The LA wildfires took his home with them. Golf gave him much more back

From the first tee at the Maggie Hathaway Golf Course, a landmark municipal property in South Los Angeles, the view extends north across the city, past the green folds of Griffith Park to the striking white letters of the Hollywood sign.

On a warm, windy morning a year ago this week, Tommy Naccarato stood there and took it in.

The court was closed, but Naccarato had not come to play. This was his first day back at work since a stroke had left him in the hospital for a month and forced him to relearn how to walk and talk. Still limited in his mobility, he drove his truck onto the property and stopped to tag trees that were about to be removed as part of a planned renovation. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner were hired for the project, and Naccarato – a jack-of-all-trades for their design firm – served as their lead man on site.

He had just wrapped yellow tape around a small pine tree when he looked up and saw dark smoke rising on the horizon. His first thought was that a plane had crashed at nearby LAX. Moments later, his phone buzzed with a government warning. A fire raged in Pacific Palisades, where Naccarato lived in a studio rental. Evacuation orders were in effect.

He got back into his truck and drove west, crossing Los Angeles through a growing haze of sirens and uncertainty. Traffic slowed and then stopped. On the edge of the Palisades, all access roads were closed. A bumper-to-bumper exodus was underway.

In mid-afternoon, Naccarato stopped in a parking lot across from Corpus Christi Church, his weekly place of worship, where he also played guitar in the folk music choir. He clung to the vague hope that he might stay home long enough to grab some belongings, even though he knew he had to sleep somewhere else. He looked for hotels. Everything was booked. The roads were jammed.

His phone rang. It was his 87-year-old mother, calling from La Mirada, a city south of LA, urging him to return to his parents’ home.

“You read stories all the time about what people experience during natural disasters,” says Naccarato. “It can be hard to keep your wits about you, especially when it’s you.”

He waited for days, watched the news, updated warnings, drove towards barricades only to be turned away again. It took a week before he was allowed back into his neighborhood, much of which had been reduced to ash and rubble. His apartment – ​​on the ground floor of a friend’s house – was gone. So was his church.

Ultimately, the Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures and killed 31 people, the deadliest wildfires in Los Angeles County since records began.

In that context, golf was hardly a casualty. But for Naccarato, almost everything he owned was gone. On the day the fire broke out, he happened to have an extra pair of pants and a shirt with him that he wanted to take to the dry cleaners. There was little else left.

“I kept reminding myself that they were just things,” he says. “But some of those things were irreplaceable.”

Among the losses were twelve guitars he had collected over decades, along with amplifiers, backstage passes and memorabilia. An Ozzy Osbourne autograph was no more. Ditto a photo he took with Cheap Trick. His library of golf books – some 500 titles, many first editions – had been burned. Most beloved was a copy of “The World Atlas of Golf,” a seminal compendium he bought for $10 at Price Club in 1979, around the time he fell in love with the game.

Although he didn’t take up golf until he was 20, after leaving home to work as an electrician, Naccarato made it his life’s passion. Union work paid the bills, but golf – and golf design in particular – fueled his curiosity and artistic interests. He became an early voice in online architecture chat rooms, forging relationships that eventually led to opportunities. Since the early 2000s, he has been a sort of Swiss army knife for Hanse and Wagner, contributing everything from research to graphics to on-the-ground problem solving.

“Tommy is one of those guys who brings so much passion to what he does,” Wagner says. “He’s exactly the type of person you want on a job.”

Golf is a global game, but a small world. News of Naccarato’s losses spread quickly. Adam Lawrence, a golf architecture writer, started a GoFundMe campaign that has raised nearly $80,000. Ron Wright, a former chief inspector and experienced luthier, built him a replacement Telecaster. Other offers of support poured in.

“That’s the best thing that came out of this,” says Naccarato. “It really highlighted how many great people there are in golf and how many great friends I have.”

Chief among them were Hanse and Wagner, who entrusted Naccarato to complete the Maggie Hathaway project.

First opened in 1962 as the Jack Thompson Golf Course, Maggie Hathaway is a par-3, nine-hole course with a small footprint and an outsized legacy. In 1997, it was renamed after the actress and civil rights activist who helped integrate public golf in Los Angeles. Long a hub for junior golfers and an affordable entry point to the game, the course received support for its renovation from the Los Angeles Country Club and the USGA – heavyweights that lent their names to a modest facility.

At 66, Naccarato lives comfortably between those worlds. His work connects him to elite clubs and powerful institutions, but his instincts are rooted in access and community. Maggie Hathaway, he says, speaks to the “soul” of the game. “It is a course for everyone.”

He returned to work about a month after the fires and stayed there throughout the year, logging as many hours as his body would allow along with project manager Pat Gradoville. The effects of the stroke linger. Naccarato’s gait can be unsteady. Sometimes he stops mid-sentence, looking for words.

Yet he continued to show himself. In an otherwise chaotic time, he says, the work gave him purpose and sharpened his focus. The Maggie Hathaway job is now complete. A grand opening is planned for March 27. The renovated course will be modest but updated: the holes have been reordered and re-constructed, the greens have been rebuilt with fresh contours and subtle edges, the bunkers have been sharpened and the view has been improved. Green fees remain $9.

Other parts of Naccarato’s life remain unsettled. He still sleeps in his parents’ home and is still working on regaining his speech and balance. But his church has found a new sanctuary in Brentwood, where he attends Mass every week, guitar in hand.

His faith remains intact, as does his gratitude – for the people who rallied around him, and for the work that supported and inspired him.

“The funny thing is, this project was to save Maggie Hathaway,” Naccarato says. “Really, but the course ultimately saved me.”