Some Gave All: The Story of Calvin Searles

Golf historian Lane Demas credits Jimmie DeVoe with being the first African-American golfer to compete in the Los Angeles Open in 1944, followed immediately by Bill Spiller in 1945. However, as is sometimes the case with golf history, one name has been overlooked in that conversation. There was another Black golfer who also played and even out-performed DeVoe in the 1944 L.A Open. His name was Calvin Searles, and while it may seem strange to be talking about the Los Angeles Open (now the PGA's Genesis Invitational) on Memorial Day, it's because sadly, Searles holds one other distinction in the annals of golf history . On April 20, 1945, Searles became the only American professional golfer to be killed in action during World War II.

Clarence Calvin Searles, Jr., was born on November 13, 1918, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the oldest son of Rosa and Calvin Searles, Sr. Little is known of his childhood growing up in New Orleans's 17th Ward, but what is known is that Searles grew up caddying at the New Orleans Country Club, where his father worked on the grounds crew. Young Calvin exhibited remarkable talent on the golf course. He was long off the tee and possessed a deadly putting stroke, but he was known to take risks that sometimes backfired. As time would tell, he was also occasionally guilty of letting his nerves dictate his performance.

Searles's competitive journey began in 1940 when he participated in the United Golfers Association's Negro National Open at at Chicago's Palos Park Golf Course, finishing alone in ninth place. The following summer, he made headlines at the inaugural Joe Louis Open, where he found himself in a tense back-nine duel with Clyde Martin, who birdied the 15th and 18th coming down the stretch for a two-stroke victory over Searles and Zeke Hartsfield. Despite the loss, the performance of then-22-year-old Searles left a lasting impression, and great expectations were set for his future in the game.

His first brush with history came in the summer of 1942, when he was one of ten Black pros approved by George S. May to play in his All-American National Open Golf Tournament, later known simply as the All-American Open. When Black golfers were excluded from qualifying in the Hale America Open, Chicago Alderman Benjamin Grant reached out to May to inquire whether he would allow Black players in his tournament that summer. In his response, May assured Alderman Grant that the words “National” and “All-American” in the name of the tournament meant exactly what they said. He emphasized that his tournaments were open to any American who was willing and able to qualify under the rules of competition.

May acknowledged the significant contributions of African-Americans in both the war effort and military service, specifically citing Private Joe Louis as “an outstanding example of all-around good citizenship.” He saw no reason to exclude Black golfers from participating in such a patriotic event. Consequently, May stated, “their participation will not only be permitted at the Tam O’Shanter tournaments, it will be welcomed.”

May enlisted a citizens committee led by Alderman Grant; Frank A. “Fay” Young, sportswriter for the Chicago Defender newspaper; former UGA president Ralph Chilton; and Walter Speedy, who was known by many in the Black community as “the Father of Golf in Chicago.” Speedy had spent the last thirty-plus years advocating for African-American golf in the United States and integrating Chicago’s municipal golf courses. He was a core member of Chicago’s Alpha Golf Club, a founding member of the Windy City Golf Association, and after meeting with Robert Hawkins in Boston, was instrumental in the formation of the United States Colored Golf Association (which later evolved into the UGA). At age sixty-four, he was too old to be competitive anymore, but he was more than happy to help pick the list of golfers to be given this historic opportunity.

When the list was handed to May, the amateurs invited included Dr. Remus Robinson, Lyle Jones, Leroy Smith, and Nicholas Rayburg. Joe Louis had been on the list, but was unable to get leave from the Army for the event. The professionals who made the list were Robert “Pat” Ball, Clyde Martin, Edison Marshall, John Dendy, Solomon Hughes, Calvin Searles, Howard Wheeler, Eddie Jackson, Zeke Hartsfield, and Hoxie Hazzard. Wheeler was given an exemption into the tournament, and the others would have to go through the 18-hole qualifier the day before competition began.

Six UGA golfers survived qualifying, including Searles, Hartsfield, Martin, Ball, Marshall, and Jackson. Most of the Black players wound up playing in threesomes among themselves, since many white golfers wouldn’t play with them. The exception was Leonard Dodson, who volunteered to play with Wheeler and Searles the first two days, as Searles managed a two-day total of 2-over par 146 and was tied with the likes of Tommy Armour, Toney Penna, George Fazio, and Henry Picard. Playing with Wheeler and Hartsfield the final two days, Searles shot a third round 77 and blew up to a disastrous 88 in the final round that put him at next-to-last in the standings. Even though none of the Black pros finished in the money, Wheeler was awarded a consolation prize of $500 for being the tournament’s “Most Glamorous Player,” and while the set-up had not been perfect–black players and spectators had a separate eating facility near the tenth tee and black players were assigned a separate locker room–May was commended in the Black press for the “democratic initiative and good sportsmanship” he showed by giving them a historic opportunity to play golf on a bigger stage.

With the UGA National and Joe Louis Opens suspended for the war, Searles played in the All-American again in 1943. This time he was the only African-American to make the cut, but just like the previous year, he finished outside the money. In January 1944, he played in the Los Angeles Open along with Jimmie DeVoe. There, he made the 36-hole cut, but when a 54-hole cut was made necessary because of the size of the field, he was one stroke below the line. Two short months later, on March 10, 1944, he was inducted into the Army and sent to Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky.

Given two weeks leave in August, Private Searles traveled to Chicago to play in the All-American Open, and barely made it through Wednesday qualifying, shooting a 77 that was right on the cut line. Rain had threatened to delay qualifying, but the first two rounds proceeded without much ado, and Byron Nelson’s rounds of 68-70 put him in the lead at minus-6, two ahead of defending champ Harold “Jug” McSpaden and Sergeant Vic Ghezzi, who was on leave from Camp Grant, Illinois. First round leader Johnny Bulla, who carded a course record-tying 65 on Thursday, went backward on Friday, shooting a 79 that left him back in the pack, six strokes behind Nelson.

At the 54-hole mark, Byron Nelson’s 211 still led the tournament by two strokes over Buck White and Jug McSpaden and three over E. J. “Dutch” Harrison. Scores had been a bit higher during Saturday's third round. Only four golfers had rounds in the sixties, and one of those rounds belonged to Calvin Searles. After scores of 74-73 in the first two rounds, Searles was once again the only African-American golfer to make the cut. His two-day total of 147 had him well back of the leaders, but something must have clicked. On Saturday, Searles posted a 69 that put him in a group of six golfers–including PGA president Ed Dudley–tied for sixth at even par, only five strokes behind Nelson. At the time, it was the highest position an African-American golfer had ever held in a major tournament heading into the final round.

Playing the final round in a group with Johnny Bulla and Ed Furgol, Searles was 2-over par and still in the top twenty when he arrived at the sixteenth hole. Sixteen was a long, 215-yard par-3 with a huge putting surface that was guarded in front by the Northern Branch of the Chicago River. Feeling the gravity of the moment, he proceeded to dunk two balls in the river, then guided his fifth shot onto the green and two-putted for a quadruple bogey seven. He finished with a 79 that put him at 295, 7-over par for the tournament, in a tie for twenty-fifth place–just outside the money. For his efforts that week, George May rewarded Searles with a consolation check for $200. Had he parred sixteen, he would have taken home $641.66 (equivalent to about $12,350 in 2025).

Searles won the lasting admiration of Bulla, who was part of the group to witness his 69 that Saturday at Tam O’Shanter. While some white golfers shied away from playing with African-American golfers, Bulla did not. “A human being is a human being,” he said, “I grew up in North Carolina, but for some reason I never bought into that racial prejudice stuff.” In an interview many years later, Bulla would say that, next to Tiger Woods, Searles was the best Black player he had ever seen.

At only twenty-six years of age, Calvin Searles was one of the most promising Black golfers in the country, but as fate would have it, the 1944 All-American Open would be his last competitive tournament. Not long after returning to Camp Breckinridge, his unit, the 4332nd Quartermaster Service Company, was deployed to the European Theater. They were assigned to the 124th Armored Engineer Battalion and were operating with the 13th Armored Division near the Ruhr Pocket in Germany when Searles was killed on April 20, 1945–the same day that Allied forces surrounded Berlin. To commemorate his legacy, the Gotham Hotel Trophy--awarded to the winner of the Joe Louis Open each year--was renamed the Calvin Searles Memorial Trophy. Its first recipient in 1946 was Ted Rhodes.

Searles wasn’t a member of the PGA. Because of the Caucasian Clause, he couldn't be. That was the portion of the PGA by-laws added in 1934 that restricted membership in the organization to "professional golfers of the Caucasian race...residing in North or South America." In fact, the only reason he could play at Tam O'Shanter or Los Angeles was because the tournaments’ sponsors, George S. May and the Los Angeles Jaycees, refused to sign a PGA sponsorship agreement. They alone made the rules for their tournaments and decided who played in them. It wasn’t until April of 1960, fifteen years after Searles’s death, that the PGA of America issued Charlie Sifford an “approved player” card. Another year-and-a-half later, they abolished the Caucasian Clause altogether.

It’s easy to sit back now and think about all of the “what if’s.” What if there had been more good Black golfers like Searles to play alongside Ted Rhodes, Howard Wheeler, and Charlie Sifford? What if Joe Louis hadn’t run out of the money and clout he had used to support Black professionals? What if all the other sponsors had the same mentality as George May? We’d like to think that things would’ve been different, but we don’t know that. What we do know is that Calvin Searles went away to fight a war against a dictator who espoused a system much worse than anything he faced back home. When heavyweight champion Joe Louis was asked why he was willing to fight in “a white man’s army,” he responded, “There’s lots of things wrong with America, but Hitler ain’t gonna fix ‘em.” Like thousands of others, Searles went to war hoping that the world he would come back to would be kinder to him than the one he had left. He never got a chance to see it happen.

So, as you play in your Memorial Day scramble or dogfight at your local club, take a moment to remember those who paid the supreme sacrifice to preserve our freedom, and remember a fellow golfer whom you probably never heard of before reading this column today. And if you hear a certain Billy Ray Cyrus song on the radio today, stop and listen to these words:

“All gave some, some gave all

Some stood through for the red, white, and blue

And some had to fall

And if you ever think of me

Think of all your liberties and recall

Some gave all.”

Thank you, Calvin, and God Bless America.

Ted Rhodes receives the Calvin Searles Memorial Trophy from Heavyweight Champ Joe Louis.