atent For Golf Cart Cover
the rocking chair .”
It ’ s taken years to get to this point . He said he came up with the idea about 16 years ago while managing the Spring Lake Golf Club
in Henrico nt for his retractable golf canopy that is County . “ I had also holds the application for the patent , this idea in May 2018 . Photo by James Haskins the back of my mind . Then when I went home I dreamed about it , and it was a full-blown plan .”
He said it has just taken time to transform the dream into reality .
Growing up , he never expected golf to be a big part of his life .
He said he only learned the game after getting a job as a car salesman at Richmond Chrysler-Plymouth , the first black person on the sales side .
He said other salesmen would come back from their weekends and talk about their weekend play in a game he knew nothing about .
“ I was always left out ,” he said . He became determined to learn how to play and began hitting balls at a vacant field in Fairfield Court and on high school football fields in the offseason .
He became good enough to win amateur tournaments . He also found a mentor in a golf shop and started learning how to repair golf clubs , just one way he sought to learn more about the game he was determined to master .
After a year , he felt he had learned enough to start a mobile golf club repair business . He said he built the business by going to car dealerships and fixing clubs for the salespeople .
That led him to open a golf shop Downtown in the now long gone 6th Street Marketplace . He later bought a second store in Williamsburg and another in South Carolina .
He sold them by 2001 when he took over management of the nine-hole Spring Lake , which was started in 1939 by a group of black golfers who were tired of the whites-only policies elsewhere . Mr . Houze joined in the 1960s after learning to play the game . The club was later sold to private owners .
Mr . Houze managed the club until 2006 , when its owners sold it . One of the streets in the subdivision that now covers the former course is named in Mr . Houze ’ s honor .
Mr . Houze , who spent 20 years serving as treasurer of the Richmond Crusade for Voters , has his fingers crossed that his new invention will be a hit .
“ I am confident that one day soon a lot of people will be using the Houze canopy .”
SEPTEMBER 2018 15