Golf’s Greatest Challenge

photo by steve newvine

This picture shows my golf ball just a few inches from the cup.  I took the picture the day I almost claimed the greatest prize for a golfer:  a hole in one. That picture shows exactly where my ball landed after teeing off on a par three hole at a nine-hole course in the Central Valley of California.

I’ve come close to the cup before, but never that close.  It happened about three years ago, and it’s never been closer to the cup since.

About ten years prior to that day when I came so close to a hole in one, I was with a golf foursome in upstate New York.  One of the golfers in our group pulled out his seven iron on a par three that the golf card said was 165 yards long.  The tee box was elevated about sixty feet higher than the putting green.

It was a beautiful hole, and if a golfer could just get the ball on the green, he or she would consider it to be a lucky shot.

My group was part of a small golf league formed at a chamber of commerce where I worked.  The idea behind the league was to keep some chamber volunteers engaged in the summer months when their activity level decreased due to vacations and better weather.

Throughout the summer every week, about a dozen golfers got together for this league.  Handicaps were used to allow those of us who were developing our game to compete with those who were more successful on the course.  I don’t remember much about who was leading in the league.  Back in those days, I didn’t care much for scores.  I wasn’t doing very well, but I loved getting out there and hacking away with the others.

While I may not have given much credence to my own golf game, I respected the skill of those who did excel on the course.  That night, I happened to be with a couple of really good golfers.  One of them had the shot of his life.

With the seven iron gripped snugly, and his head tipped downward, he lined up the ball to the club.  His swing wasn’t a hard and fast swing, but more of a graceful and lofty pitch of the ball off the tee and up high and long.

Keeping in mind that my memory of the exact characteristics of the swing have faded a little in the past twelve years, all I can say now is that it was perfect.

The ball landed about four feet from the hole, and then started to roll.  Our view from a distance of about one-and-a-half football fields away wasn’t real clear, but it looked as though the ball went in the cup.

After following the ball trajectory and landing, he looked up at me and asked, “Did that go in?”

I turned my head back to the putting green, and then back to him and said, “I think so.”

The rest of the foursome took our tee shots.  It didn’t really matter to us because by then we were all convinced we had witnessed something truly special on the golf course.

I got to the putting green first, and walked slowly up to the cup.  I didn’t say a word as our lead off golfer walked up to the cup, smiled, reached in, and pulled out his golf ball.  The rest of the foursome gave his a round of applause.

We quickly finished the round and in keeping with clubhouse tradition, the hole-in-one was celebrated with a round of drinks on the man who achieved one of golf’s most elusive feats.

I would leave that area of upstate New York in another six months to pursue the career promises and golf courses of the golden state.

Years later, in spite of playing practically every week, I have yet to experience the hole in one on my own.

But thanks to the luck of being put into the foursome on that special evening over a dozen years ago, I got to experience the magic that comes from watching someone meet up with and achieve golf’s greatest challenge.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced

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I Wish You Had Met Rick

photo by steve newvine

I wish you had met Rick.  Your life might have been changed just a little bit. He was born and raised not too far from my home in a nearby village, but we didn’t get to know one another until both of us ended up in the same class at a community college.  It was only after each of us in the class had to stand up and introduce ourselves to one another that I realized there was at least one more person who was from same area as I was.

He was shy.  I wasn’t.

Rick recalled that day in an essay he wrote some thirty years later.

“ After class he stopped me, and mentioned that he and I were not far apart where our home towns were concerned, and how we should both get together one of these days, and I said yes, of course we should, thinking to myself who the hell is this idiot who sounds like a game show host?  He sounds so artificial.  Yeah, we’ll get together.  Right.  He doesn’t really mean we ever should.  How wrong I was…”

Not much of a start for a friendship that lasted nearly forty years.  But it was a beginning point.  We proved that first impression wrong by establishing a bond that endured community college, baccalaureate degrees, marriage, children, jobs, moves, health problems, and finally annual visits to his hometown.

In the same essay, he would write, “I was me, and I was his friend, and that’s what mattered.”

Ours was what I would call an unconditional friendship.  He knew that I’d be there through thick and thin.  I knew that I could reach out anytime and there would be a listening ear.

Rick was legally blind.  He could see, but his vision was limited.  He couldn’t drive.  He tried to sit close to the front of the college classroom so that he could see the blackboard and overhead projector pages.  When I first met him he had really thick glasses.  Later his vision improved with corrective surgery.

While some may see that as a disability, Rick never let it get in the way of pursuing his many talents such as writing poetry and prose, composing music, playing the guitar and keyboard, studying ministry, and singing.

He even wrote a song about my part time job on the local radio station called Someone’s Listening.   I’ve used portions of the lyrics, with his permission, in two of my books.

After college he worked for several years at a preschool in suburban Rochester.  He loved the work, and the children loved him.  A couple he met while at another college became lifelong friends.  He was their Thanksgiving guest for well over thirty years, even outlasting the couple’s marriage.

He later became more involved with his church, First Presbyterian in Boonville, New York.  He took on an active role in the lay ministry.  He took courses and was commissioned as a Lay Preacher.  He frequently led services on Sunday at his home church, and occasionally took on assignments at other faith communities when needed.

For many years when I lived in the Rochester area, Rick and I established a Black Friday tradition.  We’d go out for a couple of beers on that Friday after Thanksgiving.

As the years progressed, we moved the venue from a barroom to a coffee shop and drank coffee for a couple of hours.  We spoke by phone and saw each other throughout the year, but there was something special about getting together over coffee on that first day of the holiday shopping season.

When my wife and I moved to the other side of the country, I made it a point to see Rick on my annual visits back to my hometown.  Several years ago, he called me a few days before he was going in to the hospital for heart surgery.  He survived the surgery, and coped with heart and then kidney problems in later years.

He became a dialysis patient in the final years of his life.  My visits in recent years were always scheduled on non-dialysis days.  We stayed close to his apartment by having coffee and lunch at Burger King.

But our times at the local Burger King drinking coffee and eating a fish or chicken sandwich were much more than just two friends catching up.  Sure, we talked about our families, critiqued the latest music from one of our favorites in the 1970s era, or complained about national politics regardless of which party was in office.

But we also talked about God, we talked about life, and we talked about death.

We tried to fill the time between in-person visits with whatever communication tools we had.  There were birthday phone calls, notes accompanying one of my books or his music CD, and our ongoing email messages.

My written messages to him always ended with the phrase, “friend through the end.”  I guess that on a subconscious level I was reassuring him that his first impression of me wasn’t the real deal.

In 2013 while visiting my dad in early November, I again made plans to visit Rick.  This time, he told me to come to the local rehabilitation center where he was recovering from yet another complication related to dialysis.  We had to sign him out of the center for the few hours that we’d be away at the Burger King having coffee and lunch.

I don’t recall anything unusual about that visit other than Rick telling me how frustrating it was to have to deal with problems related to his dialysis treatments.  He had spoken of that before, and this time it didn’t seem to be out of the ordinary for him to talk about his disappointment with this latest barrier to his health.

Later that month, he’d share Thanksgiving again with his friends in the Rochester area.  That annual visit was important to him and he wasn’t about to miss it that year.

In December during the Christmas season, my wife and I were visiting our daughter out of state.  I thought nothing of checking my personal email account and went into some sort of shock when I read a message telling me Rick had passed away over the weekend.

It was just a little more than a week before Christmas and less than two weeks before his fifty-seventh birthday.  I had already purchased a birthday card that I planned to send shortly before the holiday.  I ended up sending the card to his parents; I wanted them to know their son would be remembered on his birthday.

I can’t describe what it was like to have a friend like Rick.   The words I take so much pride in putting down on paper cannot do justice.  I’d rather use his words from the same essay referenced earlier:

“And this friend, he has been with me through all of what I am and what I have experienced.  He has been a friend through the worst of me.  I wish to God I could have done the same for him.”

Rick had this last part of his essay wrong.  Yes, I was there helping him get through all of what he was, what he endured, and what he experienced.  But he’s wrong when he says he wishes he could have done the same for me.  By living on this Earth those short fifty-seven years, he enriched the lives of so many.

Through his interpretation of Holy Scripture, he brought God to the people, and people to God.  Through his love and acceptance of his family, he touched lives in many positive ways.

As my friend, he did the same for me; his example spanned across five decades.

I wish you could have known my friend Rick. (you can read Rick’s obituary at http://www.trainorfuneralhome.com/obituary/Richard-J.-Bellinger/Boonville-NY/1323298. 

The essay by Rick referenced in this essay can be found at http://rickwestermanbellinger.wordpress.com/author/rickwestermanbellinger/page/4/ )

Steve Newvine lives in Merced

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