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ALVIN RUSH MEMORIAL SCRAMBLE Third Annual • Saturday, September 11, 1999 Greensboro, North Carolina • for the hospice that took care of Alvin |
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THIS YEAR WE RAISED $6,140 That makes $15,150 in three years. Thank you, every one of you. |
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Howdy. I'm Wallace Huff, retired after thirty-four years in a textile mill here in Greensboro, most of them as a
supervisor, and
for thirty years I played golf every Saturday morning with the same three men: Jack Nehls, Will Austin and Alvin
Rush. We had a 7:40 tee time at the same city course from the spring of 1966 until the fall of 1996, rain or
shine, and if it was raining hard enough we sat in the snack bar and argued about who would have won.
Alvin died of pancreatic cancer in November 1996. He was 58. Hospice took care of him at home for his last two months, and took care of his wife Rosemary and their girls too, and we were so grateful for those nurses that the three of us decided to do something about it. So every September, around Alvin's birthday, we hold a scramble in his name, and every dime goes to the hospice. This page is for the folks who play, the folks who give, and anybody who wants to know who the heck Alvin Rush was.
Alvin Rush taught shop at a public high school in Greensboro for thirty-two years. Woodworking, mostly, and some small engines. If you went to high school around here between 1961 and 1993 there is a decent chance you made a birdhouse, a gun rack or a lopsided bookshelf under his supervision, and that your mama still has it. He had all ten fingers to the day he died, which he said was the only credential a shop teacher really needs. He was a good golfer in every way but one. He could hit a long iron off a tight lie as pure as anybody on that course. He made two holes-in-one, both on Saturdays, both with the three of us standing right there: the first on the 7th hole in June of 1979 with a 5-iron, and the second on the 16th in August of 1991 with a 4-iron, and he bought the drinks both times and talked about both of them for the rest of his life. And then there was his wedge game. I do not know how to explain it except to say that a man who could build a cherry dining table with dovetail joints could not, under any circumstances, get a golf ball out of a sand trap. Will once counted him taking five swings in the bunker on number 14. Alvin said the sand was defective. He blamed the sand for thirty years. When the cancer came we asked if there was anything he wanted, and he said, "Tell them to fix the trap on fourteen." We made it a rule instead. See below. He was diagnosed in the summer of 1996. It was already far along, as it usually is with that kind. He didn't want a lot of fuss and he didn't get any, because the hospice folks are good at that. They came to the house and kept him comfortable, and they sat with Rosemary at the kitchen table at two in the morning, and when he couldn't come to the course anymore, we brought the course to him. We set up a putting cup on his living room carpet and played a match. He won. He always won the putting. He was a deacon, a shop teacher, a husband for thirty-six years, a daddy to Diana and Yvette, and the worst wedge player in Guilford County. We miss him every Saturday at 7:40.
It's a four-man captain's choice scramble. If you've never played one, it's the friendliest kind of golf there is, because it doesn't matter how bad you are, only how good your best teammate is on each shot. Here's how ours goes:
Eighteen teams, seventy-two players, shotgun start at 8:30, par 72, and the prettiest September Saturday you ever saw: dry, about 80 degrees, and not a cloud. Five days later Hurricane Floyd came ashore and flooded the whole eastern part of the state, so somebody up there was looking out for us, and we're praying for the folks down east.
Some notes from the scorer's table:
Nobody made a hole-in-one on number 12 to win the pickup truck. Third year running. The truck is starting to feel safe. The raffle. Every player and half the spectators bought tickets. The winners:
For the record: the first scramble on September 13, 1997, raised $3,800 with eleven teams, and the second on September 12, 1998, raised $5,210 with fifteen. The check goes to the hospice every October, and the folks there say it helps pay for things that insurance doesn't, like the volunteers' training and the extra nights a nurse spends with a family when it's getting close. That's exactly what we want it for.
The Fourth Annual Alvin Rush Memorial Scramble will be in September 2000, on the Saturday nearest Alvin's birthday, at the same course. Once the course gives us the date I'll put it up here. We'd like to get to twenty-four teams. If you want to play, sponsor a hole, or give something for the raffle, e-mail me and I'll put you on the list. Bring your own wedge. You'll need it on 14. If you like a good golf story, go read Grandpa's Golf Stories, where Harold Pettibone tells about caddying in the Depression and a lot of lost balls. Alvin would have sat on that front porch all afternoon. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
