Elderly couple refuses Augusta National's multimillion-dollar bribe to sell their home
Augusta National Golf Club is one of the most powerful golf clubs in the country, but they apparently have no sway when it comes to one of their elderly neighbors.
Over the years, Augusta National has spent over $40 million to purchase homes in a local neighborhood and bulldoze them to create a free parking lot for the crowds that gather for the Masters for one week out of the year. According to Trulia.com, homes in the area are worth an average of $241,105, so when Augusta National first began to offer figures upwards of $500,000 to home owners and then increased those offers to over $1 million, it was difficult for most of the locals to turn the golf club down.
Now Herman and Elizabeth Thacker, a couple who built a three-bedroom brick home in the area in 1959, are the sole couple left in the neighborhood, and they refuse to budge. The Thackers told NJ.com that no amount of money will uproot them from the home where they raised their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Via NJ.com:
"We really don't want to go," Elizabeth Thacker said.
But what about the potential seven-figure payout, the type of offers that dozens of their neighbors not only couldn't refuse but jumped at the opportunity to take right to the bank?
"Money ain't everything," Herman Thacker said.
The Thackers are not opposed to golf. Their grandson, a 32-year-old golfer named Scott Brown, is currently ranked No. 46 on the PGA Tour and is attempting to qualify for the Masters. Herman Thacker used to take his children and grandchildren to the Masters for that one special week of the year. Whenever anyone from Augusta National comes by offering millions for the final house of the neighborhood Augusta National turned into a parking lot, the Thackers still invite them in inside.
But the Thackers' answer to any offers remains a firm "no." That's how it has always been, and it seems like that's how it always will be as long as the Thackers are still alive. As Herman Thacker said, there are still some things money cannot buy.
