Stay awhile. Linger a bit. Bide a wee.
The colorful name adorning the municipal golf course has its roots in Scotland. It was there, the story goes, that a young boy started to run away from home.
His mother intervened.
"You had better bide-a-wee," she told him.
The boy was Fred Findlay, who grew up and moved to Virginia and designed golf courses. In the 1950s, former PGA champion Chandler Harper hired him to build one in Portsmouth, according to an account of the course's history on its website.
The account says Harper and Findlay were discussing names for their creation when Findlay recounted his childhood memory. Bide-A-Wee Golf Course was born.
Decades later, the municipal course earned a reputation as a holdover from segregation. In 1976, the Justice Department, seeking to integrate it, sued the all-white club and the city, which owned the land but leased the course to Harper.
A federal judge ruled that Bide-A-Wee did not violate the Civil Rights Act, however, because the club was private. The color line remained until the course opened to the public, and the first black resident played there in 1988, according to a Virginian-Pilot timeline of the course. The exclusive all-white club was abolished in 1990, and Harper's lease expired two years later.
The course underwent a major renovation in the late 1990s, with PGA Tour star Curtis Strange consulting on the work. Bide-A-Wee reopened in 1999 to high marks. In 2002, Golf Digest named it the most improved course in the nation, and in 2009, the magazine called it the best municipal course in Virginia.
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Dave Forster, (757) 446-2627, dave.forster@pilotonline.com
Source: http://hamptonroads.com/2012/01/whats-name-bideawee-golf-course
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