As head of Taft Broadcasting, Charlie Mechem left a lasting impact on Greater Cincinnati — building the Kings Island amusement park and golf course, transforming WKRC-FM into rock powerhouse WKRQ-FM, and pushing the Hanna-Barbera animation studio and WorldVision into national prominence.
His second and third acts were pretty good, too.
Mechem, chairman and CEO of Taft Broadcasting and its successor Great American Broadcasting Co. from 1967 to 1989, served as Ladies Professional Golf Association commissioner 1990-95, worked as personal business advisor to the late Arnold Palmer and has enjoyed a 50-year friendship with Jack Nicklaus.
Now 92, Mechem has written a book about his relationship with those two golf legends, Arnie and Jack: Stories of My Long Friendship with Two Remarkable Men.
Nicklaus, who designed the Kings Island golf course (now Mason's Grizzly Golf and Social Lodge) for Taft Broadcasting in 1970, says in the foreword: "I can say with complete conviction that there isn't a person, past or present, who knows more about Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, and the stories that took places between the two of us — and individual — than Charlie Mechem."
Arnie and Jack has a few stories about Mechem's Cincinnati days — mostly relating to Kings Island, which opened in 1972 — and a lot of insights into the two golf icons: Palmer, who died in 2016 at 87, and Nicklaus, who turns 83 in January.
Mechem notes that they were both similar and also different. They shared a similar code of ethics, respect for people and "a love and respect for the game of golf, and how it should be played, with respect and a commitment to the rules," he says.
But they could be very different. Arnie loved golf; Jack played baseball, basketball and football before deciding to focus on golf. He also was "a great hunter and a great deep-sea fisherman," Mechem writes.
Mechem says that after retiring from the tour, Palmer continued to play golf or hit golf balls every day. Nicklaus, "once he no longer felt he was competitive," played less and less golf. When Mechem told Palmer that Nicklaus didn't play much golf any more, Palmer asked him, "Then what in the world does he do all day long?"
"I thought that was the funniest line I'd heard," says Mechem in a phone interview from his home in La Quinta, Calif. As Mechem points out, they weren't being critical of each other; they simply had totally different perspectives.
One of Mechem's favorite stories was when he sought Nicklaus' advice when he was asked to become LPGA commissioner in 1990. Nicklaus told him: "You better well do it. I recommended you."
After his stint with the LPGA, Palmer asked him to be his personal advisor and consultant. Palmer suggested they work in adjacent offices for 10 years at the Bay Hill Club in Orlando, the golfer's principal winter home and business office. Palmer called him "my lawyer."
Mechem met Nicklaus, a Columbus native and Ohio State University graduate, when Taft Broadcasting asked him to build the Mason golf course in 1970. A year later, Nicklaus put the course on the map by bringing the PGA tour there because, as Mechem writes, the PGA tour commissioner owed him a favor — even though Mechem worried how a one-year-old public course would look in the national spotlight.
"Jack told me we had to do three things — make the greens lightning fast; grow the rough twice as high as what it would normally be; and narrow the fairways. And that's exactly what we did," Mechem said.
Taft's WorldVision subsidiary also distributed Golf My Way, a VHS golf video based on Nicklaus' book of the same title. At Nicklaus' suggestion, the video was priced at $100 — compared to the typical $30-$40 for an instructional video in 1987 — because he believed it was a premium product.
The same philosophy was used for Kings Island's first Winterfest in 1982, Mechem says. While some Taft managers wanted no admission fee to Winterfest, others argued that making it free "would cheapen the product and people would assume that we were charging nothing because we weren't confident of the experience," he writes. "A great product deserves a strong price, and to price it any other way tends to give the public a distorted view of its worth."
Arnie and Jack, Mechem's third book, has sold about 4,000 copies since May. It's available at Amazon and hischarliemechem website.He also wrote Who's That Talking To Charlie? and Total Anecdotal: A Unique and Fun Guide to Help You Become a Better Speaker and Writer.
Mechem, a 1952 Miami University and 1955 Yale Law School graduate, joined the Taft, Stettinius and Hollister law firm in 1956. While working for the LPGA and Palmer, he often returned to Cincinnati while serving on various boards of directors, and holding reunions with former Taft Broadcasting executives. He has not been back since stepping down from the Messer Construction Co. board last year.
"I'm 92. I don't travel much," said Mechem, who splits time between his Colorado summer home and his California winter home. "I miss Cincinnati terribly, but I keep up with the news."
