Headline: Gary Larrabee - a Longtime Golf Writer & Driving Force Behind the Massachusetts Golf Hall of Fame - To Receive Major NEPGA Honor

For Immediate Release: September 19, 2016

The North Shore's Gary Larrabee (shown left with Jack Lemmon at the Myopia Fourball) will be honored by the NEPGA in November.

Norton, MA — As the final preparations are made for the 2016 Massachusetts Golf Hall of Fame Induction Gala next month at Andover Country Club, where six new members will forever be enshrined in golf history, it’s hard to not recognize an individual who has been a major advocate for golf history.

When the likes of Bob Crowley, Bill Flynn, Joe Lazaro, Anne Marie Tobin, Frank Vana, Jr. and Herbert Warren Wind each accomplished their major milestones through their careers on and off the course, all of which made them worthy of their inductions, many individuals were there to help tell those stories.

One of those individuals was Gary Larrabee, a longtime sports writer and friend to the Bay State golf scene.

Larrabee has helped communicate and preserve the history of golf in Massachusetts for more than 46 years. More than that though, he is the one of the reasons that there is a place to honor the individuals who have made the greatest game just that.

As one of the Massachusetts Golf Hall of Fame’s 14 board members, serving as author and historian, he was and continues to be a vital part in detailing the impact that both former as well as current classes have had on golf.   

Larrabee's name has accompanied the headlines of daily, weekly, and monthly publications delivered to doorsteps around the Commonwealth and his presence has been felt at hundreds of golf events, regardless of size or scale, to help further the greatest game for nearly half a century.  

Now the history that he has dedicated so much of his life to telling will get a much-deserved addition, Larrabee himself.

The 67-year-old Larrabee was named the recipient of the 2016 George S. Wemyss Award by the NEPGA and will be officially honored in a ceremony as a part of the annual New England Section Awards Dinner November 5 at Pleasant Valley Country Club. With this, the longtime sports writer officially becomes a part of the wonderful story he has helped tell.

The award, named after Wemyss, a longtime NEPGA Executive Director, is given to an individual who has made a contribution to the game of golf and has performed a distinctive service to the NEPGA to meet its goals or enhance its image.

Larrabee has done that, and more.

Below his byline on the sports pages of several publications over the years has been the insight to players, courses and tournaments ranging from small qualifiers to the top professional tournaments that have taken place in the Northeastern United States.

Those insights extended to 11 authored books for Larabee, including several club history books, while his golf genius continue to be heard every Saturday morning during the season on WBOQ-FM 104.9 in Beverly, where he has been doing a weekly golf feature for the past 10 years as part of the North Shore Sports Desk program.

It all started with the first event he covered in 1970 – the famous Paul Harney Massachusetts Open victory at Salem with a course-record setting 65 in an 18 hole-hole playoff against 56 year old Jim Browning.

From telling that story to what seems like every other top golf story in Massachusetts’s history over the years, Larrabee made a name for himself working for several different publications. His stories were told to readers of Golf World Magazine, Mass Golfer, North Shore Golf, New England Golf, and New England Golf and Leisure and countless other columns.

He helped others tell stories at the public relations liaison for major NEPGA events in the 1970s and 1980s and was the Media Liaison and Championship Magazine executive director for the 2001 Senior Open at Salem Country Club. He will inherit that role again next September when the Championship Proper returns to the North Shore course for a second time in 16 years.

With the well-deserved spotlight on Larrabee, the MGA would like to congratulate him on this outstanding recognition and we wish him continued success.