Country Club of Birmingham history

Membership grew, and on March 30, 1930, just after the stock market crash, their current English-style clubhouse was opened.

Charley was living the dream in 1941 when he met, and married, Kitty Lacey.

In 1946, the same year he retired from the Army and resettled in Birmingham, he finished second in the National Blind Golf Championship, in Inglewood, California; the next year he won.

At about age 13 or 14, around 1947, he became a caddy at Roebuck, earning 65 cents for 18 holes, perhaps as much as $1.25 to $2: “It was just a way to make money,” Bates recalled.

In 1958, at the height of his golfing career, Highland Park was renamed "Charley Boswell Golf Course at Highland Park." Charley sponsored many Pro/Am tournaments, raising more than a million dollars for the Helen Keller Eye Research Foundation.

"It was built to burn", said Birmingham Fire Marshal, Agron Rosenfeld, Friday morning, June 30, 1972, the day the grand old clubhouse burned to the ground. "Like somebody had lit a box of pine knot kindling", a bystander remarked.

In 1975, Gurley returned to Birmingham and ran the Beacon Hill Golf Course in North Birmingham until it closed.

In 1998, Bob Barrett, co-founder and CEO of Honours Golf, and Bob Cupp, a renowned golf course architect, applied their wisdom and art, breathing new life into Highland Park’s old links.

Club members include Jesse Lewis, Birmingham Times founder and publisher emeritus; Charles Townsend, retired Jackson-Olin (J-O) High principal; and Otis Windham Jr., who has served as an advisory board member for African American Golfer’s Digest magazine since 2009.

In 2016, Birmingham Country Club proudly celebrated its 100-year anniversary.