Club Times: September/October 2022

quickly became a reality. The Club Times reported on October 15, 1957: “When the Lake Lanier property is completely developed, it will give our Atlanta Athletic Club accommodations unsurpassed by any other club in the nation with a beautiful City Club, a comfortable Country Club with two first-rate golf courses, and the Lake Lanier area. Certainly all members agree that AAC membership is the most valuable that can be had in this or any other city.” Built along Lake Sidney Lanier, Buford Dam was a U.S. Corps of Engineers project intended to block the Chattahoochee and Chestatee rivers with the intention of establishing the thirty-nine-thousand- acre Lake Sidney Lanier, named for the Georgia poet. Before the lake was filled, the AAC, under the leadership of Ira H. Hardin, who joined the AAC board in 1953, was given the task of locating waterfront property to establish a marine facility for the club. Responsibility for purchasing the land rested with T. R. “Dick” Garlington, who served as AAC president in 1947–1948, and he took from the estate of A. H. Holland an option on two tracts of land on the east side of the lake—a long, sloping hillside on the Big Creek side of the lake and a wooded cove near the mouth of Flowery Branch Creek. The club finally settled on the Flowery Branch site and eventually purchased additional land for a total of fifty acres. The Charles M. Graves Company was hired as the landscape architect to develop the facility, and William H. “Bud” Walters, who had served for six years as maintenance engineer for the downtown club, was hired to manage it. The Yacht Club formally opened in July 1958 and soon became known for a series of events throughout the year— the Fourth of July Barbeque, Pass-in-Review, the Labor Day Country Dinner and Square Dance, the Cast-Off Party, the Mystery Island Party, and the Shipwreck Party. Mike Hale, who grew up at the Yacht Club, fondly remembered the ring toss in the clubhouse: “It was a steel washer on a string, and there was a hook on the wall. Every kid that grew up in the Athletic Club would run to the Yacht Club restaurant to swing that washer. It would keep us kids busy for hours.” Hal A. Cook became the first commodore in 1957, and membership grew to two hundred by 1966. In the

1970s, though, the economy was faltering, inflation was increasing, and the nation found itself in the midst of an energy crisis. Tom Forkner explained how the Yacht Club managed to grow in these lean economic times: “At a board of directors meeting, we discussed how much the Yacht Club needed new slips. But we didn’t have the money. One member offered to pay for the additions, allowing the club to pay them back when they could. Times were tough.”

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