Michael Aw of Framingham Country Club thinks outside the box
He expressed his concerns openly.
The man who started 15 years ago with a single weekly shift as a bartender at the Framingham Country Club was eventually recommended for a promotion.
“I was very honest with them and said I didn’t know enough about golf,” warned Michael Aw. “I would be like a fish out of water.”
He knew a lot about everything else.
A career that included teaching, working in the restaurant industry and serving as an auxiliary police officer was a good fit with Aw’s current position: clubhouse manager and interim general manager at the FCC.
His responsibilities include assisting General Manager Michael Methot, overseeing pool and food and beverage operations, and hiring and training staff.
And think beyond the teeing ground.
“Flick and Float,” where kids lounge on rafts in the pool while watching a movie; “Aspen Night,” where the clubhouse was transformed into a ski lodge; and a dog flying show, where sprinting dogs catch Frisbees – all are new ideas Aw was involved in.
He describes the club as an “extension of their backyard.”
At Aspen Night on March 1, Aw didn’t let up. The members showed up in ski outfits, but were greeted with slope signs that listed Eagles songs and difficulty levels: “Take it to the Limit” (double black diamond), “Peaceful Easy Feeling” (intermediate) and “New Kid in Town” (beginner).
When Rocky Mountain Oysters (bull testicles) weren’t available, Aw had malt chocolate balls on the menu.
“Some members got it,” Aw said. “They couldn’t stop laughing.”
Members and their families were in for a scare last fall when the club hosted a haunted house, complete with a guillotine in the basement.
“Maybe it was a little too scary,” Methot said, “but he definitely pushed the boundaries and made some improvements over last year.”
From Burma to the National Educator Award in Hopedale
In 2004, Aw received the Milken Family Foundation’s National Educator Award as a sixth-grade teacher at Hopedale Memorial Elementary School, a long time after his ESL days as a student, having emigrated from Burma (now Myanmar) at age 13. His family waited seven years after his mother’s death before she could legally leave the country.
His father secretly taught his children English at home.
“In my generation, even if you practiced Western culture or spoke English, you were ostracized. You ended up in prison,” Aw said of his first days in Burma.
After arriving in Brooklyn, New York, his first job was as a waiter in a large banquet hall, where he also worked as a bar manager and head waiter. After the September 11 attacks, he attended the police academy and began serving as an auxiliary police officer in Holliston in 2002, working at the Boston Marathon, the Milford Santa Parade, and on bicycle patrol along the Upper Charles Rail Trail.
To supplement his teaching salary, he worked as a bartender at the Sherborn Inn, which led to a similar job at the Framingham Country Club. Aw, 57, who retired from teaching in 2019, has applied his life experiences to his current position.
Michael Aw goes back to school
Framingham Country Club hosts its first ever Mass Amateur golf tournament next week, and Aw will bring his natural enthusiasm to the event. But he will miss the chance to interact with the public in a more intimate way.
“I think it’s quite an honor,” he says of the Mass Am. “I’m a little disappointed – if I wasn’t responsible for everything else, I’d like to put on a uniform and direct traffic.”
He will be wearing a different uniform, but there will be plenty of excitement around him. Aw’s experience as a teacher and police officer will help him navigate the five-day tournament. Plus, a scholarship he recently received at Mass Golf has turned the former educator into a student again.
In February, he took a week-long course in Arizona and visited the area’s golf courses.
As for the public safety aspect of his life, Aw attended the Municipal Police Training Committee’s Bridge Academy two years ago to apply for a job as a school liaison officer, but due to his promotions at the FCC, the job never materialized.
“Competing against 20-year-olds was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done,” the Franklin resident said of the Bridge Academy. “As a teacher, I had no problem learning. But driving? Those maneuvers alone gave me gray hair.”
Why undergo such rigorous training?
“I have never taken democracy, freedom, equality and human rights for granted,” says Aw, who is married to Caroline Fair, a trained nurse and daughter of the late Bob Fair, who owned the Fair & Yeager Insurance Agency, which was based in downtown Natick for more than 100 years.
Sarah Vasilevsky, the FCC’s new event planner, uses metaphors that point to Aw’s desire to please the public and calls him an inspiration.
“He has a strong drive to hit the target, especially with his attentiveness and eye for detail,” she said. “He loves collaborating on projects because of his wealth of experience and knowledge. Michael is not only goal-oriented, but also analytical in his approach to work.”
The immigrant, who became an excellent teacher and received a Volunteer Star from President George W. Bush for his work in the police force, has a few more theme nights planned for the FCC. You can find him near the pool or in the kitchen. As Methot says, “He’ll have his fingers in a lot of different things.”
Aw will not be directing traffic next week. That is one of the few tasks he will not be involved in.
“Everything,” he says, “except golf.”
Tim Dumas is a multimedia journalist for the Daily News. Reach him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @TimDumas.
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