David Mastroleo proudly wears his GCSAA jacket. A 72-year GCSAA member, Mastroleo became an association member in 1954. Photo by Andrew Cooper
Told that GCSAA is celebrating its Centennial this year, David Mastroleo had a two-word response: “Holy mackerel!”
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines those words to mean very surprised, pleased or excited. Then, when told that he has achieved rare air in GCSAA’s world, Mastroleo sounded even more surprised as he uttered these three words: “I’ll be darned.”
Truth be told, one word defines Mastroleo’s current place in GCSAA history: unparalleled.
Now 96 years old, Mastroleo is No. 1 among GCSAA’s 21,000-plus membership. No active member has maintained GCSAA membership longer than Mastroleo. He is — get this — a 72-year GCSAA member, unmatched by any current association member. Besides his “I’ll be darned” assessment of being a member for over seven decades, Mastroleo continued to beam about his status. “I’m a lifetime member,” Mastroleo says. “And I’m proud of it.”
Born in 1929, he was 3 when GCSAA — which was launched 100 years ago as the National Association of Greenkeepers of America in 1926 — featured a Mastroleo. His father, Frank Mastroleo, was a charter member. Today, Mastroleo represents a living legend, highlighted by serving as a superintendent for more than five consecutive decades.
Mastroleo welcomed being on his hands and knees as a superintendent, a position he held starting in the 1950s.
Way back when … and a scare
This is how far back the Mastroleo name goes.
Before his son was born, Frank Mastroleo oversaw Geneva Golf Club in Geneva, Ill. He knew others in the industry, such as founding father Col. John Morley, who guided the initial meeting that fueled life into what GCSAA is today. Frank Mastroleo presided over the grounds at Geneva GC for 42 years. He had retired before his granddaughter, Annette Mastroleo, got to see him in action.
Still, she heard stories.
“He put leather shoes on the horses that pulled the mowers in the 1920s,” says Anette, David Mastroleo’s daughter. David grew up working for his father, but not before he served as a club caddie.
If he was going to follow in his father’s footsteps, David would be forced to overcome a near tragedy.
Frank Mastroleo, here with wife Adeline, is David’s father and GCSAA charter member.
Among those up-and-coming superintendents was Bruce Williams, CGCS. Williams is the son of industry stalwart Bob Williams. Their family settled in Illinois. When Bruce Williams moved to California in 1977, he added onto what he learned from his father and continued his rise under Mastroleo’s guidance. “I had always heard my dad talk about his dad,” says Bruce Williams, who went to Los Angeles Country Club. “Moving to California, I was like a fish out of water — never had grown bermudagrass, didn’t know what kikuyugrass was.”
On Friday, Sept. 13, 1946, the then-17-year-old David was severely injured as a backseat passenger in an automobile accident in Mattoon, Ill. “Our driver took a sharp curve and hit a telephone pole. My legs ended up halfway in the car,” Mastroleo says.
A doctor informed him he might never walk again. “I had a broken back, was paralyzed from the waist down. For a while, I wore leg braces,” he says, adding that he was placed into a full-body cast.
An interesting note about the day of the accident: Sept. 13, 1946, was the 20th anniversary of the association’s beginning. It wasn’t, though, an end to Mastroleo’s future. A year later, he was able to walk. “I couldn’t play football anymore,” Mastroleo says, “but I was able to work.”
As for what happened to him during a major tragedy avoided, Mastroleo’s well-known sense of humor surfaced. “Friday the 13th. My kind of luck,” he says.
It wasn’t a given, however, he would move forward with his life to follow in his father’s footsteps. “I got married, worked in a cabinet shop, building kitchen cabinets,” Mastroleo says.
A friend of his father helped redirect Mastroleo into the golf industry. “A member of dad’s club said Arrowhead Golf & Country Club was looking for a superintendent,” David says. The club in Wheaton, Ill., stopped looking once it met Mastroleo. He was hired in 1953. Salary? $5,000 a year. Mastroleo remained there 10 years until landing at a course in Addison, Ill. That stay didn’t last forever after a phone call from far away changed everything.
Besides attending the GCSAA Conference and Trade Show for numerous decades, Mastroleo grew turfgrass varieties for a seed business to display at the Show.
California, here we come
All it took was a query from California to see if Mastroleo would be interested in moving his family, including wife Donna, halfway across the country in 1959.
He had one question from the golf course caller in California. “I said, ‘With all of the people you’ve got in California, why is there a job available?’ I listened. I accepted the job over the phone,” says Mastroleo, who took them up on the offer at Fox Hills Golf Club in Culver City. “I also became general manager and tended to the bar. I made a lot of Seven and Sevens. It was a popular drink.”
After a decade there, he was on the move again, although not very far away — and it lasted for a while. In 1970, Mastroleo accepted the superintendent position at Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles.
The facility on West Pico Boulevard was a haven for the rich and famous. Its membership included Irving Berlin, the legendary composer and songwriter whose works such as “God Bless America” and “White Christmas” might ring a bell. Legendary comedians/entertainers belonged there, too. Among them: Jack Benny, Groucho Marx and George Burns, who lived to 100 before his death in 1996. “Dad knew him (Burns),” Annette Mastroleo says. He also was friends with singer, actress and GCSAA 1993 Old Tom Morris Award recipient Dinah Shore.
Jesse White, meanwhile, was more than a friend. He is family. White spent numerous summers at Hillcrest CC. White, a grandson of Mastroleo’s, fondly recalls time spent at the club. “Every Tuesday he took me to the golf course. I got to go out with grandpa for the day, hang out on the couch in his office, drive around in the cart. For lunch, I’d have a tuna melt and be like grandpa, with sweet pickles and a grape soda,” says White, who operates Maven Mapping Solutions as a land surveyor, a profession for which he learned a few tricks from his grandfather from his days of building golf courses.
“He had two families — work and his own family (which also includes another grandson, Jacob Mastroleo, granddaughter Kelsey Preble and great-grandson Abel Mastroleo),” White says. “He always made time for both.”
Legendary performer Dinah Shore (pictured with Mastroleo) was very involved in golf, including pro tournaments in her name. Photos courtesy of Annette Mastroleo
Planting the seed for others
Craig Edminster still praises Mastroleo’s efforts in aiding him during GCSAA’s marquee event in days gone by.
“For years, he would grow things for us at Hillcrest. The seed peddlers in the industry know him,” says Edminster, who in those days worked at International Seeds and in 1996 launched Pacific Northwest Natives. “We had a booth (at the GCSAA Conference and Trade Show) with different varieties (of turfgrass). He was under contract with us, and what he grew for us was impeccable. They were in flats, and we picked them up and hauled them across the country to the show.
“He is just a pleasant guy who knew his stuff. He was good for the young superintendents, had a rapport with the industry veterans. He had great respect across the board.”
Mastroleo set him straight.
“David Mastroleo taught me much I knew about growing grass, knew who the connections were in LA,” says Williams, who, like his father, was elected GCSAA president (the father in 1958 and the son in 1996). “He is a funny guy. We always had a laugh when he and Jim ‘Speedy’ Lipari (a well-known personality whose goods sold to golf course maintenance facilities remains a staple in the industry) were around.
“Dave was old school. Had no filter. Tells it like it is. He was admired by a younger generation of superintendents in the LA area. He was an extremely good mentor to me.”
Three decades at Hillcrest CC was a stupendous feat for Mastroleo. But he wasn’t done yet. Mastroleo departed and went on to other places in California, such as Tierra Rejada Golf Club in Moorpark and Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta, where he spent five years. “They told me we had the best conditions they ever had. That made me feel good,” Mastroleo says.
David Mastroleo with his daughter, Annette, and grandson Jesse White.
A member to remember
Mastroleo was an active member — and not just for getting his hands dirty on the course.
Besides his GCSAA membership, Mastroleo was a chapter member of the California GCSA and GCSA of Southern California, the latter at which he created something special for its members. Mastroleo, besides serving as president of both chapters at different times, started Divot News in the early 1960s and oversaw the monthly publication as editor, advertising sales representative and production editor. “A little magazine written by turf people,” says Mastroleo, a GCSAA Distinguished Service Award winner in 1998. In 2022, the DSA was renamed the Col. John Morley Award.
Speaking of turf, Mastroleo has witnessed changes on the ground throughout the years. Game changers? “Gas to electric equipment,” he says, “and greens that in my day were one-quarter-inch cut was the standard. Now, they’re like lightning.”
Triplex mowers certainly have had an impact from what his father implemented. “He had a three-gang mower that had big bicycle wheels,” Mastroleo says.
Mastroleo retired in 2004. Currently, he lives in Bend, Ore., near his daughter. As for his enduring membership and what he accomplished in his 72-years-and-counting relationship with GCSAA, he has cherished every second of it.
“Back then, I was a greenkeeper, not a superintendent. Now, they have a director of agronomy. I never had an agronomy degree. I came up through the ranks, the hard way, learn as you go. Used common sense,” Mastroleo says. “I’m glad I came up when I did. Did the best that I could with what I had.”
Although he didn't attend the February GCSAA Conference and Trade Show in Orlando and hasn’t been at one in about 20 years, Mastroleo sent his best wishes. “I made it to 50 straight conferences, enjoyed every one of them,” Mastroleo says, “and enjoyed every day on the golf course. There wasn’t anything I didn’t do.”
Howard Richman (hrichman@gcsaa.org) is GCM’s associate editor.