Carlton Frank Wells, a Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, was the faculty representative for the Evans Scholars at the University for many years, and before that one of the state’s top amateur golfers in the 1920s.
A native of Vicksburg, he won consecutive Michigan Amateur Championships in 1922 at Flint Golf Club and ’23 at Kent Country Club, and then won again in 1925 at Saginaw Country Club. He was the second golfer to win as many as three amateur titles, and it was four-time winner James D. Standish Jr. who kept him from winning four consecutive by taking the 1924 title at Detroit Golf Club. Ironically, it was Standish who later helped create the Evans Scholars program through the Western Golf Association.
Wells served in the U.S. Navy in World War I and following World War II was the chairman of the Michigan Committee of Americans for Poland. Many of his academic works are part of a collection at the University of Michigan where he earned multiple degrees and taught in the English Department from 1921 to 1968.
He was active as a faculty advisor to foreign students as well as the young caddies who came to the university as Evans Scholars. He didn’t play golf for the university because a golf team was not organized until 1921. A longtime resident of Ann Arbor, he died on Dec. 7, 1994 at the age of 96.
Year inducted: 1987
| Last Name | Wells |