The LA fires claimed his home. Golf gave him much more in return

From the first tee on Maggie Hathaway Golf Coursea landmark urban plan in South Los Angeles, the view stretches north of the city, past the green folds of Griffith Park to the bold white letters of the Hollywood sign.

On a warm, windy morning a year ago this week, Tommy Naccarato stood there, taking it.

The course was closed, but Naccarato hadn’t come to play. It was his first day back at work since a stroke that hospitalized him for a month and forced him to relearn how to walk and talk. Still limited in his mobility, he drove his truck into the property, stopping to tag trees slated for removal as part of a planned renovation. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner had been hired for the project, and Naccarato—a top salesman for their design firm—was serving as their on-site manager.

He had just wrapped yellow tape around a small pine tree when he looked up and saw dark smoke rising on the horizon. His first thought was that a plane had crashed at nearby LAX. Moments later, his phone buzzed with a government alert. A fire was raging in Pacific Palisades, where Naccarato lived in a rented studio. Evacuation orders were in effect.

He climbed back into his truck and headed west, driving through Los Angeles through a growing fog of sirens and uncertainty. Traffic slowed, then stopped. At the edge of the Palisades, all access roads were closed. A bumper-to-bumper exodus was underway.

By mid-afternoon, Naccarato pulled into a parking lot across from Corpus Christi Church, his weekly place of worship, where he also played guitar in the folk choir. He clung to the faint hope that he could be left in the house long enough to get a few things, though he knew he would need somewhere else to sleep. Searched for hotels. Everything was reserved. The roads were blocked.

His phone rang. It was his 87-year-old mother who called him from La Mirada, a town south of LA, asking him to return to his childhood home.

“You read stories all the time about what people go through in natural disasters,” Naccarato says. “It can be hard to wrap your head around, especially when it’s you.”

For days, he waited, watched the news, the refreshing alerts, moved toward the barricades only to turn back. It was a week before he was allowed to return to his neighborhood, much of which was reduced to ashes and rubble. His apartment – on the first floor of a friend’s house – was gone. Such was his church.

In the end, the Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures and killed 31 people, the deadliest fires in Los Angeles County since official records began.

In this context, golf barely registered as a victim. But for Naccarato, almost everything he owned was gone. On the day of the fire, he had an extra pair of pants and a shirt that he planned to take to the cleaners. Beyond that, there was little left.

“I kept reminding myself that it was just stuff,” he says. “But some of those things were irreplaceable.”

Among the losses were twelve guitars he had collected over the decades, along with amplifiers, backstage passes and memorabilia. There was no more Ozzy Osbourne autograph. This is a picture he had taken with Cheap Trick. His library of golf books — about 500 titles, many of them first editions — had burned. The favorite was a copy of “The World Atlas of Golf,” an important compendium he had bought for $10 at Price Club in 1979, around the time he fell well behind the game.

Although he didn’t take up golf until he was 20, after leaving home to work as an electrician, Naccarato made it his life’s passion. Union work paid the bills, but golf — and golf design in particular — fueled his curiosity and artistic interests. He became an early voice in online architecture chat rooms, building relationships that eventually led to opportunities. Since the early 2000s, he’s been something of a Swiss Army knife for Hanse and Wagner, contributing everything from research to graphics to troubleshooting in the field.

“Tommy is one of those guys who brings so much passion to what he does,” says Wagner. “He’s exactly the kind of person you want in a job.”

Golf is a global game, but a small world. Word of Naccarato’s losses spread quickly. Adam Lawrence, a golf architecture writer, started a GoFundMe campaign that has raised nearly $80,000. Ron Wright, a former superintendent and fine guitar builder, built him a replacement Telecaster. Other offers of support poured in.

“That’s been the coolest thing that’s come out of this,” Naccarato says. “It really brought home how many incredible people there are in golf and how many great friends I have.”

Chief among them were Hanse and Wagner, who trusted Naccarato to help complete the Maggie Hathaway project.

First opened in 1962 as the Jack Thompson Golf Course, Maggie Hathaway is a nine-hole par-3 layout with a small footprint and a big legacy. In 1997, it was renamed for the actress and civil rights activist who helped integrate public golf in Los Angeles. A longtime center for junior players and an affordable entry point to the game, the course attracted support for its renovation from Los Angeles Country Club and the USGA—the heavyweights that lend their names to an unassuming structure.

At 66, Naccarato lives comfortably between those worlds. His work connects him to elite clubs and powerful institutions, but his instincts are rooted in accessibility and community. Maggie Hathaway, he says, speaks to the “soul” of the game. “It’s a course for everyone.”

He returned to work about a month after the fires and stayed at it throughout the year, clocking as many hours as his body would allow alongside project manager Pat Gradoville. The effects of the shock persist. Naccarato’s gait can be unstable. He sometimes stops mid-sentence, looking for words.

However, he kept showing up. In an otherwise chaotic time, he says, the work gave him purpose and strengthened his focus. Maggie Hathaway’s work is now done. A grand opening is planned for March 27. The revamped course will be modest but revamped: realigned and resurfaced holes, rebuilt greens with fresh contours and delicate surrounds, sharpened bunkers, improved views. Green fees will remain at $9.

Other parts of Naccarato’s life remain unresolved. He is still sleeping in his childhood home, still working to regain his speech and balance. But his church has found a new sanctuary in Brentwood, where he attends Mass every week, guitar in hand.

His faith remains intact, as does his gratitude—for the people who rallied around him and for the work that supported and inspired him.

“The funny thing is, this project was supposed to be about saving Maggie Hathaway,” says Naccarato. “Really, though, the course ended up saving me.”