March 21, 1919 — May 13, 2023

Hubert Bluford “Boots” Claunts, who was well known to our readers for his numerous holes-in-one at Canyon Mesa County Club and his birthdays as he neared, then surpassed, the century mark, has died at age 104.

Boots lived for more than a century, outlasting presidents, political and social movements, wars, historic moments and six Larson Newspapers sports reporters, five of whom interviewed him about his golfing prowess over the last 11 years.

Reporter Staci Gasser was the first to report on Boots, back on June 15, 2012, when he hit his 13th hole-in-one. He was 93 years old at the time.

“He is 93, and he is out here six days a week,” Jeff Watts, director of golf at the Sedona golf course where Claunts hit his latest hole-in-one, told Gasser. “He is still hitting hole-in-ones.”

Gasser reported that Boots started playing golf when he was 16 years old.

Reporter Daniel Hargis next interviewed him six years later, when Boots hit a hole-in-one on Jan. 3, 2018. At 98 years and 10 months of age, it made Boots the oldest player to ever hit a hole-in-one at the course. It also marked Boots’ 14th overall and the 12th at the course, Hargis wrote. He shot his first hole-in-one in November 1988 and his first at Canyon Mesa in 1999.

Boots was just as witty as his memory was sharp, Hargis wrote. He spent four years, one month and three days, from 1942 to 1946, working in what he called the Financial Fighting Corps of the U.S. Army Air Forces, serving in the China-Burma- India theater during World War II.

After his discharge, he moved from his native home in Oklahoma to Arizona, where he began working at Valley National Bank for 13 years, followed by 30 years at The Mahoney Group, an insurance company. Boots married his childhood sweetheart Jackie Riley on Valentine’s Day 1953 in his hometown.

Boots moved to the Village of Oak Creek in 1990 and joined the golf club that year, Hargis wrote. He lived in the same house in the Village of Oakcreek Association and played cards and golf almost daily — so long as there were three others he could play cards with and someone to help him on the course.

Angels Care Home Health was instrumental in helping Boots maintain his health at his age. “Much to the dismay of his therapist,” Boots continued golfing regularly. He played from the red tees on the sixth and seventh holes, increasing his chances at a legal hole-in-one by focusing on those two shorter holes.

“Golf’s a great game,” Boots told Hargis. “You don’t have to train or do this or do that. If you’ve got enough guts to get up here, come out to the course and play. Anyone can play.”

Sports reporter Ivan Leonard III covered Boots’ 100th birthday on March 21, 2019.

“‘Boots’ probably comes from a little girl that I was raised with in Oklahoma,” Claunts told Leonard. “It did not come from cowboys’ boots but from the way she pronounced my name.”

“I was named after my father and the doctor that brought me into this world, but they had hideous names,” Claunts said, referring to his parents Hubert and Vivian Lane Claunts. “All of my diplomas feature the name ‘Boots’ instead of H.B. or Hubert.”

“People ask how I got to 100 years old and my answer remains the same,” Claunts told Leonard. “I have been living the same way since I was 50 years old. I do not take any miracle drugs, but I do partake in good clean living and I rely on the man upstairs.”

Boots also had a daily reminder on his front door, Leonard reported, that asked him, “Hearing aid? Teeth? Zipper?”

“I was not too familiar with him at first, but upon listening to his stories, I was drawn to all he had accomplished in life,” Leonard wrote when notified of Boots’ death. “His amount of stories and gratitude is endless.”

Boots celebrated his 104th birthday party at Oak Creek Estados on Sunday, March 19. He died the morning of Saturday, May 13.

“When I found out about Boots’ passing, I was surprised,” wrote Michael Dixon, a Larson Newspapers reporter from July 2019 to May 2021. “I’m sure that will sound crazy, given that so few people reach 104.”

“In March of 2021, we were invited to Boots’ 102nd birthday party,” Dixon added. “I went there to speak with Boots, as well his gathered family and friends. I couldn’t help but marvel at a guy who not only had lived such a long life, but still had so much to offer. His mind was still sharp. He was still playing golf five times a week.

“When I listened back to the interview with him, the part that struck me was Boots talking about how he had survived COVID. That struck me in part because it’s amazing that a then- 101-year-old man survived COVID at a time when treatments and shots were only starting to be understood. It also struck me because when I did the math, I realized that Boots was born during the Spanish flu pandemic. How many people can truly say they lived through both?

“That inspired me. In addition to being a big sports fan, I’m also a history nerd. So, when I wrote the article about his birthday, I had a lot of fun going back and finding events that happened in Boots’ life. When he was born, Babe Ruth was still on the Boston Red Sox. Prohibition in the United States was not yet a law. The first Masters was still more than a decade away from being played.

“For the majority of Boots’ life, he lived in a world where mankind had walked on the moon. That’s the case for just about everybody today. But not many of those people were 50 when it first happened. Heck, when Boots was born, Charles Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic had not yet taken place.

“Boots didn’t just experience good moments. He also lived through tragedies like World War II, Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination and 9/11.

“He lived through 19 American presidents, starting with Woodrow Wilson and running all the way through Joe Biden. Or, to put it another way, Billy Joel’s song, ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ was written in 1989, when Joel was 40. The song was written to detail everything that he’d experienced in his life. It covers a lot of ground. Well, Boots’ life started 30 years before the events of ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ began and extended 34 years beyond the song’s release.

“When someone lives through all of that, good, bad and everything in between, it’s easy to think that he’ll live forever. So it did come as something of a surprise to find out that Boots had left us, even at 104.

“In every interaction I ever had with him, he made me feel like I was one of his lifelong friends. He left quite an impression on me and, I’d only guess, most other people who knew him.

“I express my heartfelt condolences to Boots’ family, friends and everyone who had the pleasure of knowing him. Rest easy, my friend.”

“I was having one of ‘those days’ that newspaper reporters often have,” wrote Austin Turner, Larson Newspapers’ sports reporter from August 2021 through September 2022. “I already had two high school sports games to somehow get to on the evening of March 30, 2022, and an event at an elementary school to cover in Cornville at 9 a.m. when I was told that I needed to interview Boots just after his 103rd birthday for our upcoming edition of The Village View.”

“After some coordination I managed to schedule my chat with Boots at 8 a.m. in his home in the Village of Oak Creek, meaning I’d have just about 30 minutes with him before I had to get back on the road.

“I was ready to get it over with and move on to the next event, already feeling the burnout from the long day that hadn’t even happened yet.

“As soon as I was let inside Boots’ home, with the immediate display of his 16 hole-in-one balls — an absurd amount for five lifetimes, let alone one — my day turned from frustration to pure joy.

“I quickly learned that 30 minutes with Boots wasn’t enough to scratch the surface, as the voice memo app on my phone documented our off-topic conversation about my home town of Riverside, Calif., which he was familiar with from his military days, to a deep and thorough dive into family and enjoying the time we have left on this planet of ours.

“Despite the fact that I was a sports reporter and I was interviewing a person who was noteworthy for his golf game, it was refreshing to speak to Boots simply about life.

“We were complete strangers that morning, having never spoken before, but we had a deeper conversation than I’ve had with plenty of people that I’ve known for a decade. That’s when I realized just why Boots meant so much to the Verde Valley and to its golfing community. It wasn’t about the skilled, yet lucky shots on the course that netted him a gallery of golf balls next to his front door. It was about the friendly and joyful man that made everyone around him feel like they were with a lifelong pal.

“After our much too quick interview, I drove to Cornville at peace, rather than stressed as I was earlier, ready to tackle the day with enthusiasm. Though I spent a measly 30 minutes of his 104 years with the man, he left an impact with me that sticks with me more than one year later.”

Larson Newspapers’ sports reporters and photojournalist who interviewed Boots:

“Once Upon a War”

A Just Thinkin’ column by Hal McBride
Republished with permission

On May 13, my 104-year-old cousin, H. B. “Boots” Claunts, died.

“Cousin.” Growing up I knew him as “Uncle Boots.” But his mother and my mother were sisters, the eldest and the youngest in their family. So, “cousin” he was.

Death arouses the curiosity of others. The most frequently asked question? Where did he get his nickname? His given name is Hubert Bluford. The nickname rose from his younger and only brother, John Wesley “Tag” Claunts, attempts at pronouncing Bluford. Bluford came out Boots. Boots stuck.

He made a single request of me when it came time to construct an obituary for him. “Tell ’em that I graduated from Stigler High School in 1936 with both of your parents (Follie Belle Lane McBride and Shearon McBride) and write down that I lettered in basketball and tennis.”

So, I did.

I have pages of notes describing his experiences at our Grandparent Lane’s dirt floor log cabin in the Boston Mountains of western Arkansas. He enjoyed detailing daybreak squirrel hunts followed by a breakfast that included biscuits and squirrel gravy.

Like many of his generation, World War II brought education and morning hunts to a crashing end. World War II marked them all. Boots was unique. Many Haskell County men told stories of how they rushed to the recruiter’s office following Pearl Harbor or their 18th birthday or when they lied about their age. Boots saw waiting to be drafted as a more common-sense approach.

Once inducted, Boots spoke of his goal as being not to get shot at. A few years ago, he joked with the Sedona Arizona newspaper describing himself as a member of the “Financial Fighting Corps”.

An officer had asked if anyone was good with numbers and he held up his hand.

“Knew I’d be safer with a pencil than with a rifle.”

After a short time in Seattle, he was assigned to an accounting division in Burma-China theatre keeping up with the supplies flown “over the Hump” into China. Then in his own self-deprecating fashion, he would describe how he would find himself in the cargo hole of a DC-3 pushing supplies out the cargo door and praying they got back to fighter cover before the Japanese Zeros found them.

That, and Boots knew if he died his mother would never forgive him.

I remembered Eugene Sledge’s quote from his memoir “With the Old Breed.” He wrote, “Courage means overcoming fear and doing one’s duty in the presence of danger, not being unafraid.”

I like to believe that in 1944 somewhere over the Himalayan Mountains in the cargo bay of a DC-3 Boots found a way to make death less fearful and there he found the secrets to a long life.

“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.” – U.S. Gen. George Smith Patton Jr. [1885–1945]