told me he was originally from Ft. Smith and as a boy used to caddy at Hardscrabble Country Club. I told him I had some brothers-in-law who used to caddy at North Hills Country Club in Sherwood, who claim they got paid two and a half bucks to carry a bag for 18 holes. Jack said he wished he’d have made that much and he usually carried two bags.
It didn’t take long for me to get a sense of his deep love for the game of golf and his club.
“I’ve played many of the top 100 courses in the country,” Jack said. “And when I would come home and get back out to Pleasant Valley, I would always think, man this golf course doesn’t have to take a back seat to anybody.”
When I asked him how it all began, he gave me a DVD, in which he sits down with Barry Brandt, of KATV and PV, to talk about the history of the club. Jack said the membership leaders were looking for someone who could rekindle memories, so that they’d always have those available in their archives. Here is some of that interview.
Jack Ramer: The story is an interesting one. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of twists and turns. We didn’t start out as Pleasant Valley Country Club. We were Riverdale Country Club initially.
We’ve lost a lot of the older members that came from Riverdale out here, who formed our original membership, so we don’t have access to their knowledge, or what we could glean from their minds. And so I guess we’re kind of left with me as this historian, which makes me an old guy in the club.
Barry Brandt: So let’s start at the beginning. How was Riverdale Country Club founded?
Jack: There was a group of businessmen in 1947 who felt like Little Rock could afford and handle another upscale, full service country club. They got their minds together and formed Riverdale Country Club. In 1948 they opened with 379 members. It was located just east of Rebsamen Park Road, behind where the Buffalo Grill and Faded Rose are today.
It was really a family active club, about a seven minute drive from downtown. And in those days almost everybody’s office was downtown. So a lot of people went to the club for lunch. And then after work, it was on the way home, because most of the members lived in Sherrill Heights or the upper Heights, and so everybody was within 10 minutes of the club.
We had a swimming pool, a golf course and four tennis courts and it was really family active. The course itself was on about 120 acres, which is small for a golf course. You could be putting out on one green, walked five or six steps, and you’re on the next tee, and it was almost all flat. We had a big caddy program and everybody walked a lot. In fact, carts hadn’t even come in when it was formed.
There was a company called Pleasant Valley Inc. owned by Winthrop Rockefeller, and he had a management team headed up by R. A. “Brick” Lyle, who was a CPA and a local businessman. They had put together a project out on the extreme west end of Little Rock, way past everything that was developed at that time. They wanted to build a championship golf course, a state of the art clubhouse and a total facility.
They wanted the golf course first, and then, once that was activated, they wanted to develop all of Pleasant Valley. So they had cleared the ground and laid out the markings for the greens and tees.
Lyle, who was one of the founders of Riverdale, approached Vernon Giss, who was president of Riverdale at that time, in the latter part of 1964, with a proposition that they would build a championship golf course out west, and that they would like to have the Riverdale property. It was proposed as a turnkey swap. And in that process, they agreed to pay our $250,000 mortgage at Riverdale, along with other considerations.
So the proposal was presented and the Riverdale Board of Directors discussed it and looked at everything, and they thought, what a great deal. So that’s that was the beginning of it.
Barry: But it wasn’t quite that easy, was it?
Jack: It wasn’t easy at all.
At this point of the interview, Jack reads from a letter written by Giss, whose presidency ran in the 1964-65 year. Giss wrote that in the latter part of 1964 he received a phone call from Lyle who told him that he and Rockefeller had bought land to the west which included property that would become Pleasant Valley Country Club. They figured that if they could get Riverdale members to move out to PV, it would enhance the sale of their lots. Riverdale had a $250,000 mortgage and a clubhouse badly in need of repair. There were 250 acres of land, which included riverfront land “on the wrong side of the levee,” that was not usable. (Jack interjected that Rockefeller and Lyle wanted the land along the river for a port)
After inspecting the Pleasant Valley land, Giss and his board met with Lyle. They hired Jimmy Demeret and Jack Burke as consultants, and Max Mehlburger as consulting engineer.
“Their proposition,” Giss wrote, “was they would build a golf course according to specifications, which they gave to us in writing. There would be 27 holes with a car pass around the greens. We would get the new golf course debt free in exchange for Riverdale.”
The next step for the board was to inform the members, outline the proposal and send out proxies. There were 575 members, and bylaws required a majority percentage of them voting favorably to sell or mortgage the property. The board got back 256 favorable proxies and 254 against, and those members who were opposed immediately filed a lawsuit.
(Jack told me that the issue many opposing members were having was the distance they’d have to travel to get to their new club. Riverdale was almost in their back yards, and in those days the distance from the Heights to what is now PV made it seem like you were driving to Perry County)
“We knew we would lose,” Giss wrote. “So we regrouped and presented our proposal in a little better way. We also got out and did some hard selling, which caused a lot of hard feelings at the time.”
Giss thought the hard work paid off as they got back 380 favorable proxies. A second vote was set for an evening in the summer of 1965 at 7pm.
“I was playing golf that afternoon of the vote when a deputy sheriff came up and served an injunction on me,” Giss wrote. “No reason was given.”
Giss immediately called a fellow member, attorney Hershel Friday, and after that conversation it was decided they could not proceed with the swap while an injunction was in force.
The Supreme Court was in summer recess and so Giss called Judge Sam Robinson, “who was a good friend.” At the same time, Friday called Arkansas Supreme Court Justice George Rose Smith and explained the situation. They all headed down to the court where the clerk met them and a hearing was held, resulting in the injunction being set aside and clearing the way for a new meeting and vote to be held that evening.
“If we had not been permitted to hold our meeting that night,” Giss wrote, “I doubt very much that we would have been able to organize the workers to attempt another effort to pass the proposal.”
“In any case, it passed,” Jack said. “They got done what they needed to get done. But many feelings were hurt.”
One other provision in the new vote was that Pleasant Valley Inc. would agree to initially offer the lots around the perimeter of the course only to Riverdale or new Pleasant Valley members, for a period of two years. The members received a five percent discount on the price of the lot and another five percent if they built within two years.
“They had a lottery at Riverdale,” Jack said, “and your name went into a hopper, and when your name was drawn, you got to pick the lot you wanted that was still available. Those lots ran between eleven and fifteen thousand dollars. It was a pretty good deal.”
“But one more important thing. Our monthly dues at the time at Riverdale were $18.75. When we moved out here the board went crazy and rose them to $35.”
Barry: What was the overall reaction from everybody as they came out to the clubhouse? What did the membership think when they first saw this property in its finished form?
Jack: Well, I can tell you how I felt, and I think everybody else felt the same way. We opened it up on November 24, 1968, and when we came out, the golf course was just unbelievable. When I walked in the front door of the club and saw all the walnut paneling and everything, I’d never seen anything like it, none of us had. And I wondered how in the world we were going to afford it. But my gosh it was a beautiful place.
And still is.
(Many thanks to Jack Ramer and Barry Brandt for the time spent on the DVD, which contributed to most of this article)
Photo Caption:
The renovated clubhouse at Pleasant Valley Country Club as seen from the 18th fairway. (Photo taken from PV Facebook page)
