Sometime in the early 1950s, a circle of South Side Chicago men — friends, neighbors, fellow parishioners, business partners — began gathering each summer at Pistakee Bay Country Club on West Bay Road in McHenry, Illinois for a golf outing. What began informally became, over time, one of the most enduring traditions either family would ever know.
At the center of it were three men: John "Jack" T. Goldrick, George C. McCabe, and Louis F. "Lou" Micetich. All three were products of Chicago's South Side Irish and immigrant Catholic community. All three were veterans of World War II. All three came home, built careers, raised families, and found lifelong devotion in the game of golf.
The connections between them were woven through the neighborhood. Jack Goldrick and Lou Micetich met through mutual friends — Jack Desmond and Jack Ahern — who lived on the same street on the South Side. Desmond and Ahern were founding partners of Desmond & Ahern, Ltd., a law firm rooted in the same Beverly/Morgan Park community. Both were Notre Dame men, veterans, and parishioners of St. Barnabas Church on South Longwood Drive — the same parish where Gary Micetich and Mike Goldrick attended school together. Desmond wasn't just a connector — he was a player himself, teeing it up with the founding generation for years. Lou later met George McCabe through a mutual friend, Ralph Linden, and the two also crossed paths at Olympia Fields Country Club, where Lou served as president from 1974 to 1975 and George was a member for 52 years. The tournament brought their worlds together into one.
Also woven into the fabric of the early tournament was George "Nellie" Wray — Lou Micetich's business partner and a U.S. Army veteran, whose first initial combined with Lou's to name their firm, W-M Tower Insurance Agency. Wray's name appears on the early scorecards. The tournament was never just a golf outing; it was an extension of a community.
He was a very kind and religious man whom everyone loved and who was easy to live with.
— Mildred Micetich, on her husband LouRecords going back to **1982** exist — that's the year the sons first officially joined their fathers. On February 19, 1982, **Tim McCabe** wrote a letter on McCabe & Associates letterhead to seventeen sons inviting them to join their fathers for the first time at the "Annual Pistakee Bay Weekend." The letter noted, with diplomatic tact, that "some fathers have not shown overwhelming support for this idea (we understand, Mr. Goldrick)." Jack Goldrick, it seems, needed some convincing. By May the logistics were set: rendezvous at the Hinsdale Oasis at 7:15 AM, tee time 9:00 AM, $125 cash covers everything. The sons stayed in cottages L-4 and L-5 at **Pink Harrison's Resort** — rented from Tom Harrison, son of Pink Harrison himself, who appears in the 1953 founding photo. The 1982 expense sheet survives: golf and carts $286, food $463, rooms split eight ways — **$134 per man**. Tim McCabe wrote organizing letters every year from 1982 through the mid-1990s. The earliest surviving spreadsheet scores date to 1994.
The men who started it taught their sons to play. Those sons brought their own sons. Today, over forty years after the first known scorecard was kept, their grandchildren tee it up together every summer. Pistakee Bay Country Club has since closed — the property sold, the course gone. The tournament now makes its home at Boone Creek Golf Club, just down the road in McHenry — the only 27-hole public golf course in McHenry County, with three unique nines winding through wetlands and wildlife. The name Pistakee Bay Invitational carries the memory of where it all began.
