Writing from Chicago
    Saturday, December 7, 2013

    Illinois golf, and golfers everywhere, lost a legend on Friday when Bill Heald died after a short illness. He was 86.
    It will be disconcerting to attend an Illinois Golf Hall of Fame meeting without Heald running it. For all he did in the game – from teaching to mentoring to officiating – across 61 years, shepherding the Hall of Fame nomination process beginning in 1999 was his favorite activity. Selected for induction himself in 1997, he subsequently helped select those who sat on the committee, helped develop the two-stage voting process, and presided over the selection meetings with an eagle-eyed view toward getting the best class of inductees every time.
    His guidance was superb, his humor limitless. You knew Bill Heald respected you when he fired a one-liner in your direction, and on target.
    Those meetings were behind closed doors. More publicly, one could always find Bill Heald at an Illinois PGA tournament, whether it was big, such as the Illinois Open, or a routine Monday 18-hole affair. Heald’s knowledge of the Rules of Golf was all-encompassing, but like any good rules official, he stayed in the background until needed.
    It was a surprise when Heald was absent from the Illinois PGA Championship at Olympia Fields. Only then did word begin to spread that he was ill. But, while needing dialysis three times a week, he made a pair of appearances in October, including at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, wheeled in by his wife Margo. He had not missed a ceremony since his induction in 1997, and had presided over several of them.
    Heald arrived on the Chicago-area scene from Wisconsin in 1952, when he became the head professional at Riverside Golf Club. There he would stay, the professional for 45 years. In that time, he served countless years on the Illinois PGA board, and was the section’s president in 1976-77, when he spearheaded the move to create a full-time office and helped hire the first executive director.
    He became a PGA master professional in 1990. While he retired from Riverside in 1996, he never left golf. He only became more busy. In 1981 and 1999, Heald won the national PGA’s Horton Smith Award, bestowed for creating educational opportunities to fellow professionals, as well as the section’s similar award as well as the Bill Strausbaugh Award for club relations, and then was further honored by the creation of the Bill Heald Career Achievement Award.
    Heald’s interest in education was long ingrained. For several years in the 1950s, he coached golf and was an assistant basketball coach at Proviso High School – and the work on the basketball court came first. Somehow, he also found time to teach history at Proviso and the subsequent Proviso East and Proviso West.
    Heald began his golf career as an assistant in Bailey’s Harbor, Wis., for three years before becoming the head pro at Baraboo Golf Club in 1947. He was a graduate of Wisconsin State Teachers College.
    He is survived by Margo, his bride of 63 years, daughters Michele and Erin, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. A combined visitation and funeral service will be held Tuesday at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 2317 S. Wolf Road, Hillside. Visitation is at 9 a.m., with the service at 10:30 a.m., with burial on in the adjacent cemetery.

    – Tim Cronin