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The man behind the Hermosa golf course

Fred Mang has three loves: His wife, the links, photography

At the beginning of his 10th decade, Fred Mang may be slowing down a bit, but his passion for the things he loves has not diminished.

Mang, 91, may be best known as La Plata County’s most ardent golfer, loving the game so much he has created a five-hole golf course in his front yard in Hermosa, a golf course that’s become a local landmark. At 91, he’s out every day, mowing his greens, moving hoses around and, of course, actually hitting some balls.

A passion for golf

“The course was in rough shape this year after the dry winter,” he said, “so I planted a 100-pound bag of grass seed. It’s filling in nicely.”

On June 17, he hit his second hole-in-one on the same 120-yard hole where he’d hit his first “a couple of years ago,” he said with a laugh. “I do have an unfair advantage since I built the course. I never lose.”

He doesn’t mention that he achieved the feat while legally blind.

“He hits four or five balls where he knows the flags are,” said his wife, Midge Mang, “then he gets on his driving lawn mower and goes down to see where they landed. On (June 17) he had four within birdie range, and the fifth was in the cup.”

Mang can see the balls in the air, he said, but he can’t see where they land.

He has an official yard guide for his course. The “Course Rules” are in the small print section.

“(U.S. Golf Association) rules govern play with local rules established by Club Professional Fred Mang at tee-off time,” it says.

Golf is not a pastime the couple, who are coming up on their 68th anniversary, share.

“I played a little bit,” she said. “But it was so expensive, and it made me nervous.”

Mang inherited his love of the game from his brother and sister-in-law, Gerald and Hazel “Sissy” Davis, whose home course in Fillmore, California, inspired the design of some of Mang’s holes.

He has lots of golfing memories, including visiting the Bob Hope Classic with them.

“We met Lee Trevino,” he said, “and I asked if I could take Sissy’s photo with him. He was so nice, he gave her a big hug. It’s one of my favorite photos.”

That’s saying something. Mang spent more than two decades as one of five National Park Service official photographers.

A career in photography

He joined the NPS as a science photographer with the Wetherill Mesa Project at Mesa Verde National Park in 1961.

“I didn’t know a mano from a metate,” he wrote about the experience, “and as far as I was concerned, McElmo Black-on-white could have been a local ice-cream sundae concoction.”

Four years later, he was publishing papers on archaeological photography and transferring to the Park Service’s Southwest Regional Office in Santa Fe. His wife, who began a career with the phone company at 16, transferred with him, moving into management and retiring after 40 years when she was 56.

While she was working her way up, her husband was on a peripatetic mission covering Park Service news stories, working on exhibit projects and traveling to wilderness areas to document them for presentation to Congress. By the time he retired at 59, he had photographed nearly 200 of the 300 parks in the system at the time.

He photographed President Lyndon Johnson and two of his subjects were first ladies – Lady Bird Johnson and Rosalynn Carter – and perhaps most memorably, iconic artist Georgia O’Keeffe. At the time, the National Park Service was considering rolling her home in Abiquiú, New Mexico, into the system, and Mang was assigned to photograph exteriors. Much to his surprise, he was invited into the house to photograph the artist herself.

“I was too overwhelmed to say much,” he said. “I didn’t realize that she posed for me, it felt so natural.”

He pointed out a book cover with a similar O’Keeffe photo with a grin.

O’Keeffe, Stieglitz, Adams

As his talent matured, Mang became a great admirer of Alfred Stieglitz – Mang was born the year Stieglitz and O’Keeffe married, he said – and Ansel Adams, with whom he shares a Feb. 20 birthday. Adams developed the Zone Technique, which assigns different values to different tones of black and white, providing sharper contrast during the developing process. Mang studied and practiced the Zone Technique, eventually mastering it.

An Iroquois mask belonging to the Rockefeller Institute Mang shot during his career displays his success, as does a collection of pots he took in four different exposures. Only a few of the thousands of photos he took for the Park Service are on display in the Mangs’ home. They, along with several books of photos, are all part of the photography collection at the Library of Congress.

Among his proudest possessions is an Ansel Adams autograph, which Mang’s friend and famed photographer Laura Gilpin got for him.

“I was always proud to say I never sold a photograph,” Mang said, “and then National Geographic used some of my photographs and forced me to take payment.”

Several of the photos on Mang’s wall are exemplars of Adams’ and other photographers’ work.

“He never gives himself credit,” Midge Mang said quietly. “The best of his work is easily as good as Adams’.”

And the passion for his wife?

The first thing he pulls out to show is the receipt from the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, where he took her for their honeymoon in September 1947. The $50 charge for the Bridal Suite cleaned him out financially, he said, but it was worth it.

abutler@durangoherald.com



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