A few months after King George mounted England's Throne there was founded conveniently adjacent to Havana a country club which was the great enterprise of "Father Snare." Last week came his Silver Jubilee, celebrated with presentation of silver gifts amid silver-decked palms, with the stateliest ladies of Cuba in attendance wearing cloth-of-silver gowns. Cried the Island Republic's No. 1 lawyer, silver-tongued young Dr. Mario Lazo: "Of course this Country Club of Havana is not the most important of the difficult things Mr. Snare has founded here. The most important thing is the spirit of understanding and affection which exists today between the people of Havana and the foreigners who reside here or visit here. Show me another community in the world where such a spirit exists and I will look for another Frederick Snare!"
Twenty-five years ago, Saturday was the signal for most prosperous foreign males in Havana to get drunk, moderately or otherwise, until time for business Monday. They had no place whatever to play golf, tennis or other sports which their
Cuban friends then considered mildly mad. Cuban mothers cooped up their daughters in the Spanish tradition of despotic chaperonage tempered by matrimonial intrigue. And Mr. Frederick Snare was a rising U. S. contracting engineer who in Cuba specialized, as he still does, in "Piers and Warehouses, Power Plants, Bridges, Sugar Mills and Difficult Foundations."
A muddy morass of shifting sands and marshy lagoons offered the "difficult foundations" of the Havana Country Club. It was first sketched on the back of a dog-eared envelope and capital was subscribed by such Havana bigwigs of those days as Lawyer Norman Hezekiah Davis, now President Roosevelt's famed Ambassador-at-Large. As go-getting Mr. Snare mellowed into "Father Snare," his club historically changed the mores of Havana's better class. Today week-end drunks are anything but smart. And golf and tennis unchaperoned have become the birthright of Cuban debutantes, if they disport themselves at the select, discreet and quiet Havana Country Club.
With the most lavish and expensive swimming pool in any Caribbean country and with one of the best layouts for daytime sport and moon-drenched romantic evenings in Latin America, "Father Snare" still busies himself with earnest works appropriate to one who last week celebrated his Silver Jubilee. Few caddies are so pious as his. Smart Cuban lads, placed under the strict guidance of three Roman Catholic priests and educated in English and arts & crafts in the Club's school, these Greensward Sons of "Father Snare" never tire of hailing his greatest greens feat. Last year on his 72nd birthday he drove for the 18th hole, needing a five to make the course in par 72. He made it in six, and every caddy still boasts this a record unbeaten and unbeatable on the Havana course by a man of the years of "Father Snare."