Arnold Palmer: New Book Highlights The King's Humble Nature

PITTSBURGH, PA - Almost anyone who has journeyed to the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe knows that a statue of the late golf great is located near the entrance.

What they probably don’t know is that for decades Palmer served as a member of the Westmoreland County Airport Authority that ran the facility. The world famous celebrity didn’t mind delving into the decidedly non-glamorous minutia of airport operations and maintenance.

Palmer at heart was an ordinary man who never outgrew the comforts of his Latrobe hometown despite his international success. That theme is the basis for Chris Rodell’s warm and engaging new book, “Arnold Palmer: Homespun Tales of the King.”

No typical biographer, Rodell, of Latrobe, perhaps wasn’t a confidant of The King but knew him as well as anyone in his hometown. He met Palmer while on assignment for Golf magazine in 2000 and and forged a friendship with him that would last until Palmer’s death in 2016.

“He could have lived anywhere, but he chose to live in this shot-and-a-beer town just 320 yards from the drafty little shack where he was born,” Rodell told Patch.

Rodell said Palmer always was enamored by the friends and neighbors he encountered on the streets, in the bars and even the lottery ticket lines, of his hometown. He was the rarest of royalty, a king who enjoyed few things more than mingling with the serfs.

“He was worth about $800 million when he died,” Rodell said. “But people here would have treated him about the same if he had only been worth about $8,000. He liked that.”

Joe Holliday of Latrobe recounted Palmer’s everyman quality by relating in the book what happened after he introduced himself to The King at Giant Eagle in 2008.

“We were standing there by the lottery ticket station and he must think that’s why I’m there because he asked if I want to go in on lottery tickets with him,” Holliday told Rodell. “He says. `Give me $20.” So I empty my wallet and give my last dollar to Arnold Palmer who at the time was worth, I think, more than half a billion bucks. He says, `If we win, we’ll split it.’”

They didn’t win. But Holliday had a great Palmer story to tell.

Any serious golf fan can tell you that Palmer won seven majors in his illustrious career, including four Masters and two British Opens. But Rodell reveals heretofore unknown details about The King, such as that he liked the Youngstown Grille’s French toast so much he once asked for the recipe.

The tome also discloses tidbits such as Palmer used to get his hair cut at the XPX Barber Shop across the street from Holy Family Church. His late wife, Winnie, got her hair styled above a bar called The Pond and every time she got her hair done she would take home a Pond pizza.

Palmer’s normalcy always seemed to trump his celebrity in a town best known for hosting the Steelers’ training camp every summer. That’s what makes the book so enjoyable and the fact that Palmer no longer walks the streets of that town so regrettable.

Rodell, who also has written a self-help guide to happiness titled “Use All The Crayons!” hopes the Palmer book provides people with similarly significant lessons.

“He displayed so much civic-mindedness toward his hometown and was a guy who loved going to the local bars and being just like everyone else,” he said. “He can serve as an inspiration for how to treat people -- and how to live life.”

Eric Heyl is Patch’s Pittsburgh field editor. He can be reached at 412-334-4033 or Eric.Heyl@Patch.com.