It’s excruciating to see bad things happen to truly good people. That’s why I deeply regret how much of the former is occurring to the latter in the Alvamar vs. Alvamar donnybrook here.

Too many fine people with good motives and noble intentions have been caught up in a maelstrom where it’s hard to determine villains and victims. A number of the principals are neither. Yet major changes must be made, or there will be even more financial bleeding. The cash drawer could be leaking a million bucks a year.

People in all the venues want desperately to get activities stabilized and profitability established. Our town needs this.

Back in the 1960s, Bob Billings, John McGrew, Gene Fritzel, Mel Anderson and other notables, but mainly Billings, had a dream of setting up a world-class golf layout and augmenting it with commendable living units. Certainly they didn’t inaugurate the venture to lose money, though that’s what’s been happening for some time now. Their notion: if you do something good for the community, it will respond, and you’ll profit.

They did something tremendously good, a lot of it, and things moved beautifully for quite a while. Then costs, competition, soaring overhead, too much generosity at the wrong times and questionable and erroneous business decisions turned things to a negative bent.

Time was when outsiders thought of three entities when they considered Lawrence: Kansas University, a charming Lawrence downtown area and the Alvamar golf and country club layout. All sorts of wondrous things happened because of the Alvamar operation by the visionary Billings and his minions.

Have a few roots here, no money or stock. In 1967, when the first 18 holes of the golf layout were shaping up, residential lots went on the market. My wife and I bought about the only one we could afford, $3,000. At the time, you could get the most scenic lot along the course for $4,500 (try that now!). We couldn’t afford a links layout, and feared struggling up Tam O’Shanter hill in bad weather.

So we were the first people to live full-time out there, with Jim and Carolyn Hemphill and George and Ella Brahler moving in the same week in January ’68.

Things continued to grow and prosper with the golfing rated the finest to be found. Players came from everywhere, residences got better and better, and Billings became The Prince of Alvamar for good reason. He was all that and more with his entrepreneuership, optimism and overwhelming faith in humanity.

Scads of good people have worked for and with the Alvamar situation and have done outstanding jobs. Some of those same people now have to challenge how things have been going; it’s not been good. I hope deeply somebody can pull things out of a tailspin the way people like Charlie Oldfather and Norman Hamm did.

Billings, a college basketball teammate of Wilt Chamberlain, seldom could say no to people, and that created a lot of the troubles. When he headed KU’s office of aids and awards, Captain Cash often kicked in his own money to make more student loans available when funds ran low. At Bob’s memorial service in 2003, close friend Monte Johnson said it’s a good thing generous Bob wasn’t a woman because he always would have been pregnant.

It’s inestimable what Billings, Alvamar and countless good people have meant to this town. It’s gut-wrenching to see so many with good intentions locked in a struggle that results in bad things happening to good people. Hope for a miracle.