Grady B. McCanless, left, and Jim Monroe

Shane and Brody Benfield made a run in latest “Grady B.” tourney.

By Mike London

Salisbury Post

SALISBURY — Another Grady B. McCanless Four-Ball Tournament went in the record books over the weekend. It was the 61st one.

That’s a name every local golfer is familiar with, but McCanless goes way, way back. He died 58 years ago in 1967, long before the top local golfers were born, so not many people know who he was or what he did.

Grady Brenn McCanless was born in Rowan County in 1900. As a youth, he was educated in Rowan and Charlotte schools.

He was a teenage soldier, one of the doughboys who sailed across the Atlantic to charge the German machine guns in the Great War that would later become known as World War I.

McCanless joined the Samuel H

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