Brewer snowbird compares golf spots

It comes as little surprise that one of Brewer’s favorite sons, Lawrence “Bud” Lyford, spends his winters in an area similar to his beloved hometown.

Two days after Christmas, the retired owner of Thompson and Lyford Hardware store of Brewer, heads to Avon Park, Fla., with his wife Jean for a 31/2-month refuge from the dark and dreary days of the Maine winter.

Avon Park is a twin city to Sebring, best known for its 12-hour auto race.

“Avon Park and Sebring are twin cities, like Brewer and Bangor, but there’s no river between them, just a boundary line,” Lyford said. “Sebring is a little larger than Bangor, and Avon Park is a little smaller than Brewer.”

Avon Park is about 85 minutes south of Orlando and is away from the heavy traffic areas of the coast, another factor similar to Brewer-Bangor that attracted the Lyfords to the area.

“It’s like Brewer, when you go home from work at night, it takes you five or 10 minutes. Down here, we can get to where we want to go in 10 or 15 minutes,” Lyford said.

Where Lyford and his friends like to go in that short time span is a golf course where the former Brewer High School sports standout spends many of his Florida mornings.

“A typical day is an early breakfast and take the girls shopping, or when my buddy Bill Hayes is here, we take the car to the golf course,” Lyford said.

There are eight golf courses in the Sebring-Avon Park area, but Lyford prefers the Harder Hall Executive Course in Sebring. The nine-hole layout is challenging, but not as crowded as others in the area and does not require a tee time.

“We can start out at about 7:30 in the morning and by 8 we can get right on the course,” said Lyford, adding that his best score on the par 33 course is a 36.

While Lyford likes the relaxed style of play at the course, he also loves to compete and does so frequently with several playing partners, including a Congregational minister he has yet to beat.

“He uses nothing but woods and probably beat me the last time by about five strokes. I almost had him once a year ago, but lost by a stroke,” Lyford said.

The minister is from Wisconsin and pairs up with a doctor from the same state each spring for a golf match against Lyford and Hayes, Lyford’s brother-in-law who also ran the successful hardware store on Brewer’s Center Street.

The match is a fun-filled affair, as Lyford gave the Wisconsin doctor a University of Maine hockey cap one year, and he reciprocated with a “big chunk of Wisconsin cheese.”

The Harder Hall Executive Course, Lyford said, is similar to the one he just joined as a member, the Island Green Golf Links in Holden.

“The difference is the terrain – the hilly parts [in Maine],” he said. “It’s all flat down here, but they compensate with lots of sand and lots of water. That really makes a difference, but it’s still very comparable to [Island Green].”

Lyford’s relaxing winter days in Florida started after he retired in 1985 after 40 years in the hardware business. He started the store in 1945 with his father, Albert, and father-in-law, Arthur Thompson.

Before that, Lyford served in the 104th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army during World War II. He was wounded in battle at Inden, Germany, in 1944 and later received a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

Before the war, he was a student at the University of Maine, where he also played football. He has maintained strong ties to Brewer and UMaine even in Florida, where he keeps up on the local news with the not-so-daily delivery of the Bangor Daily News, which the mail carrier “brings in bunches of two or three at a time,” he laughed.

Lyford was pleased by the success of the UMaine football team and was hoping for another NCAA title run for the UMaine hockey team, but was not surprised with its early exit in the tourney.

“We go to all of the [hockey] games when we’re home. Marty Kariya was always getting the puck to someone, but they just couldn’t put it in,” Lyford said.

Lyford said he is confident, however, of more success for both the UMaine football and hockey teams and is looking forward to watching the school’s baseball games when he returns to Maine in a couple of weeks.

“The baseball team had a great season last year. They’ve really turned it around up there,” he said.

After years of following another much-loved baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, including trips to spring training games, Lyford has become a realist. He doesn’t expect a pennant in Beantown this season.

“They’ll finish second again. The Yankees just have too much money to contend with,” he said.