MSU Alumni Magazine, Fall 2004 issue - MSU Alumni Association ...

SPARTAN PROFILES
RAY HEARN:
YOU DA ARCHITECT
He has been chased by boars in
Alabama, attacked by rattle
snakes and spiders in Costa Rica,
and heaved by strong updrafts
while flying an ultralight plane
over the Pacific Ocean. All these
are par for the course for Ray
Hearn, B.S. ’83, B.L.A. ’89, one
of America’s rising golf architects.
After serving 10 years as a senior
designer for Matthews & Associates,
he founded Ray Hearn Golf
Course Designs, Inc., Plymouth,
in 1996. He proceeded to build a
string of successes, such as the
Grande Golf Club in Jackson and
Hemlock in Ludington, named
by Golf Digest as “Top Ten You
Can Play” successively in 2002
and 2003. Hearn has won national
awards for Sea Oaks, Little
Egg Harbor, NJ, where he adroitly
combined elements from Augusta
National and Pine Valley;
for Mistwood, Romeoville, IL, a
routing tour de force; and for Fox
Hills Strategic Course in his
hometown of Plymouth. Most
recently, Yarrow in Augusta
opened to rave reviews, while
Macatawa Legends in Holland is
sure to receive similar acclaim this
fall. “I never want anyone to look
at a golf course and say ‘There’s a
Ray Hearn designed course,’”
says Ray. “My goal is that each
golf course maintain its own
identity and remain true to the
characteristics of the land it is
built upon and the tenets important
to its owner.” That philosophy,
combined with his sheer creativity
in golf design, has landed
Ray two plum national projects—a
spectacular resort course
in Queopos, Costa Rica, right
next to a tropical rain forest, and a
major 36-hole resort course in
Franklin, CT, for which legendary
architects likeTom Fazio
and Pete Dye were also considered.
“I have the utmost respect
for Fazio and Dye as designers,
but every once in a while the
Scott Thacker
young underdog wins,” he notes.
“Thank goodness they picked
me. They said they liked my design
concepts and my passion.”
Or, put another way that is familiar
to golf fans, they let Ray know,
“You da man!”
WENDY BAKER: THE HEALING
POWER OF HORSES
In The Horse Whisperer (1998),
a little girl and her horse are severely
injured in an accident, but
both recuperate with the help of a
mystical healer (played by Robert
Redford). This story rang so true
for Wendy Baker, ’77, an editor at
Yahoo!, that she saw it multiple
times. And it rings even truer
now that she has just published
The Healing Power Of Horses:
Lessons From the Lakota Indians
(BowTie Press, 2004), which recounts
the stories of 12 Oglala
Lakota Indians of Pine Ridge,
South Dakota, and how they are
healed by horses. “We all have
tragedies in life, and the secret is
to treat them as opportunities,”
explains Baker, who moved to
Burbank, CA, after 12 years as a
book and magazine editor in
New York City. “For example, a
horse was the source of my problems,
but a horse became the solution.”
Indeed, as recounted in
her book, Wendy suffered from
rheumatoid arthritis in her knees
and could hardly walk when her
mother gave her horseback-riding
lessons. “It
gave me the freedom,
mobility, and self-confidence
that I had lost,”
recalls Wendy of her
childhood in Ann Arbor.
She chose MSU “to get
away from home, without
going too far away.” At
MSU she was greatly inspired
by creative writing
professor Al Drake, which
led to an editorial career in
New York City with DoubleDay,
Harper & Row, and
US and Conde Nast Traveler magazines.
In 1990 she moved to
California, and four years later
suffered a major horseback-riding
accident with three broken limbs.
Again, what saved her was a horse
called Mollie. “She has one eye
In 2002, Wendy tried a rodeo
horse in Pine Ridge, North
Dakota, home of the Oglala
Lakota Indians.
PAGE 16
FALL 2004
MSUALUMNIMAGAZINE