The Derby and Golf: A Tradition Almost Six Decades Running

There aren’t many guarantees in life. But Dick Barry being at French Lick Resort on the first weekend of May every year is one of them.

We always love to hear about guests who keep coming back to French Lick Resort for annual traditions, and Dick is working on a streak that may exceed any other. Every year, Dick makes the trek back to the Midwest to attend the Kentucky Derby. And every year, French Lick Springs Hotel serves as the overnight pit stop before and after the big race.

“This is my 58^th Derby, I guess,” Dick says, with the first Derby trip coming in 1961. “I’ve never missed a year.”

Dick Barry (third from right in back row) has been visiting French Lick Springs Hotel for 58 straight years on Kentucky Derby Weekend with a group of family and friends.

Well, there was the one time in 2006 when the hotel was closed for renovation so he stayed somewhere else nearby. But otherwise he’s made this a weekend of tip-top priority, even as he’s lived everywhere from Chicago to Connecticut to Los Angeles to South Carolina currently.

“Even when I was in the Army, I managed to get leave. I was at Ft. Riley, Kansas, and I managed to get leave for that long weekend,” Dick recalls. “I remember I flew back on a DC3 … I flew back to Chicago and I drove down.”

Hey, he’s got to prolong the family tradition. His father made visits to French Lick back in the day. When he was in high school, Dick would come down here with his uncle starting in the late 1950s when the hotel was owned by Sheraton.

Dick can tell you all about some of the hotel’s well-known features from the era: the domed pool; Lucifer’s Lounge piano bar; and the enormous dining room that seated hundreds with a handful of smaller rooms off the main one. He remembers Stiger, the well-known guy who worked in the hotel’s restaurant and banquet venues for 54 years who was like their personal waiter every year they came. “Used to see him every year. I got a Christmas card from him every year still — I send him one, he sends me one.”

Dick also remembers full well the time when the Monon railroad spur would pull up practically right to the hotel’s front door.

“In those days, the train still came out in front, and let passengers off,” Dick says. “And then on Derby weekend they would have buses all lined up in the driveway and take people to the Downs for the races on Derby day.”

Dick and his Derby-going group of friends and family came back to French Lick every year — even when it meant embracing some of the quirks of the aging hotel in the ‘80s, ‘90s and early 2000s prior to restoration.

“In this front wing, particularly, the floors were all cock-eyed. I had my great-niece down here and she was on a roll-away bed – and the dang bed would just roll across the floor. I had a room here one year that was a suite, and it had a step down into the bathroom – you just didn’t go on a level floor, you had to step over a ledge like and down into the bathroom.”

Old buildings do tend to have fun stories attached, though. Such as one of Dick’s first visits here about 60 years ago when he and a friend poked around The Pete Dye Mansion back when it was a barren area not many people ventured. (The mansion was sold in 1953, restored in 2008 and now houses the Pete Dye golf shop.)

A before-and-after of The Pete Dye Mansion.

“They had a for-sale sign up there, and the mansion was just abandoned. It was shut, but we got in and we wandered around in there. They had a fish pond out in front. There was nothing up there. It was like a haunted house up there, it really was. (A friend and I) actually made a bid to buy the place. I said to my friend, ‘We ought to try to buy this joint.’ We called the real estate guy in Louisville and we actually put a bid in. I forget what we offered — maybe like 50 grand. I’m sure the guy laughed himself to death even then. I don’t know what we were going to do if we ever got it,” Dick recalls with a laugh.

These days when Dick visits, it’s all about being the best in the F.L.O. — aka the French Lick Open that he and his group always work into their Derby weekend stay. It started four decades ago as a golf tournament between Dick and a couple other buddies. It’s a big production now when the F.L.O. happens at The Donald Ross Course: The two winners (regular division and senior division) get huge trophies with their names engraved, and red jackets are awarded to the champs after their first win —just like the Masters.

Dick’s nephew has taken over a lot of the trip planning for Derby weekend over the past few years, so it sounds like this is a family tradition that will just keep rolling. But Dick assures that as long as he’s able, he’ll be spending every Derby weekend at a hotel that holds a lot of memories through the years.

“It’s gone through so many changes it’s beyond comprehension. It’s gone through a lot of changes, and I’ve seen them all.”