SENATE CONFIRMS MILWAUKEE COUNTRY CLUB MEMBER AS CZECH AMBASSADOR

By Michael Horne
milwaukeeworld links correspondent

River Hills, WI, August 04 2006 -- The United States Senate confirmed Richard W. Graber as the next Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Czech Republic late last evening.
According to Graber's biography on the website of Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren, S.C., where he serves as the law firm's president and chief executive officer, "when not practicing law or working on state politics, Rick enjoys perfecting his golf swing and coaching little league." (Graber has been the head of the Republican Party of Wisconsin since 1999.)
Graber, a Milwaukee Country Club member whose last known address was in Shorewood, has a 14.7 handicap, and shot a pair of 97s on his last two outings at the River Hills links, on June 10th and July 8th. His best score of the season was a 92 on May 29th. Graber shot an impressive 88 at North Shore Country Club in neighborhing Mequon last August 28th, just eleven days after he shot a dismaying 107, this also on tour at Bristlecone Pines in Hartland.
I am uncertain about the international reciprocity treaties in effect between the Milwaukee Country Club and the members of the Czechoslovak Golf Association (founded in 1931), but Graber should be able to continue to perfect his swing at Golf Resort Konopiste or Golf Club Podebrady, both just a short distance from Prague. Let's hope they are as welcoming to Ambassador Graber as Wisconsin clubs have been!
While in the Czech capital, Graber will be working in the Schoenborn Palace, built between 1643 and 1656 by Count Colloredo-Mansfield, an Austro-Hungarian general who had lost a leg in the battle of Lutzen. The castle was designed with a terrace specially inclined so that the crippled general could ride straight in on horseback, if he chose.
The 100-room villa, with 30 foot ceilings on the first floor -- high enough that you could ride in standing on the horse -- is owned by the United States and has served as its embassy since the government bought in 1925 for $117,000 from Richard Crane, the first U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovokia.
Franz Kafka lived in the palace briefly in 1917.