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James Gordon Bennett is credited with bringing the grand game of polo to America in 1876. He retired from the game in 1878, but by then the seed was planted. Early matches sprung up in Westchester County, before spreading to the shores of Newport, Rhode Island, as the newest equestrian rage attracted a growing number of riders.

With the development of private fields and stabling on Long Island, the Meadow Brook Club quickly became the hub of all high-goal and international polo in America, hosting the J. Watson Webb, the Whitneys, Milburn, the Phipps’, the Guests, and any other player of merit or rank.

But when the venerable old club’s polo operations wound down in the mid 1950s, it was the Butler family and the Oak Brook Polo Club that preserved the history, structure and direction of polo in the United States for decades to come.

With the club’s first field installed in 1922 by Frank Osgood Butler, the dream had begun. When son Paul took over the reins, additional property was purchased in the western Chicago suburb – and a dozen polo fields and stabling for over 300 horses were constructed by the Butler family.

Under the watchful eye of Paul Butler, the village of Oak Brook developed around the rustic grandeur of his beloved polo fields. A member of the Polo Hall of Fame, his induction plaque reads: If polo was ever in need of an angel, it was at the time when Paul Butler gave a beleaguered postwar sport a new lavish center and a home of the US Open Championship. Generously, with flair and vision, he nurtured a recovering sport until others could carry the torch. His contributions to American polo through Oak Brook Polo Club were complemented by a long service for nearly three decades.

Oak Brook Polo Club hosted the United States Open Championship 23 times while entertaining everyone from Lord Cowdray to the Maharajah of Jaipur. It hosted the first two World Cup competitions and tutored Bill Ylvisaker in the corporate language that resulted in the success of Palm Beach Polo and Country Club.

Oak Brook’s management style was pure Butler. ‘One principle was that Dad was the monarch, we were his prime ministers,’ said Michael Butler. ‘Jorie (Butler Kent) and I were joined at the hip, as we still are.’

With the now retired 10-goaler Cecil Smith serving as the polo manager, Jorie

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above Michael, Jorie, Paul and Frank Butler left Paul and Jorie at fi eld Number 3, the main Sunday ground

Butler Kent took over the management lead in 1967 and ran the Polo Division of Oak Brook’s International Sports Core. It was under Jorie’s watch that the concept of major corporate sponsorship came to fruition in the world of polo. Jorie brought in the McDonald’s Corporation, Brookfield Zoo, Tiffany and Friends of Conservation.

‘Michael brought in Air France and United Airlines,’ she recalls, ‘before he went to London to produce the musical, Hair, while playing polo at Windsor Park.

With Jorie deeply involved with the organisation of Abercrombie & Kent Group of Companies, Michael Butler returned to take the polo reins, alongside his son Adam.

As the years passed, the history of the creation of The Village of Oak Brook and the Oak Brook Polo Club faded. Twelve fields shrunk to five and then to a single field. The Village board finally voted to eliminate the polo altogether this year, and the once proud polo jewel of the Midwest was forced to fold up its tents.

Unlike the Meadow Brook Club, the Oak Brook Polo Club was a family effort that was born of the purest of purposes, for the glory of the sport. Thank you Oak Brook, thank you Paul, Jorie, Michael and Adam.