friday, february 21 , 2020. the washington post eZ re B5
BY HALLIE MILLERBALTIMORE — After her father
died in 1977, Audrey Wesson as-
sumed ownership of his row-
house in East Baltimore, paying
the mortgage and taxes and rent-
ing it out to friends, family and
others when they needed help.
Sandwiched between a city-
owned property and one owned
by an out-of-state limited liability
company, the two-story brick
house at 1028 N. Patterson Park
Ave. represented a piece of gener-
ational wealth for the Wesson
family — one Audrey Wesson
eventually hoped to sell.
But after the second story of an
adjacent property collapsed, city
officials condemned her house
and tore it down in 2018 along
with four others on the block,
leaving her with just the lot.
While she fought the demoli-
tion, Wesson said she’d come to
accept it as a loss. Then the city
sent her a bill in January for
$26,965 — perhaps more than the
home was worth. Many nearby
rowhouses are valued at about
$19,000 for tax purposes by the
state. The bill Wesson received is
in the form of a lien on the
property meant to recoup the
money for razing it.
The city has sweeping authori-
ty to take swift corrective action
over buildings and residences it
deems unsafe, but the loss has left
Wesson upset and angry.
“I worked 50 years. I’ve never
been on social service. I never ask
nobody for anything,” said Wes-
son, a mother and grandmother.
“I just want justice for this.”
Wesson said her troubles with
the Baltimore Department of
Housing and Community Devel-
opment began sometime in 2015,
when the adjoining property par-
tially collapsed in the back. That
August, the department issued a
code violation notice and order
on Wesson’s house, claiming it
was “unfit for human habitation”
and demanding she secure the
required permits and correct the
problems within 30 days.
An inspector wrote in a 2015
memo that the house appeared
vacant, citing closed doors, two
partially boarded-up windows,
high grass and weeds. According
to an August 2016 inspection
memo provided by the housing
department, the city determined
the house had some structural
and mechanical problems, but
that they could be resolved.
In 2018, after Wesson unsuc-
cessfully appealed the notice and
was prevented from making some
repairs, the city razed the entire
block of homes, with her appli-
ances and other belongings still
inside, she said. The city had
recommended she pay $600 to
“donate” her property before the
house came down. Otherwise, she
said she was warned she’d h ave to
pay for the demolition.
Ta mmy Hawley, a spokeswom-
an for the housing department,
said in an email that the agency
“is willing to work things out with
the property owner” and let her
donate the property.
But Wesson feels she shouldn’t
have to pay a cent to give up the
title to her father’s property, now
a vacant lot. In fact, she said, she
believes the city should compen-
sate her for tearing down the
home because it was in repairable
condition.
The housing department’s
2016 inspection memo reinforced
her belief that the home was
relatively stable.
The city, Wesson added, failed
to attract or retain residents who
might have maintained the
neighboring houses.
Jordan Brookmyer, who assist-
ed the family as the former senior
legal services staff attorney for
the Bar Association of Baltimore
City, said he attended Wesson’s
administrative hearing with the
department in September 2016.
Officials had told Wesson she
could make a case to rehabilitate
the property i f she could provide a
quote from a contractor and
proof of funding to pay for the
work, he said.
But when she presented both
items at the hearing, Brookmyer
said, the city “found the amount
of the contract wasn’t believable
and ignored it.”
“She was paying taxes each
year and doing her best to get it
up to code,” he said. “But I think
they recognized if she did bring it
up to code, it would throw a
wrench in their plans to demolish
the whole block.”
The city also prevented Wesson
from getting permits to start the
rehabilitation work before the
hearing, he said, adding to the
family’s frustrations.
Brookmyer said he advised the
family to donate the house, but
“there was so much resentment
about the city getting the proper-
ty and then having to pay the city
to take it that they weren’t w illing
to go ahead and do it.”
Wesson’s son, Stephen Wesson,
said the city should work with its
seniors, not intimidate them with
expenses and bill them until they
give their homes away. “She’s a
model citizen, with deep roots in
the city, and they threw her away
like a piece of trash,” he said.
The decision to keep the prop-
erty has created mounting finan-
cial woes for Audrey Wesson who,
in retirement, lives on a fixed
income.
“This is the first time I’ve been
made aware of something like
this,” s aid council member Shan-
non Sneed, a Democrat who rep-
resents the 13th District in East
Baltimore.
Sneed said the housing depart-
ment should learn to better bal-
ance the concerns of aging prop-
erty owners with its efforts to
curb vacancy and blight: “It’s
tough, but I don’t want anybody
to lose their property.”
The nearly $27,000 bill comes
on the heels of a similar demoli-
tion in West Baltimore’s Boyd-
Booth neighborhood in Septem-
ber, in which the city razed a
woman’s home with only a few
days’ notice. As in Wesson’s case,
Frances Chase’s home came
crashing down along with her
belongings. Chase said officials
initially did not offer to compen-
sate her. The city later relocated
Chase to a mortgage-free home.
After the Baltimore Sun pub-
lished the details of Chase’s de-
molition, City Council President
Brandon Scott publicly admon-
ished the housing department,
seeking more information about
demolition protocol.
“In Baltimore, a city that has a
severe housing stability problem,
we must make every effort to help
citizens stay i n their homes,” S cott
wrote in a letter.
In response, Housing Commis-
sioner Michael Braverman cited
the city’s authority to take correc-
tive action in dire situations as
well as each resident’s right to
appeal. In a letter, he wrote, “it is
rare that the threat to an occupied
property is so immediate that
both a vacate order and an emer-
gency demolition is required.”
Hawley said the city treated the
family with fairness. “We feel con-
fident the proper process was
followed, leading to that out-
come,” s he said.
That doesn’t make Wesson feel
any better about the situation. “I
don’t want no fortune. All I want
is a little bit of help,” s he said.
Wesson has 30 days from
Jan. 27 to pay the bill. Property
records estimate the lot’s total
taxable value at $4,000.
— Baltimore Sun‘All I want is a
little bit of help’
Baltimore tore down
Audrey Wesson’s home,
then sent a $27,000 billMAryLAND
lloyd Fox/Baltimore sunAudrey Wesson says the home that the city of Baltimore demolished
was repairable and she deserves compensation. Officials disagree.
Mickey Wright, 85associated press photos
Mickey Wright at the Toronto Golf Club in 196 7. Experts at Golf and Golf Digest magazines ranked her as the greatest female golfer of all
time and among the top 10, male or female. Ms. Wright’s 82 tournament victories are the second most in women’s golf history.as it passed beyond the lights.
Over the years, when I needed a
big drive, I’d whisper to myself,
‘Make it disappear.’ ”
As a 19-year-old amateur in
1954, Ms. Wright was the final-
round playing partner at the U.S.
Women’s Open with the champi-
on, Babe Didrikson Zaharias,
who had won gold medals in
track at the 1932 Olympic Games
before helping launch women’s
golf as a professional sport.
Ms. Wright left Stanford Uni-
versity after one year to pursue a
professional golf career. As she
reached her 30s, she began to
battle chronic wrist and foot
injuries. She stepped away from
the game from time to time and
won her final tournament in- As late as 1979 — playing in
tennis shoes because golf shoes
hurt her feet — she lost in a
tournament playoff to Nancy Lo-
pez.
Ms. Wright occasionally
played in senior tournaments in
the 19 80s and 1990s. Even when
she was in her late 50s, other
golfers could identify her simply
by the solid sound of her club
striking the ball.
“I had s een o ld film clips of her
swing,” Hall of Fame golfer Patty
Sheehan told Sports Illustrated
in 2000. “It looked the same:
very fluid, very powerful — flaw-
less. You could see she was in
love with golf and dedicated to
hitting a golf ball purely. She had
these old clubs, old as dirt, and it
was clear they were her best
friends. She had an inner confi-
dence. I picked up on that very
strongly. You knew that u ltimate-
ly all those wins came from
something deep inside.”
Ms. Wright used the same set
of Wilson clubs from 1963 until
her final tournament in 1995.
She donated the clubs and other
artifacts to the U. S. Golf Associa-
tion Museum in Liberty Corner,
N.J., where she is the only wom-
an with a dedicated room. She
was also elected to the World
Golf Hall of Fame and the LPGA
Hall of Fame.
In l ater years, Ms. Wright l ived
alongside a golf course in Port St.
Lucie, Fla. She h ad no immediate
survivors.
She looked on modern-day
golf with some disdain: She
thought the longer shafts and
larger clubfaces of today’s clubs
took much of the skill and artist-
ry out of the game. She was
particularly adept at using the
“long” i rons, such as the notori-
ously hard-to-control 2-iron.
“I could hit it so well,” Ms.
Wright told the New York Times
in 2012. “I used to say the
second-greatest feeling in the
world was a high 2 -iron to a
well-trapped green.’’
There was only one feeling
that was better, she said: “Win-
ning.”
[email protected]
of 62 at a tournament in Mid-
land, Te x. — the lowest score in
women’s competition up to that
point. Trailing by 10 strokes as
she entered the last round, she
ended up tied for the lead with
her record-setting performance
and then won the tournament in
a sudden-death playoff.
“I don’t u sually emote much in
public,” she told Sports Illustrat-
ed in 1964, “ but for some reason,
after the first few holes, I’d grin
and laugh each time I tapped a
putt in. And the crowd really
seemed to be with me. I’ve never
felt so much electricity. Between
shots the gallery was so quiet I
could hear myself breathe.”
Mary Kathryn Wright was
born Feb. 14, 1935, in San Diego.
Her mother was a homemaker,
her father a lawyer who intro-
duced her to golf as a child.
She was 5-foot-8 at age 11 —
“The kids at school called me
‘Moose.’ I had a terrible inferiori-
ty complex” — and found solace
in golf. On S aturdays, her m other
drove 125 miles each way so her
daughter could take l essons f rom
Harry Pressler, a teacher Ms.
Wright credited with developing
her smooth swing.
“Golf is just one thing to me,’’
she said in 1993. “It is the pure
pleasure of swinging the golf
club.”
As a girl, Ms. Wright some-
times gave demonstrations in
San Diego at night, with the
course illuminated by lights. The
local pro would tell her, “Mickey,
show the people how you can
make the ball disappear,” she
recalled to Golf Digest in 2017,
“and I would drive the ball so it
went out of sight, still climbingtance but weak in what golfers
call the “short game” of chipping
and putting. But as she polished
her all-around game, she became
almost unbeatable. In 1967, the
Golf Writers Association of
America named her the game’s
best putter — among both men
and women.
She described the fundamen-
tals of her game in a 1962 book,
“Play Golf the Wright Way,” in
which she detailed the impor-
tance of the grip, foot placement,
backswing, balance — and, of
course, endless practice: “You
will be better if you practice and
you won’t be if you don’t.”
The one thing she couldn’t
practice, however, was the pres-
sure of competition. She finished
two major tournaments — the
1962 Titleholders Championship
and the 1964 U. S. Women’s Open
— tied for first place at the end of
72 holes. In both cases, she was
tied with Ruth Jessen.
In the 18-hole playoff round
for the Titleholders Champion-
ship, Ms. Wright birdied three of
the first five holes and never
trailed, shooting a 69 to Jessen’s- Two years later, in the Wom-
en’s O pen, s he won a gain, f iring a
70 to top Jessen by two strokes in
the playoff.
“A t my best I would go into
what I called a ‘fog,’ ” she told
Golf Digest in 2017. “I never
thought of it as the ‘zone’ you
hear about today, though maybe
it was something like that. It was
a mental state where I could
concentrate really well and play
with a greater confidence than
usual.”
Ms. Wright was in that state in
1964, when she shot a final round
BY MATT SCHUDELMickey Wright, one of the
greatest golfers in the sport’s
history, with a picture-perfect
swing that enabled her to domi-
nate the women’s game in the
1950s and 196 0s, died Feb. 17 at a
medical facility in Fort Pierce,
Fla. She was 85.
The cause was a heart attack,
after a recent hospitalization for
a fall, said her lawyer, Sonia
Pawluc.
From the late 1950s until her
semiretirement in 1969, Ms.
Wright was the preeminent fig-
ure in her sport, once winning 44
tournaments during a four-year
span. She played infrequently
after age 34, but her 82 tourna-
ment victories are the second
most in women’s golf history,
after Kathy Whitworth’s 88.
Ms. Wright was a four-time
winner of both the U.S. Women’s
Open and the LPGA Champion-
ship, and her 13 wins in major
tournaments of the Ladies Pro-
fessional Golf Association are
second only to Patty Berg’s 15.
Experts at both Golf and Golf
Digest magazines ranked Ms.
Wright as the greatest female
golfer of all time and among the
top 10 in history, male or fe-
male.
“She was our Jack Nicklaus,
Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods,
Nancy Lopez all rolled into one,”
Whitworth told Golfweek maga-
zine.
At her peak in the 196 0s, Ms.
Wright was such a popular draw
that sponsors refused to hold
tournaments unless they knew
she would appear. In 1963, she
won 1 3 of the 32 tournaments she
entered. Only one male golfer —
Byron Nelson in 1945 — has won
more tournaments in a single
year.
But Ms. Wright’s influence on
the game went beyond the num-
ber of her victories. She had a
swing and style of play that
approached the platonic ideal of
golfing perfection.
“Mickey Wright, greatest golf
swing I ever saw,” Ben Hogan, a
star of the 1940s and 1950s, told
golf historian Rhonda Glenn in- “Boy, what a swing.”
Nelson, To m Watson and other
golfers said the same.
Using a driver with a small,
wooden clubhead, Ms. Wright
could routinely drive the ball 225
to 250 yards. “I can outhit many
men — much to their embarrass-
ment,” s he told T ime magazine in
When reporters called her the
“female Arnold Palmer,” she an-
grily replied, “Palmer and I don’t
have a thing in common. I have a
classic swing. His is all wrong.
He’s just lucky he’s strong as an
ox.”
At first, Ms. Wright was a
one-dimensional player, with an
ability to drive the ball for dis-
Dominated women’s golf in ’50s, ’60s
Ms. Wright celebrates in 196 4 after winning her fourth U.S.
Women’s Open. She also won the LPGA Championship four times.obituaries
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