Maurice “Dick” Severino of Saratoga Springs and his German Shepard Gallant in a bobsled at Mount Van Hoevenberg near Lake Placid. Severino was a member of the 1952 U.S. Olympic Bobsled Team and Gallant served as the mascot and accompanied the team to the Olympics at Oslo, Norway. (Lake Placid Olympic Museum Collection)

Maurice ‘Dick’ Severino, a member of the Association since 1974, died last month (July 2005) after suffering a stroke during his annual summer visit to Saratoga Springs, New York, where he grew up. Dick was 85.

He had lived in San Diego for the last 25 years after being a long-time resident of Beirut. The former Olympic bobsledder was both a writer and photographer on golf and was often the only American journalist on the European Tour. He leaves a widow, Louise, two children and six grandchildren.

“I didn’t know Dick until four or five months ago,” said Tod Leonard, the golf correspondent of the San Diego Union-Tribune. “We became fast friends. He was an unbelievably fantastic guy, incredibly humble. He was failing physically, but if you talked to him on the phone he sounded like a 30-year-old. That’s how sharp he was. Dick’s daughter, Sophia, says she would appreciate any remembrances. Her e-mail address is email hidden; JavaScript is required and her phone number is 001 615 385-2964. Sophia says her mother, Louise, who was married to Dick for 46 years, would enjoy hearing from old friends. Her address is: 10081 Mesa Madera Drive, San Diego, CA 92131.”

A couple of months ago Tod wrote the following profile for the Union-Tribune:

Pausing on the stairway in his Scripps Ranch home, Dick Severino brings his face close to the beautiful, framed photograph he took years ago of the Royal County Down golf course in Northern Ireland. “You see that cloud?” he says, raising his finger to point out a large, wispy shape in the bright blue sky. “I waited an hour for that cloud to get into that spot.  “But,” he says, his face lighting up with a grin, “it was worth it!”

Severino, 85, likes to say that behind every picture is a story. In his case, there’s a story behind every story, too. Some people in their journalistic pursuits write well. Others have an eye for photography. Through diligence, talent and unabashed enthusiasm, Severino has reached great heights in both. By happenstance as much as design, the golf world became his canvas and his notepad. In the nearly 40 years since Severino’s rather humble start in the business, writing free golf columns for an English-language newspaper in Beirut, he has covered golf in nearly every corner of the globe for most of the major golf publications and his own Golf Feature Services. He has photographed elephants on courses in India and golfers playing on sand and gravel in Egypt. His passion for links golf in Ireland produced a series of his photographs that are displayed in clubhouses in the U.S. and Europe.

And when Severino took his eye away from the viewfinder, he chronicled with his portable typewriter the victories of nearly every major player of the late 20th century, from Arnold Palmer and Gary Player to Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman and Tiger Woods. “Dick is one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a lot of people” said Kaye Kessler, a retired longtime golf writer of the Columbus Citizen-Journal who closely covered the career of Nicklaus. “He is a total people person. He’ll bend your ear off, but unlike some guys it’s not all about him. It’s about the places he’s been.”

It has been a fine second career for Severino, considering he didn’t do anything in golf until he was well into his 40s. “This wasn’t an initial goal of mine,” Severino said recently as he lounged in his home of 25 years. “When I first started, I had no idea of becoming a golf writer and photographer. But I figured out after a while that I could carve out a little niche for myself in golf, and that’s what I did.” Severino shoots few pictures now, because failing eyesight and osteoporosis won’t oblige his youthful exuberance. He pursues fewer writing assignments. But he can recall with fine and colorful detail the people and places in golf that have shaped him. “I could have made a lot more money in another business,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have had as much fun.”

Severino’s was a fully realized life before he got into golf. He grew up in Saratoga Springs, N.Y; played football and boxed at Cornell, where he received an engineering degree in ’42; served as an officer in the Air Force during the Korean War; and all the while he pursued the great passion of his youth, bobsledding. Six times Severino drove two-and four-man bobsleds for the U.S. in world championships, and he was a member of the four-man American team in the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, Norway. He had a 20-year career in bobsledding, and it was through acquaintances in the sport that he landed a job as a salesman of construction equipment in Europe, most notably for Mack Trucks, which assigned him to Asia and the Middle East.

Dick and Louise Severino, who have been married 46 years, settled in Beirut in 1959 and raised a daughter and son there – before the war began and eventually chased them to San Diego in 1980 after a missile came through the wall and nearly struck Louise. It was Louise, a former New Jersey fashion model, who suggested in 1967 they join the Golf Club of Lebanon for the social benefits. “I had played golf,” Dick said, “but I wasn’t a golfer.” He nevertheless found himself wanting to promote the game and the club, and he offered to write a golf column for the The Daily Star of Lebanon. Because Severino seems to do nothing casually, that sent him headlong into studying everything and everybody in the game.

“I’m the kind of person who once I get into something I really try to do it right,” Severino said. “Without having my nose in the air, I always thought there was no substitute for quality, and I tried to live that way.” Severino eventually abandoned the sales business, and once he began covering professional tournaments in Asia and Europe for Golf World magazine, his enthusiasm charmed the players in an era when reporters played pro-am rounds and spent hours of leisure time with the golfers. “Other than the British Open, I was the only American in the press corps,” Severino said. “They related to that, and the fact I lived in Beirut was kind of mysterious to them. I stood out without being pushy about it.” The legendary golf writer, Dan Jenkins, did a piece on the European Tour for Sports Illustrated in 1973 and wrote: “I say Dick Severino is a spy. He uses his notepad, his camera and Golf World as a cover. Besides, he lives in Beirut.”

Argentinian Roberto De Vicenzo would become a close friend of Severino’s, and Severino was on good terms with many players, including Palmer and Lee Trevino, with whom he walked yearly in practice rounds at the British Open. Severino recalls having breakfast with Palmer before the final round of the 1975 Spanish Open. In the previous two days, Palmer had driven into a lake on the par-5 finishing hole. “I said, ‘Arnold, what are you going to do when you get to the 18th tee?’ ” Severino recalled. “And he said, ‘I’m going to hit it as hard as I (expletive) can.’ And I said, ‘Well, hit it straight Arnold.’ ” In a downpour that day, Severino recalled, Palmer finally hit the fairway, rifled a 4-iron to 7 feet and made the eagle for a one-shot win.

Severino first took up golf photography as a necessity, because while doing features on courses in places such as Afghanistan or India, photographers were either expensive or non-existent. In 1976, he visited the Emerald Isle for the first time while covering Ben Crenshaw’s victory in the Irish Open, and his love for Ireland’s people and its unique golf landscape has produced his most widely known and distributed work. Numerous books and magazines, even Delta Airlines, have used photos from The Irish Collection, and Severino felt extremely honored when Ballybunion chose one of his pictures for the cover of its centennial book in 1992. In the U.S., Castle Pines Country Club in Colorado displays 22 of Severino’s pieces, and the Irish-founded MacGregor Links Country Club in Saratoga Springs ordered several photos from him before it knew he was a native son.

Severino never “hustled” his photos, never even bothered to print a brochure – which jibes with the humble and low-key way he’s gone about his business. “I’m not an ‘I’ guy; I don’t even like to write in the first person,” he said. “I would never want to come off being that way. I don’t believe in it, and I don’t think it’s true of me.”

The following is an extract from Severino’s obituary in The Saratogian, the local paper in Saratoga Springs, under the headline Local Olympian dies:

The Spa City’s first-ever Olympian and an acclaimed golf writer and photographer has died. Maurice ‘Dick’ Severino, 85, grew up on Locust Grove Road in Saratoga Springs and was a member of the four-man U.S. bobsled team at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, Norway. Severino, who lived in San Diego, died on Sunday (August 28) at Albany Medical Center as a result of complications from a stroke he suffered last Thursday.

‘He was the most magnetic individual I’ve ever been around,’ said his close friend Bob Duncan. The two met about six years ago at Saratoga Race Course. Duncan was working as a starter for NYRA, while Severino was photographing the races. The two men quickly became close friends, and Duncan eventually credited him with changing his outlook on aging and life. He described him as a man who acted decades younger than his age and a world-traveller who had an endless curiosity and knowledge.

‘Every day we spoke there was another revealing thing,’ Duncan said. ‘He was a Colonel and travelled around the world. He interacted with politicians in various countries when he worked for Mack Trucks. His stories in Beirut when he was there during the Civil War. Bullets being shot through his apartment. Every time I talked to someone else about him, there’s another wonderful story. He’s kind of like James Bond. He’s done a little bit of everything.’

Severino was also quite an athlete. At Saratoga Springs High School he played football. At Cornell University, where he graduated in 1942 with an engineering degree, he also played football, in addition to excelling in ping pong and boxing. But more than any other sport that he participated in, Severino was known for bobsledding. Severino had a 20-year career and he piloted two- and four-man sleds for America in the World Championships six times. At Oslo, he was the No. 3 man on a U.S. sled whose stirrups broke shortly before reaching speeds of up to 80 mph. ‘It was really two miracles running that saved us,’ Severino said, according to a 1952 newspaper account. The stirrups broke on the bobsled run’s first curve, and only the driver’s skilled handling kept the sled on course. The stirrups were welded, but broke again at the same place, again on the first curve.

Severino even met his wife of 46 years, Louise Guthrie, 83, in the late 1950s on a mountaintop in Switzerland, the country in which they eventually married. ‘They met when my father was sitting in a bobsled at the top of the sled run,’ his daughter Sophia said. Severino and his wife vacationed in Saratoga Springs every summer, and just a few weeks ago he presented the Olympic Regional Development Authority in Lake Placid with his 1952 four-man sled. ‘We’re bringing that sled back to life,’ ORDA spokesman Sandy Caligiore said.

Workers are sandblasting and repainting it, and the sled will be displayed at Lake Placid’s Verizon Sports Complex where the bobsled course is located. Severino’s donation off the sled was one of his final acts for the sport he loved most, followed closely by golf. ‘He was known to the bobsledding community,’ Caligiore said. ‘He made many, many trips down the 1980 course here.’

Severino is survived by his wife of 46 years, Louise; his sisters Rita King and Grace Donahue; brother Jerry; two children, Richard and Sophia, and six grandchildren. ‘He had a great mind, a great heart. He was a spectacular human being, and he was my dad,’ Sophia said. ‘What a privilege it was to have him as my dad.

See also – https://saratogaliving.com/the-olympic-connection/