White Fang and the Golden Bear

by Joe Wessel

  When I returned from the trip, Dad had to know every detail about the outing. In fact, Dad might have enjoyed my second trip to Augusta more than I did.

  As I recapped the round at Augusta, it was clear from Dad’s reaction that I seemed to be some kind of hero to him, though given his veteran status, I always considered heroics more of his thing. Dad visited Arlington National Cemetery for the first time on May 12, 2012, thanks to Honor Flight Southeast Florida, an organization created to help American veterans visit their memorials. He went with a group of eighty-five veterans who were flown up for the one-day trip using the funds raised by the organization that had been created by an Ohio doctor, who had been a soldier and wanted to honor fellow veterans. Dad seemed touched by the visit. The Miami Laker wrote a story on his visit, and Dad spoke about the significance of the organization in relation to World War II veterans, noting, “There won’t be too many of us left. So now was a good opportunity to go to the memorial and remember those who died for our country.”

  Remember, Dad never considered himself a hero. He always claimed that the heroes of World War II were the guys who died while fighting for their country.

  Speaking of World War II, Dad revealed a little-known part of his life to me when he began to open up to me more.

  For most of my life, my relationship with Dad had been one-sided. He’d been stern and anything but open. I wanted my kids to experience more, so I tried to change that with them. I think I’ve managed to have an open relationship with them. I just don’t think Dad was equipped to be open. Still, I never doubted his love for me, which was a good thing, because he sure wasn’t going to come out and express his love for me. At least that’s the way he was earlier in his life. He made up for being that way later. He identified it in his own shortcomings, and he tried to make up for them. I never asked him about it. I understood it. The more he opened up, I learned things about him I’d never known, like the fact he’d been smitten with an Australian girl when he was in the Navy.

  Of course, Dad didn’t just reveal the information outright. I gleaned that information from constantly probing him about the war. I asked him about the girls when he was in the Navy. When I asked him, I said, “You were fifteen or sixteen, you were going into these foreign countries, and, well …”

  He told me he’d met a girl from Australia in a bar on one of the islands where his ship docked. Later, he said he always thought about what she did, how her life turned out, that sort of thing—typical, because we all look back and wonder about the girls we dated. I could tell by his voice he felt as though his life would have been completely different had he married her. Clearly, she had been special to him. After telling me about the girl, he never mentioned her again.

  Dad got deeper into his Catholic faith the closer he got to the end of his life. He sang and always stayed involved in the choir. Dad consistently had questions and conversations with the clergy. He was a very inquisitive person, and he was a ferocious reader. Some of his family, and my mom’s family, had several priests and nuns in them, and they had friends who were clergy. We always had clergy of some sort around the house and often on Sundays. They were not just religious people; they were friends and family.

  He didn’t like the movement of the church away from the old Catholic Mass. I remember many conversations on that subject. Dad would question the priests. Most of the time, he’d question them about the changes in the Mass. He remained a traditionalist and liked the old hymns. Naturally, he butted heads with them when they ventured away from that. He got to see the business side of the priesthood, too. Dad felt priests would get too involved where they didn’t need to be involved, especially in the music. Many a day he would come home and say, “Those priests don’t know what they are talking about!”

  Dad had a particular love for Gregorian chant, which is an unaccompanied sacred song of the Roman Catholic Church traditionally performed by choirs of men and boys. Gregorian chant is complicated and has a deep, rich history that dates back to the 9th century.

  Dad was so enamored with Gregorian Chant that he once attended a three-day Gregorian chant camp. He said that this was his retreat, his quiet time and a way of praying that brought him closer to his Creator.

  Dad died on February 28, 2016.

  He never lost his faculties, and his memory was good to the end, unlike that of his deceased brothers and sisters. Prior to Dad’s death, all of us were experiencing a tough situation with my mother, who began to lose her memory. She didn’t make sense on many occasions and would come home with dings in her car. Trying to get her keys away from her became a big issue.

  The relationship my parents had with each other taught me a lot about relationships. They maintained a generally solid relationship, but with two alpha personalities, they had their share of disagreements over the years.

  Like many of us, we tell our children how to treat others, then we sometimes fail in the eyes of our kids. My Dad was far from perfect, but he was a playful, loving person to my mother, though definitely not a doting husband. Of course, he would always be quick with a stanza of a song to express his affection. Dad’s famous line that he used to sing all the time came from Camelot—“How to Handle a Woman,” wherein the answer is, of course, simply to love her.

  Maybe Dad’s memorization of all those Broadway tunes is what kept his mind so sharp all those years!

  With both short- and long-term memory still intact, in his later years—up until the day he died, in fact—Dad would consistently bring up the topic of our Augusta outing. I’ll forever be grateful to Jack Nicklaus for enabling me to treat Dad to the priceless golf fantasy of a lifetime. I thought about Jack and our special day at Augusta National the day I began composing Louis Joseph Wessel’s eulogy.

  Not once could I keep it together while writing the tribute that celebrated my father’s life. Tears constantly formed when I thought about the man I loved and all that we had shared over the years. But the day of his funeral service at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, I did not shed a tear, and yes, I did sing. I wanted people to know that Solomon would have been proud of Dad. He made life more meaningful than meaningless to so many. He followed God’s word as best he could and enjoyed life to its fullest. I also did what he would do by mixing in a tune from several Broadway shows in midsentence. I then ended it like I promised him in my garage twenty-three years earlier—“Lord bring him home so that he can receive the greatest gift exchange in the history of the world, the gift of eternal life.” I sang a cappella, asking God to bring him peace, joy, and to his final resting place in Heaven.

  An appropriate ending for one’s best friend.

  Epilogue

  THE YEAR FOLLOWING DAD’S DEATH, I didn’t play much golf because of a back problem. Most every time I did play, I thought about a conversation we’d had maybe three years prior to his death. I don’t know what triggered it, but I told him, “When you get up there, if I get a hole in one, it’s got to be a Titleist 1. And if it’s staring up at me from the hole, I’ll know where you are, and I know you’ll be with me.” We kind of joked about it. I didn’t bring it up a lot, because we didn’t have a whole lot of conversations about him dying.

  When I did go golfing after he died, I’d make sure when I played a par-3 that I had a Titleist 1 ready to go. I’d take balls out and change it out. For some reason, I wasn’t thinking about using a Titleist 1 when I ventured to Oak Hill Country Club in October 2017. I took a group of guys to the famed course in Rochester, New York, that had hosted numerous PGA Tours, U.S. Opens, and even a Ryder Cup. My brother-in-law, Brian Scott, being from Rochester, blessed me many years ago with the privilege of meeting many friends who were members of Oak Hill. I had played Oak Hill many times before and even played in a couple of member-guest tournaments with a great friend, John Post. There was even one time when Joe Huber, who was the best man at my sister Margie’s wedding, and I concocted a surprise trip for my dad to play Oak Hill. He did not know that I was going to be the fourth member
of the foursome, so I surprised him in the pro shop. That became one of those great father-son moments in my life and remains one of the many reasons why Oak Hill remains a special course for me.

  The course would become more special to me after my October 2017 trip, which turned out to be a divine golf trip. We were guests of John Post, who was the current club president.

  The East course at Oak Hill is the championship course. We were scheduled to play it twice, on consecutive mornings. But the afternoon round on the West course turned out to be most memorable.

  When we teed off, we were the last to do so for our afternoon group.

  My foursome included friends Mark O’Conner, Greg Jones, and Greg Iglehart.

  My back, which had been a constant source of physical pain for the previous ten years, was giving me fits on that trip. And I wasn’t playing well, either. Adding drudgery to the round—if you can possibly call any round at Oak Hill “drudgery”—the greens had just been punched and topdressed. Thus, putting was no easy task.

  We approached the 14th tee, a 177-yard par 3 that has a slightly downhill green shaded by trees. I went with a 6-iron and knew I’d hit the ball well. I tracked the ball as best I could. It appeared to be slightly to the right of the flag stick. We knew my ball would be close, but we couldn’t see it land. In fact, when we approached the green, we couldn’t see any balls on the surface. Suddenly, Greg ran up to the hole and started jumping up and down. “It’s in!” he shouted. “It’s in! You made a hole in one!”

  By this time, the other groups started coming up to the green high-fiving me. In the middle of all the chaos, I pulled a ball out of my pocket and noticed it was a Titleist 3. It then dawned on me that after playing the twelfth hole, I had switched out my Titleist 3 for a Titleist 1. I asked Greg if the logo and the 1 were staring up at him when he pulled it out. He paused briefly and said, “Yes, but why?”

  With tears rolling down my face, I struggled for words while recounting the conversation Dad and I had years ago.

  I knew where Dad was now! The Titleist 1 gave me that confirmation.

  Experiencing better health in October of 2018, I got an opportunity to play at Baltusrol Golf Club, the course where White Fang had been born.

  I had first played the historic course in 2005, a week after Phil Mickelson had won the PGA Championship there. My visit on October 11, 2018, came on a golf trip with seven friends from Palma Ceia Golf and Country Club in Tampa. I knew much more about Baltusrol after studying what had happened during the 1967 U.S. Open and had grown more familiar with Jack Nicklaus’s victory.

  I never got the chance to tour the clubhouse on my first trip, and boy did I miss a lot. The expansive Tudor-looking clubhouse and grounds are among the best that I have seen to date. Walking in the halls and rooms of the clubhouse, I felt as though I were in a golf museum. Trophy cases filled with replicas, clubs, and pictures of champions who had distinguished themselves at Baltusrol (including Mickey Wright, Jack Nicklaus, Kathy Baker, Phil Mickelson, Lee Janzen, and Jimmy Walker, to name a few) were all on display. As I circled around one hallway, I looked to my right, and there was the trophy case that was dedicated to Jack, who won not only the 1967 U.S. Open, but also the 1980 U.S. Open here. Inside that trophy case, I saw a replica of White Fang. The guys with me had heard the story of White Fang over the years. Now, they saw what it looked like.

  We had a fabulous dinner, and our sponsor Jeff Bak tried to answer all the questions about Baltusrol and its history. In time, with two bottles of Faust Cabernet empty, the questions shifted to politics, where there were not many answers. Unfortunately, we were not able to stay in the rooms on the property, so we retreated to our hotel.

  We teed off under cloudy skies the following morning. The heavy rain held off until the fourteenth, where we headed for shelter and waited. Once the rain stopped, we were able to finish, but we played in wet conditions, including a couple of soaked greens. As we walked down the eighteenth fairway, I couldn’t help but think of the story told to me by the Baltusrol historian, Stu Wolffe, to whom I’d been introduced two weeks prior to our trip.

  Recall the final round of the 1967 U.S. Open. Nicklaus birdied five of his first eight holes to open up a four-stroke advantage over Arnold Palmer, and that is how they finished. At the par-5 eighteenth, Nicklaus had played safely with a 1-iron off the tee, but it went right and required a recovery shot from the rough. The recovery shot didn’t go very far and left him with a 230-yard shot to the green. The third shot was over water and uphill 230 yards from the green. He hit another 1-iron that has been talked about ever since. He then sank the birdie putt from 22 feet for the record score of 275 that stood for thirteen years. Wolffe told me about a man named Larry Carpenter, who had been a marshal stationed on the eighteenth fairway that day. After witnessing Jack’s recovery shot, Larry allegedly said, “That was the worst shot I have ever seen.” As the story goes, Jack heard the remark, turned around, and quipped, “I agree with you on that!”

  Recently, my second cousin John Murphy told me that he and his sister, Marilyn, had attended that very opening round of the 1967 U.S. Open at Baltusrol. John told me they had “gloriously” been a part of Arnie’s Army that day. His recount emphasizes what a remarkable round Jack had that day, given the fact that he beat Palmer, who was the 1960 champion, and the turning point marked by that outing.

  John recounted the well-known story of Palmer winning the 1960 Masters. While waiting for Arnie to get to the clubhouse, Bobby Jones, arguably the greatest golfer ever, said to Cliff Roberts, the president of Augusta National, “If I had to make a putt, the man I would choose would be Arnold.”

  “Two years later, the magic was gone,” John said. “Arnold lost to Jack in a playoff the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont in Pennsylvania. Arnold needed a lot more putts for the four rounds than Jack did.

  “Friday of the 1967 U.S. Open, Arnold hit every fairway and every green in regulation. I think he could have shot 62 that day if he’d sunk a few putts. I’m going to my grave believing Arnold was both the greatest sports celebrity and golfer in my lifetime. Arnold smiled and winked at my thirty-seven-year-old sister. She cherished that moment forever.”

  After Palmer died on September 25, 2016, Jack spoke at his funeral. They had been rivals and friends for decades. During his remarks, Jack said, “[Palmer] was the king of our sport, and he always will be. Like the great [broadcaster] Vin Scully said when he called his last game Sunday night for the Dodgers: ‘Don’t be sad because it’s over. Smile because it happened.’ Today I hurt, just like you hurt. You don’t lose a friend of over sixty years and not feel an enormous loss. But like my wife always says, ‘The memories are the cushions of life.’”

  Couldn’t have said it better myself, Jack.

  We ate lunch after we finished our round at Baltusrol. Before we left the club, a photographer opened the trophy case so we could take pictures of the “White Fang” replica. The original is now housed at the Jack Nicklaus Museum located on the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, Ohio.

  Holding the “fake” White Fang (which didn’t have a pencil in the handle), I thought about the Golden Bear, Steve Nicklaus, and, of course, Dad. White Fang had brought us all together for an experience of a lifetime.

  Appendix

  THROUGHOUT, DAD’S WESSELISMS PERMEATED MY life. Here are some of his go-to sayings that he repeated on many occasions, many of which he first delivered when I was a young boy:

  “Don’t walk off like a goat.”

  He used this one if I walked away from a job that was undone, or when I walked away from my chores, or if I left a job unfinished.

  “I need to go pee on that money tree in the backyard!”

  That came when he thought that we wanted him to buy things that he felt we didn’t need.

  “Be the best version of yourself.”

  He basically copied this from Matthew Kelly, one of the apologists for the Catholic faith.

  “New math.”

  He
couldn’t understand how people could be spending money on iPhones, cars, etc. Coming from his post-Depression era, he didn’t understand how people bought the things that they bought. Even with me, it was his way of questioning my purchases. He would say, “Must be part of the new math?”

  “You drink and I get drunk!”

  Dad’s go-to line when people would be drinking at dinner, getting loud, and not making sense.

  “You can’t fly with the eagles if you’re out with the turkeys all night long.”

  Obviously, this was when we would come home late. My parents were great with waking us up early the next day after we were out late. There were chores to be done. And if not, they made some up. “Go polish the leaves!”

  “You’re sandpapering a lion’s ass.”

  This would come when he observed me working on something, either on the boat or in the garage, and I wasn’t doing it correctly. In essence, I was wasting time, which he didn’t hesitate to point out.

  “Don’t be a ragamuffin.”

  This was a reference, and sometimes a term of endearment, to when we were going out and we had ratty clothes on. He also would say, “Don’t be dressed up like a bag of rags.”

  “Did someone drop a giffick?”

  I don’t know where this one stemmed from, but it pertained to someone passing gas—when something smelled like poop. I heard Dad deliver this one long before Rodney Dangerfield’s “Somebody step on a duck?”

  “Getting old is not for sissies.”

  Obviously, this one isn’t unique to Dad, but later in life, he often told doctors this during his visits.

  “Don’t know what you see in that roundball.”

  Dad’s phrase to all of us about basketball. He never quite understood the attraction of the sport.