Who's Who - Chester FORDYCE

FORDYCE

Posted By: Joey Stark
Date: 3/11/2006 at 20:05:38

"Fairfield Tribune", Oct. 20, 1921

WHO'S WHO IN OLD JEFFERSON
No. 33 - Chester FORDYCE

Attention! Eyes Front! Although not in uniform, a salute is due to this military-looking chap, Doctor Chester FORDYCE, who writes "Commander Allan Jewett Post of the American Legion" after his name.

Everybody has seen Chet in action, so it was thought advisable to present him in a role in which he is unknown to the public -- that of repose. The artist dropped in on him just before twelve o'clock one Thursday this summer and found Chet in the attitude of meditation; also, of impatience. You see the dentists close their offices each Thursday afternoon and take the afternoon off. Some of them go home and beat rugs for their wives; others go fishing; probably some of them shoot craps. But not Dr. Chester FORDYCE. It's Doc to the golf links like a homing pigeon to its cote. And the good doctor was caught on this particular Thursday and impatiently waiting, watch in hand, the hour when he could lock the doors.

For Doctor Chester FORDYCE is somewhat fond of golf, be it known. Doc is far from being a novice at the game too. He has hung up some marvelous records which bid fair to stand for years to come and are the envy of other devotees of the game. He is the only golfer who has ever made the local course in 45, on a Thursday afternoon after three o'clock, with the wind blowing from the southeast, with one shoe unlaced, and wearing a green cap. This record will stand unchallenged. Also, he is the only local golfer who is known to have made two successive shots with the ball several yards behind the tee after each shot was made.

Doc has a language all his own which he employs to a golf ball and the golf clubs. Those who have heard him at his best declare that he has his great military comtemporary, Gen. Dawes, backed clear off the boards in the matter of picturesque language. What Doc has to say to an obstinate golf ball is about everything that all other people have wanted to say and didn't. He has a vocabulary which would turn a negro crap shooter to a sickly green with envy. It is related that the first time Doc went to Muscatine with the team to play there wasn't any special interest in the game on the part of the native spectators. But the links were crowded the next time he came -- men only. They came to hear Doc talk.

Chet was born down around Glasgow. There wasn't enough excitement down there for him so he induced his father to move to Fairfield. Chet got into action as soon as he got here, for he isn't the sort of chap to be idle long. His school teachers and classmates will attest to the truth of this statement, although they decline to say that Chet's time was always put in on his lessons. Like Bruce Gobble, and some of the others who began humbly in life, Doc tried working on the section for a season. A railroad career, via the section, didn't make any special appeal to him though and he left the railroad company flat on its back the next season.

Chet's father, being an M.D., wanted him to join the ranks of that honorable profession. Chet thought the thing over.

"'Tisn't everybody who is sick," meditated Chet. "If I should get into a community where there was too much health I'd be out of luck. But everybody has teeth, and they're always causing trouble from infancy to old age. The tooth game looks like a good one to me; guess I'll be a dentist."

Doc lost a few years of his precious life -- just wasted them -- practising his newly acquired profession out at Guthrie Center. Then he came to Fairfield. Chet's been sticking at his job pretty steady ever since.

Doc heard the call of Uncle Sam to go and whip Germany. He grabbed his trusty forceps and went. 'Twasn't long before Germany was whipped. His army experience proved quite valuable to him -- enabled him to puck up quite a lot of choice words and phrases which he had never heard before, which he has since applied in his addresses to golf balls. It is said that Gen. Dawes overheard him calling down an orderly one day and immediately made requisition to have Chet attached to his staff.

But there is one thing about Dr. Chester FORDYCE -- you never misunderstand his meaning. When Doc says something it's always emphatic and undeniably plain. And when he tells you a thing you can count on it. If there is one person he hates above another it is the grand-stander. He doesn't care much about frills. American Legion boys swear by him -- maybe swear at him, at times. If so, it's all right with Chet.

Altogether, taken by and large, Dr. Chester FORDYCE is an up-standing two-fisted, four-square sort of a chap. He works hard at his own job and he finds time to do a lot of work for others; put him at the head of some enterprise and he'll work his head off to make it go through. And, if the doc wants to pep things up a bit by painting his words something of a lurid hue -- why, nobody cares, for he gets results.

*Transcribed for genealogy purposes; I have no relation to the person(s).