Politicians and golf: Golf priority over wedding anniversary

The latest in an occasional series of posts.

Inquiring minds want to know if New York Gov. Al Smith did, indeed, make it back to the governor’s mansion in time to celebrate his wedding anniversary after playing golf.

“Not only was today an exceptionally busy one for Governor Smith, but it also was his twentieth wedding anniversary,” reported a May 6, 1920 Albany-dateline news brief published the next day in The Post-Star of Glens Falls, NY.

Smith spent much of the day signing recently passed laws and considering legislative proposals.

One of the bills he signed made it a misdemeanor crime to “knowingly or willfully” provide “false and untrue” information to newspapers and magazines with the intent that the erroneous information be published, according to a separate Post-Star report.

Smith also discovered a fire in the executive chambers, and later in the day he attended a meeting of delegates to the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

“His only recreation came in the afternoon when, for a short time, he went to a nearby country club where he was defeated in a game of golf by Charles F. Murphy of New York,” the news brief concluded.

Perhaps the golf solaced the governor’s spirit after a frustrating legislative session that was predominated by the legislative trial and expulsion of five Socialist Party assemblymen that had duly been elected in their respective districts.

“The problems of the day remain unsolved and few measures of state-wide importance were considered. Political expediency overshadowed public necessity,” Smith had said at the end of the session, according to an April 20, 1920 report in The Post-Star.

Click here to read the most recent previous post in the series.