BY SETH MANDEL
Staff Writer
Forsgate Country Club is pictured shortly after it was built by John A. Forster. The club opened in 1931 with the challenging Banks Course, designed by Charles Banks. MONROE – From Joe DiMaggio and Willie Mays to Bob Hope and Ben Hogan, working at Forsgate Country Club in the 1960s and ’70s gave Henry Schlegel and his co-workers the opportunity to meet A-list celebrities on a regular basis.
But Schlegel, now living in East Brunswick, doesn’t hesitate when asked if any one person he met there had a lasting impact on his life.
“I guess you might say so,” Schlegel said. “My wife.”
As Forsgate turns 75 this year, Schlegel fondly reflected on his years at the country club, which began with a morning delivery route for its dairy farm and ended with Schlegel as an assistant manager at the club.
“The first 10 to 15 years, I was on the milk route and I was out in the fresh air, and the last 10 to 15 I was inside in a nice country club. I couldn’t have it any better,” Schlegel said.
Jamesburg resident Tony Vanzino started as a milkman and eventually became a full-time bartender at the club. Vanzino raved about the work environment, the benefits and the respect with which each employee was treated.
“Everything that I could say was positive,” Vanzino said. “I spent 30 years there and enjoyed every minute of it. It was 30 years of delight.”
Vanzino, who just turned 80 years old, rattled off the names of his co-workers with the same speed and certainty he employed to offer up each memory, from what Bob Hope drank (orange juice) to what breed of cow were kept at the dairy farm (Golden Guernsey).
“Back in those days you had that esprit de corps, you couldn’t wait to get to work,” Vanzino said. “And if you didn’t like your job, your boss always told you, ‘Tony, there are 17 doors leading out of the country club.’ People fought to get in there.”
The club was founded in 1931 by Scottish golf enthusiast John A. Forster. Forster also co-founded Forster and Crum Insurance Co. in Hackensack, but according to his grandson, Jack Abeel, Forster continued to visit the Monroe area looking for land on which to build his dream project.
“Basically what my great-grandfather wanted to do was have a self-sufficient community where the retirees could retire to,” Abeel said. “So Forsgate Farms actually was the first thing on the drawing board.”
Before the club was established, Forster used over 50 acres of open land for a farm that included horse-breeding, chickens, a greenhouse, apple orchards and what became a very successful dairy operation.
The country club opened with the challenging and highly regarded Banks Course, designed by the famous golf course architect Charles Banks. The course was as celebrated for its deep greens as it was notorious for its daunting traps.
Abeel said golfers would often joke that the sand traps called for a tactic referred to as the hand-masher.
“A hand-masher is when nobody’s looking, you’re in the trap and you pick up a handful of sand and the golf ball in the other hand, and you throw it up at the same time,” Abeel said.
Forster’s daughter, Edith, and her husband, John Howard Abeel, took over after Forster’s death. John Abeel earned a reputation as a philanthropist, helping to put the children of his employees through college.
Vanzino said he was given $500 each semester for each of his four children’s college tuitions. His daughter is now a doctor, one son is a pilot, another son is an industrial engineer and his other son operates his own company.
Jack Abeel said his father’s generosity of spirit and loyalty to his employees created an atmosphere where the friendships and socialization between workers didn’t stop after their shifts ended.
“When you have a business where everybody is friendly, and like a big family, it’s a nice place to be around,” Abeel said.
As the only son, Abeel was expected to get involved in the club.
“It sort of just made sense,” Abeel said. “So as I went to boarding school and then to college it was more and more an assumption that I would get into the club operation and try to continue it.”
But his father’s devotion to his family and employees made it an even easier decision, Abeel said.
“When we had it, it was like a big family affair,” he said. “Everybody knew everybody else.”
That’s how Vanzino felt about his role as a milkman with Forsgate, which, he said, paid well and allowed him to have a second job in the afternoons.
“It was just such a family-oriented thing,” Vanzino said. “It was a fun place to go to work.”
And it only became more enjoyable when Vanzino was hired to tend bar. Governors’ conventions brought notable politicians, and various golf events brought professional athletes.
“What I enjoyed so much about the country club was you met just the upper echelon of people,” Vanzino said. “You didn’t have any beer in the kegs, everybody was lawyers and Indian chiefs. It was fun.”
Schlegel said the two jobs complemented each other perfectly. In the morning, he had his relaxing, peaceful milk route, and in the afternoons he would tend bar, serving Hope his O.J. and former Gov. Brendan Byrne his gin and tonic.
“It was really wonderful,” Schlegel said. “It was the best time of my life, I know that much.”
In 1961, golf course architect Hal Purdy was hired to design a nine-hole course, and he returned 10 years later to add another nine holes. That is now called the Palmer Course, renamed in 1999 in honor of golf legend Arnold Palmer’s 70th birthday.
The dairy farm business was sold to Welsh Farms in 1971, and the Forsgate property was sold in 1984 to R.H. Development Co.
In 1997, the club was sold again, this time in a joint purchase by National Fairways and RDC Golf Group. RDC bought out National Fairways in 1999, and remains the sole owners of the club.
According to RDC Chief Executive Officer Christopher Schiavone, all the residential-zoned property connected to the club was either sold or developed prior to RDC’s joint venture with National Fairways. Once RDC got involved, it was only the club, and the chance to enhance the club’s already sterling reputation.
“It was definitely attractive to us based on the reputation of the club, the location, the great elements to the asset itself. … And being in the setting that it is, it’s all part of what makes it a great facility,” Schiavone said.
Some of RDC’s improvements to the club include the addition of a 500-seat banquet hall to replace an outdoor tent on the front lawn. That lawn, Shiavone said, will eventually include gazebos, walking paths and monuments to John A. Forster and Charles Banks.
“And try to give some recognition to the people that helped make Forsgate possible,” Schiavone said.
That area will be known as the Great Lawn, and will be created after construction is complete on a pool and fitness facility, Schiavone said. In August 2004, the Monroe Township Planning Board approved plans for both of those facilities.
Club General Manager Dave Wasenda said the pool and fitness center are aimed at attracting nongolfers to the club. The pool will be outside, next to the two-story building that will house the fitness center and men’s and women’s locker rooms on the upper level, while the snack bar and day lockers will be located on the lower level near the pool.
Schiavone said the company would like to make the club a destination for entire families.
“I’m a big believer that, unlike the generation where I was a kid, people need to spend as much of their nonworking time with their families as they can,” Schiavone said. “That’s the culture in America today, and so you have to have a country club environment that is not just for the husband’s golf habit, but for the entire family’s recreational activities.”
Despite RDC’s recent focus on other activities, they have kept the big names coming back – for a good cause.
The club plays host to the annual Charity Golf Classic, which has featured Peter Jacobsen, Chi Chi Rodriguez and John Daly in a two-day event to benefit Special Olympics New Jersey. This year, the Make-A-Wish Foundation will also be a beneficiary of the event.
Schiavone said as club officials prepare for the future of Forsgate, they are well aware of the past, and the visionary that John A. Forster turned out to be.
“It’s amazing when you think, in 1931, there’s no New Jersey Turnpike, there’s no development down there, that whole area was pretty much farmland and not much more than farmland,” Schiavone said. He added that the area is now part of a fast-growing community of professionals, many of whom are young married couples who both work during the day and benefit from a place like Forsgate.
“They’d like an environment, especially post-9/11, where you feel safe, where you know the people around you and yet it’s a healthy environment for all kinds of recreational activities,” Schiavone said. “And that’s what we try to create at the country club.”
Schiavone said RDC wants Forsgate to be the best value family club anywhere, in terms of quality, amenities and reputation.
He said as the area grows, its connection with Forsgate becomes even more apparent, as does RDC’s obligation to remain true to John A. Forster’s dream.
“He was kind of a forward-looking guy in some respects, and there’s a history there – three-quarters of a century,” Shiavone said. “And we feel kind of a stewardship, not only to Forster and what he created, but to the community, because it is a focal point of the community and something that people should be glad is there.”