Becoming Goldfinch

BECOMING GOLDFINCH

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Becoming Goldfinch

One woman's journey on the Appalachan Trail

By Jenna Biter

“You follow the white blaze,” says Brandi Swarms, uncomplicating the Appalachian Trail. “The white blaze takes you.”

Brandi, trail name “Goldfinch,” is 35 years old, tall as a cornstalk and has eyes as blue as swimming pools. If she was a season, it would be summer. She’s upbeat but thoughtful and a touch romantic, with a quiet vitality bubbling up from her soul. It sprung up in the heartache of a broken childhood home and decades later carried her onto the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, the roughly 2,200-mile-long route that connects Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Mount Katahdin, Maine.

Benton MacKaye conceived of the Appalachian Trail in a 1921 paper. Through the work of trail club members and passionate volunteers, the route was completed in 1937. Somewhere around 3 million people touch the AT every year, on day hikes, long sections of miles lashed together or thru-hikes that push right through all 14 states.

“I heard about the AT from a dear, sweet friend and father figure,” Brandi says, swimming through memories. “I’d heard him talk about it for years. I was probably just enchanted by his stories, but then when I looked it up, I thought, ‘What is this beast?’”

Another five or so years passed, as did her fat, fluffy cat, before Brandi would actually approach the trail. “When she passed, I went to my house, and thought, I can’t live here,” Brandi says, remembering the loss of her beloved hair tie-chasing feline, named Garber. Brandi had gotten the green-eyed kitten when she was in sixth grade, and in turn, the multicolored furball had gotten her through a childhood split between Michigan and North Carolina. Garber died when Brandi was 30, taking her last breath on her owner’s chest.

“These walls are too empty,” Brandi says, recalling the heartbreak. She held a garage sale and came away with $600 to buy hiking gear.

“I had never spent a night alone in the woods by myself before,” she says. “I’m all or nothing. I’m like, all right, I’ll figure it out or I won’t.”

PART I

A plaque at the summit of Springer Mountain marks the official northbound start of the Appalachian Trail.  It was March 23, 2021, and Brandi remembers the trailhead humming like a hallway on the first day of school: “Where are you from? What’s your name? Did you hike the approach trail?” Thirty miles to the north, Blood Mountain rises 4,458 feet and is the first real test. “I climbed it and was like, ‘Was that easy? No, but was that completely doable? One-hundred percent.’ And so I realized quickly that hikers are very dramatic.” Brandi laughs, with a voice like bells.

She breezed through Georgia, breaking in her “trail legs,” filtering water from clear Southern streams, and throwing a thumb to hitch a ride to a hostel shower or a resupply in town. She’d always return to exactly the spot she exited even if she had to re-hike miles to get there.

“I was an ‘AT purist,’ so I never skipped a mile,” Brandi says. Purists hike past every white marker, or “blaze,” between Georgia and Maine. That means no “yellow blazing,” bypassing boring or tough sections by car; none of the oh-so-creative “aqua blazing,” floating down nearby waterways; and not even any “blue blazing,” hiking alternate routes due to bad conditions.

The miles climbed into the triple digits, and the characters lined up like a sitcom cast. There was “Little John” and “Homer” and “Purple Haze,” a woman tired of being known as the lady who had been bitten on the butt by a bear. Like the others, Purple Haze is a trail name, the alias a hiker goes by on the AT. A trail name is a gift one hiker bestows on another at some point along the way. Brandi had already passed up lazy attempts like “Legs” and “Sunshine,” until one day, a Florida man burst from a cabin to deem her “Goldfinch.” He’d seen Brandi sharing lunch with the gregarious birds a couple days before.

“I met a lot of Legs and Sunshine and all that,” she says, smiling. “I didn’t meet one other Goldfinch.”

Jeff, trail name unknown, was in his 70s, smoked more weed than he ate food, and was attempting an extended thru-hike from Florida to Nova Scotia for the second time. (Spoiler alert: He makes it.) Jeff taught Brandi how to hike 20-mile days so she could try to traverse the Great Smoky Mountains before snow blew through. The new skill became a superpower.

“I’m hiking consistently 20-mile days at this point, and I’m feeling really good about them,” Brandi says. “Not only is there a freedom, but there’s a ‘well done’ every day.”

She bounced back and forth between Tennessee and North Carolina as the trail snakes north along the state border. She passed through some regular old towns and hiker-friendly towns and often turned bends to find goodies put out by “trail angels.”

“You’ll come around the corner, and there’s a huge chocolate cake, and you’re like, ‘Manna!’” she says.

About eight weeks and 500 miles into the hike, Brandi was approaching the Virginia border town Damascus, a magical but very real land of brambleberry milkshakes and “wild ponies.” (Technically speaking, they’re feral, the descendants of domesticated horses loosed on the mountainside meadows to keep them well shorn.) “Right before I got to the wild ponies, I came off the trail for a week to go to a friend’s wedding, and when I came back, I had gotten a text from my mom that she had found a lump in her breast,” she says. Brandi didn’t hesitate. She left the trail to be with her mom as she battled stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer.

PART II

Two years came and went, and the wild called again. It was June 6, 2023, Mom had beaten the aggressive cancer, and Brandi had a new companion to join her on the trail. “I had a new kind of difficulty with a dog. I had the dog food, and that was very heavy,” Brandi says, patting the red golden retriever at her feet. “Rapture got the trail name ‘Freeloader’ because I didn’t make him carry anything.”

The pair found a like-minded hiker, this one human, in “Happy Feet” — “Happy,” for short. “He was like a little brother,” Brandi says. “It’s weird to find someone on the AT that you want to spend time with because it’s low-key getting married. You have to be able to be silent, and you have to be able to have conversation.”

The merry band was getting along and hiking well through the Shenandoah Mountains. “One day Rapture literally stopped and I looked at him, and he looked at me, and he put his paw up, and I said, ‘You’re done.’” With Happy riding shotgun in a rental car, Brandi drove Rapture to Michigan before flipping a U-turn and gunning it back to the trail. The round trip took two days. “This time, I was like, nothing’s stopping me. I’m coming back right away,” Brandi says. “Nothing could stop me.”

Virginia is a long state. The AT  runs 557 miles through it, making Virginia the longest stretch in any state. Many a hiker hangs up their boots. Injuries stack up. People get bored. Others are behind schedule to reach Mt. Katahdin by mid-October, when Baxter State Park closes for the winter. “There’s something called the rollercoaster in Virginia — you hike it in one day — but it is just a constant up and down four or five or six times.” It was hot. Brandi was steaming with sweat. She remembers crawling into her tent at night with a layer of salt crystallized on her skin. She kept hiking.

Home to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters, where thru-hikers officially register their hike, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, is known as the “psychological halfway.” It’s also where Brandi was stung on the ankle by a honeybee. The site swelled to the size of a baseball and oozed green. In Pennsylvania, home to the AT’s actual halfway mark and one of Brandi’s favorite states, she was plagued by mosquitoes and tripped up by rocks. “I remember I hitchhiked with a woman. I got in the car, and I closed the door, and I said, ‘Man, I love Pennsylvania so much.’ And she laughed and said, ‘I’ve never heard a hiker say that.’” Apparently hikers refer to the state as “Rocksylvania.” Still, Brandi kept going.

She crossed into New Jersey and then New York. “The hiker drama is that you don’t know if the rocks are literally going to stop at the state line or pour over, and unfortunately, they keep going for a while,” Brandi says, setting the record straight. She scooched past a protective mama black bear and four cubs and day-tripped to Manhattan with Happy to see the city sights.

“It feels like slow motion now, but I was walking, I looked up and there was a huge hornet’s nest. I looked down and then all of a sudden, I felt like a hot knife on the back of my skull.” Brandi screamed, “Happy help me!” Her throat swelled, and she started to panic. “Will my breath leave me or not?” Brandi dug through her well-stocked first aid kit — “most people have two Band-Aids and a dirty Q-tip” — and popped some Benadryl while Happy found a shortcut off the trail. A hive-covered Brandi knocked on the first door they found. An old woman answered and drove Brandi into Pawling, New York, where she got another ride to urgent care a few towns over. “I had this looming feeling,” she says. Brandi left the trail again.

PART III

Another two years and countless immunotherapy treatments came and went. It turned out Brandi was deathly allergic to yellow jackets, white-faced hornets, yellow hornets and wasps. She also learned that the AT wasn’t her identity. “I think there was some of that wrapped up in me, but I wanted to finish what I started,” she says. Clear-eyed but nervous, she hit the trail again on July 29, 2025.

“When I got dropped off, I re-hiked the miles to where I got stung because I’m a purist,” Brandi says, remembering the overwhelming fear. The fateful spot came and went, but literally and figuratively, Brandi wasn’t out of the woods. Before leaving home, she had forgotten to check the status of her water purifier — it was broken — and the lapse brought her low. “I just felt such turmoil of, what are you doing? You don’t belong here.” She borrowed from another hiker, and his kind words urged her on.

“Next morning, I got stung by a bunch of yellow jackets.” Before starting immunotherapy the strings could have been lethal. She wept for two hours sitting in the front yard of what happened to be a medic’s house. “Then I got up, brushed it off, and just went on,” says Brandi.

She made it into Connecticut and back to 20-mile days. Vermont brought maple syrup everything. This time Rapture stuck with her until “the Whites,” the treacherous but beautiful mountains that run from New Hampshire to Maine. “All the hikers talk about the Whites, and I will say, it’s the one time they’re right,” Brandi says. They’re beautiful, and they’re grueling. “It was hard to leave Rapture, but it was almost full circle, how it would finish was how it had started.”

Brandi missed Happy but found like-minded hikers in a family of nine. “It was the dad, who had wanted to hike the trail since he was like 12 years old, and this incredible mother and seven children. I mean, there was a 5-year-old, his name was Jackson, and when I met him, he literally just jumped from rock to rock.” Brandi tosses her head. “What a childhood.”

She continues, “I got to Maine and something in my spirit blew up. I got so re-energized.” The famous hostel before the Hundred-Mile Wilderness is owned by a legend called “Poet.” “You hear about Poet all the way down in Georgia,” Brandi says. “So, I’m finally meeting Poet, and he’s as cool as you’d think he’d be, and the food is as good as you’d hoped it’d be.” He drives hikers to the wilderness edge for the last stretch of the Appalachian Trail.

I pop out of the 100-mile wilderness, and I just shout, and I holler, and I scream, and I run, and I was just so happy,” Brandi says. “Boy, I was just like, I don’t know, is euphoric the right word? I just felt like a piece of heaven came down and met me.”

Mt. Katahdin was an arduous climb, but she made it to the summit. It was totally gray. “It’s funny because a few days before I was like, I’m going to wait until it’s sunny up there because I didn’t come this far . . . no, I was just pumped to get up there, and then it was over.”

Brandi was at the airport that night: Sept. 25, 2025. Pieced together, it took her about six months to hike the Appalachian Trail from start to finish. “A few months later I was reading a book, and I just stopped and was like, dude, you hiked the whole AT.”

Surely Home

SURELY HOME

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Surely Home

For there the heart can rest

By Jenna Biter

Photographs by John Gessner

“It’s a very, very livable house,” says Ginger Monroe.

She’s standing in the kitchen, the heart of her family’s Pinehurst home. The Southern cottage, wooden clad and painted dove white, measures more than 4,000 square feet but less than five. There’s a guest house out back, and the property sits on a dash less than an acre. It’s the perfect size for the Monroe family of five, seven if you include black Labs Scottie and Bonnie.

“Twin Sycamores” is a real charmer — a home, not just a house — and that’s what drew Ginger to it. An interior designer by trade, she aims for a space that feels like the last stanza of American poet Henry van Dyke’s “A Home Song”:

But every house where Love abides,

And Friendship is a guest,

Is surely home, and home-sweet-home:

For there the heart can rest.

Ginger and Edward Monroe didn’t design the house on Fields Road. From what they’ve pieced together, a European couple built the house in 2009 and clearly had a knack for bringing the Old World to a new build. There are wider-than-wide old knotty pine floorboards, and what looks like a vintage newel post on the staircase and pediment above the stove. With honest-to-goodness historical (or at the very least historically convincing) details, the house hides its youth among the 20th-century cottages that define the Pinehurst Historic District.

“I’m always drawn to houses that just make you feel welcome when you walk in,” Ginger says, “that have the appeal of being old even if they’re not — and loved.”

The Monroes settled into the home in 2019, just in time for the COVID pandemic to lock the family away with plenty of time to make the place their own. The couple laid sod and restained the front porch. Edward defeated diabolical invasive wisteria with “roots that looked like big sweet potatoes.” Ginger points at the wisteria’s replacement. “This garden, this is my husband’s.” It’s a prim little thing off the side of the house, just outside the dining room window. A perky pink rosebush stands out against sunshine ligustrum. “He loves to garden,” Ginger says. It’s a creative outlet, a break from his dental practice in Southern Pines.

Twin Sycamores, named for the couple’s twin boys and two trees out front, features an open first floor good for family time as well as their annual Good Old-Fashioned Cocktail Party. Edward mixes old-fashioneds, and Ginger makes Brunswick stew. Guests flow in and out of the living room, dining space and kitchen, but there are still nooks to cozy into. A table and chairs converse on the covered back porch, and a pair of leather armchairs, mini fridge and TV relax in the “green room,” a moody space called by its Pinehurst-perfect color. “My favorite thing to do for a house is color,” Ginger says. “I’m drawn to the artist’s eye.”

Local works hang on the walls. There’s a painting of rabbits by artist and family friend Bee Sieburg, a gift when Hunter and Charlie were born. There’s a painting of lambs by Ginger’s mom, Cindy Groce, and an artwork by Ginger herself.

“This is my favorite, though,” she says, pointing to a painting above the mantel. “This is from a photo that I took at Biltmore.” Ginger’s friend Lanie Mann painted the scene showing Janie, the Monroes’ daughter, walking hand-in-hand with her younger brothers. “I love it because I remember being right there taking that picture.”

Past the fireplace is the master en suite. When the Monroes moved in, they enclosed the screened-in porch to make the new room, upsizing the main house’s original footprint. The teenagers have the run of the upstairs, each with their own bedroom. “Janie kind of lucked out in this whole situation,” Ginger says, walking into the middle of her 18-year-old daughter’s yawning room, “because this was the master.” Of course, Hunter and Charlie wondered who would move into Janie’s room when she leaves for UNC in the fall. Ginger dodged that one. “It will still be Janie’s room.”

The boys’ bedrooms show “how different they are,” Ginger says. Hunter has a windowsill of plants. There’s a Christmas cactus, aloe and even a crocheted plant on his side table. Like father, like son. Ginger crosses the hall to Charlie’s room. “Night and day,” she smiles. Charlie likes golf and hunting. There’s a hand-on-his-holster cowboy floor lamp that belonged to his dad. Ginger uncovered it in her in-laws’ basement and had it restored.

Back downstairs, Charlie likes the green room. Opposite the entry hall is Hunter’s favorite room, the music room, where he plays piano. Janie spends time in the living room or doing her homework on the back porch.

“I love the kitchen,” Ginger says. “That’s where we gather, and I love it when the kids’ friends come over. It makes me so happy to open our doors and invite people in.”

It’s a Puzzle

IT'S A PUZZLE

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It's a Puzzle

Girl Scout Troop 2301 wants to share some of its adventures with you. From slang definitions to crosswords, word search to fill in the blanks — it's simply "a-mazing." Take a journey of the imagination and maybe a friend along the way.

Poem June 2026

POEM

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A Swift Thought

A car engine rattling.

A busted radio preaching the end 

of the world. That soft, hazy sun racing 

behind the horizon, peaking only for the 

thought of crashing. The Earth’s breath, 

hot and fast, blowing the trickled sweat 

from my hairline to my forehead. A swished 

whiskey hits the adrenaline, causing 

a swerve left, then right. The radio speaks, 

“Blazing temperatures bring hysteria!” I turn it 

off without a care in the world and without a 

second to spare.

— Joi Floyd

 

 

Three Decades Down the Road

THREE DECADES DOWN THE ROAD

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Three Decades Down the Road

Excerpt from Final Rounds: A Father, a Son, the Golf Journey of a Lifetime

By Jim Dodson

It was not until the next October — far too long to suit my tastes — that we played again. I’d been working hard, traveling a lot, trying to figure out why it was that whenever I was in some glorious, glamorous golf place, I spent so much of my time thinking about home, worrying about my children and my roses, both of which require a lot of hands-on attention.

Two of my colleagues at Golf Magazine invited me to join them for a round at Pinehurst No. 2, the marvelous Donald Ross course where Opti and I had played many rounds over the years. The course was one of his favorites. I invited my father to join us, and he agreed.

The day was raw, wet, and cold, and everyone’s game was off, but my father’s was really desolate. He topped balls and missed putts he could once have made with his eyes shut. At one point I was passing a steep fairway bunker when I heard him sheepishly call my name. I turned and saw him asking me for a hand up. I reached and took his hand. It was trembling ever so slightly. My heart almost broke on the spot.

We attempted to joke off the disaster on the hour drive home. I told Dad those super senior clubs he rejected would have saved his skin, and he said at least nobody died in the train wreck. We rode along for a little while in silence, looking at the slick road and rainy countryside. He seemed as down as I’d ever seen him. Then an idea came to me.

“Let’s take a trip,” I said.

“What trip?”

“The trip we always talked about. The one we never took.”

He glanced at me and steered Old Blue, his ancient barge-sized Cadillac, around a farmer pulling a hay wagon.

“Don’t you remember?” I said.

“Of course. But you go there all the time.”

“I go there all the time by myself,” I corrected him. “I’ve never been there with you. We’ve got some unfinished business.”

“I suppose so.” He managed to conceal his enthusiasm for the idea. I hoped his rotten day on the course accounted for this.

In any event, that’s where it really began, the first step in our final golf journey — a trip to the places where he learned to play golf as a sergeant in the Eighth Army Air Corps during the war. “There” was St. Andrews, the birthplace of the game. Thousands of golfers went there every year. But we hadn’t. It was now or never and almost that simple.

But nothing is really that simple. I knew not to push my father on the subject. Things were obviously changing fast in his life. Losing his golf pals had merely revealed his mortality. I sensed a powerful urgency in him to tie up loose ends, to finish whatever needed finishing at home, and in his life and work.

We didn’t speak of it again for months. I got on with my own life, telling myself I’d planted a proper seed. What else could I do? I hoped — I even prayed — it would grow.

By early August, everything was set. I’d made plane and hotel reservations, reserved the rental car, and contacted several club secretaries who were enthusiastic about helping out. It read like a grand tour of the British golf establishment: Sunningdale, Royal Birkdale, Royal Lytham, Turnberry, Royal Troon, Carnoustie, possibly Gleneagles and Muirfield, and of course, St. Andrews. I’d been to most of these places on my own but couldn’t wait to go back with my old man.

Two weeks before the trip, he called again.

I took the call on our cellphone, standing out behind the perennial garden where I was trying to figure out the best place to build my daughter a playhouse like the one she’d seen in a local theater production of Peter Pan.

“I’m afraid the trip will have to be postponed,” he said. With a sinking heart, I asked why.

“I had some bleeding. I didn’t think it was any big deal, but I guess I was wrong. They did some tests. They want to do some more, starting tomorrow.”

The cancer of a decade ago had come back, he said, spreading radically throughout his pelvic region. It had moved into his back, had even invaded his stomach and intestines.

I asked for the official prognosis and will never forget what he told me: a month, two at most.

Then he laughed. Only Opti would have laughed at such a verdict. He said he would call back in a couple more days when he knew more.

I hung up the phone and sat down on a wooden bench. My first thought was undeniably selfish: Christ, we’ll never play golf again. I went through the next few days in a trance. I tried to read stories to my children but kept missing passages. I tried to write my columns and prune my roses, but nothing helped. I went to my golf club and played three holes and quit. I picked up the phone to begin canceling reservations but put the receiver down again.

Then my father called back.

“Well, the options are not good,” Opti said, sounding eerily like his old self. “They can pump me full of poisons and maybe hook me up to some machines and buy a few more weeks. Who the hell needs that?” He said he planned to let nature take its course.

I told him I admired his courage.

He told me to save my lung power for the golf course.

“I’m planning to whip your tail at Lytham and St. Andrews,” he said. “Hope you haven’t canceled those reservations or anything.”

I said I hadn’t.

“Good. Here are my terms,” he continued. “No complaints. No long faces. We go to have laughs, hit a few balls, maybe take a bit of the Queen’s currency from each other’s pockets. But when I say it’s time to go home, I go home. No questions asked. I’ve got plenty of stuff to do. But I do want to pin your ears back for old times’ sake — so you’ll at least remember me.”

I sort of laughed; then agreed.

“Good. See you at the airport in Atlanta,” he barked happily, banging down the phone.

Opti the Mystic had spoken again.

I went out and finally pruned my roses, damn near barbering them to the ground.

* * *

The lane led to a gated burying ground at the rear of the church. On the far side of the graveyard was a public park of some sort, with a rose garden at its center. Dad opened the iron gate and proceeded along the stone pathways of the graveyard, eyeing the headstones. I followed him to a large polished granite cross positioned near the rear of the cemetery. It was a common grave. Wreaths and wildflowers had recently been placed there, but the chill nights had turned them rusty, bundles of asters and poppies and chrysanthemums. I read some of the names inscribed on the stone border: Gillian and June Parkinson. George Preston. Michael Probert. Kenneth Boocock. Lillian Waite. Silvia Whybrow. Judith Garner. Annie Harrington . . .

The names went on, thirty-eight in all. A mass grave.

“How did these folks die?” I asked.

“They weren’t folks,” he replied softly. “They were children.”

The words didn’t sink in at first. We stood there for a few seconds staring at the names.

“Children?” I repeated finally.

He nodded. “Four- and five-year-olds. Maggie’s and Jack’s ages. They went to the infants’ school here at the church. One of our bombers crashed into the school. The airfield was just over there.” He lifted his head, solemnly, to indicate where.

I didn’t have a clue what to say. I’d never heard of anything so awful. So for a change, I said nothing.

We stood in silence for a few minutes more before he spoke again. He shut his eyes and opened them. I wondered if he was praying or just reliving scenes I couldn’t begin to imagine.

He spoke evenly. “It was about ten in the morning. A large thunderstorm had just come up. We had our parachute crews working double shifts because this was six or seven weeks after D-Day. I’d just stretched out on my cot in our Nissen hut to steal some shut-eye when I heard a big roar overhead, followed by an explosion. The whole hut just shook. Jesus, it shook . . . I knew it was one of our birds. The hut I was in was probably the closest one to the school here. One of the other guys jumped up and ran out, and I ran after him. It was raining like hell, but I saw fire down at the school and started running. We were all running.”

Dad cleared his throat. He was shaking a bit. I placed my hand on his arm. He continued:

“I guess I was one of the first to reach the school, though others got there quickly. God . . . what a sight. The plane had gone right through the school and struck a café where lots of our guys and R.A.F. personnel used to hang out. It set half the town on fire. Burning fuel was running down the street. I just remember  . . . starting to pull away pieces of things . . . pieces of the plane, you know, also bricks and mortar . . .  and all these precious little kids inside . . . buried alive or killed by the explosion. I remember the sound of a child weeping. I couldn’t seem to find her. We pulled out several of the children. They were dead or badly injured. You didn’t have time to think. You just kept digging.”

His voice stopped. I saw tears gathering in his eyes for only the second time in my life. The first time had been when we buried my nephew Richard, one summer day in 1987. Richard, his first grandchild, had been gamely battling a rare nervous system disorder when he died in his sleep. Richard was nine.

I slipped my arm around my father.

We stood that way for several more minutes. He cleared his throat again and said, in a stronger voice: “I knew a lot of these kids, Jim. As I told you, they were always hanging around the base. The guys loved them. We each had our favorites. There was one little girl in particular I loved. She was always laughing, like your Maggie. I called her Lady Sunshine. I used to tell her I hoped I had a daughter like her someday. She was one of those killed.”

Good lord, I thought.

“A week or so after the crash, after the funeral and all of that, I found a note attached to the bulletin board from that little girl’s parents. They wondered if anybody had taken a photograph of their daughter. Can you imagine? They didn’t even have a picture of their only daughter. I took them all I had. They were so grateful. We sat there in their little front parlor and just cried. I don’t think I ever experienced anything quite so sad.”

“Were you okay?”

My father gave me an anguished look. Dumb question, I realized.

“Hell, no!” he snapped. “How could anybody be okay after something like that?”

“I’m sorry. I guess I meant physically. Were you injured . . . “

“Yes . . . no . . . my hands were burned a bit. Wore bandages for a while. No big deal. I was fine . . . but I didn’t feel up to going to the funeral. They brought Bing Crosby in to sing to the people of Freckleton. I couldn’t even stand to go hear him sing. I think I went somewhere and tried to play golf. Burned hands and all. I just wanted to be alone.”

“Do you remember the little girl’s name?”

Dad, better now, considered the names on the grave.

“Harrington. Maybe it was Annie Harrington.” He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “Lady Sunshine,” he murmured.

I took my father’s arm, and we left the burying ground, slowly closing the iron gate behind us. Two boys on bikes were pedaling furiously up the alley and swerved to avoid hitting us. One of them turned his head and gave us a dirty look. My father, rubbing his eyes, didn’t see it. The air was cold. The moon was already out. It was going to be a beautiful night.

“I’m surprised you never told me this story,” I said when we reached the car.

He paused and looked back at the church, a looming shape in the early shade of evening now. I saw a single small light burning somewhere inside.

“The war ended for me right here,” he said. “I promised myself I would never speak about it again.”

* * *

We were standing on the seventeenth tee of the Old Course. The Road Hole.

The sun was gone, the air was cold, and the course lay almost fully in the embrace of a blue twilight now. A few faint stars were visible above the clouds, and there were lights on in the Old Grey Toon. The group we’d been following had hit their drives and disappeared rapidly down the fairway.

“This is where I wish we had our real clubs,” I said.

“Aw, who needs ’em?” Dad said. “Let’s play anyway.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “We could play air golf with the ghosts of St. Andrews the way I played air guitar with The Beatles. Please play away, Mr. Dodson.”

Dad teed up his air Top-Flite, took his stance, and swung. “There,” he said. “Right over the sheds. Just like fifty years ago.”

I teed up my air Titleist and asked, “How fast did that fifty years go by?”

“Stick around. You won’t believe it.”

I struck my shot and outdrove him, as usual, by at least a hundred yards.

We walked down the darkened fairway side by side. For a change, I wasn’t really thinking about all the greats who had walked this way to immortality: Old Tom and Young. Taylor and Braid. Jones and Snead. Nicklaus and Lema. Ballesteros and Faldo. Watson who had crossed this spot with a record-tying sixth Open within his grasp — to just miss.

I was thinking, instead, how simply fine and proper it was that my old man and I were finally playing the Road Hole together. Now came Opti and son.

From the heart of the fairway, Dad used an air three-wood to lay up short of the infamous Road Hole bunker. From the left rough, I swatted a beautiful air four-iron to the lower half of the green. We were playing our own games, if I may say so, magnificently.

He walked up to his air ball, just shy of the bunker, and announced he was using his air sand wedge, then lofted his ball sweetly to the green, stopping it within a few feet of the cup.

“Very nice,” I said. “Before we putt out, though, tell me about your birdie.”

He looked at me, then nodded solemnly at the bunker.

It took a few seconds for me to realize what he was telling me. He’d somehow made birdie from the Road Hole bunker!

“That’s unbelievable,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve never heard of anybody doing that.”

“It came as a major shock to me, too.”

I demanded that he describe in detail this miraculous little feat, on a par in my mind with anything Jones had done at Lytham or Palmer at Birkdale.

He said the details were kind of foggy, but he seemed to think the hole was considerably different back then. “For one thing, the bunker was a lot shallower than it is now. The sod wall was nowhere near as high as it is here. You could escape pretty easily with a decent shot.” He took a step closer, sizing up the wall, which was higher than a man’s head. “I don’t see how anybody could come out of this thing.”

He added that the pin he’d shot at that day fifty years ago was on the lower half of the green. The greens were thicker grass in those days, before modern lawn mowers came along. That made a big difference, too.

“You still made a hell of a shot,” I said to him, “And it wasn’t an air ball.”

“No,” he said a little wistfully, “it wasn’t. Sometimes, though, it takes on the quality of a dream. Perhaps, I simply imagined it.”

“No,” I said. “Not a chance.”

We putted out rather quickly. I made an uncharacteristically fine air lag from the lower part of the green and tapped in for four — a brilliant air par! Dad sank a clutch five-footer to halve the hole.

“Two air pars on the hardest hole in golf,” I said as we shook hands.

We walked to the eighteenth tee, struck fine drives into the darkness, then moseyed down the fairway of the most famous finishing hole in golf, crossing the little arched stone bridge. For weeks I’d been so fearful of this moment, anticipating how awful I would feel when it finally arrived. But, strangely, I wasn’t the least bit sad now. I was cold as blazes but almost unnaturally happy to be finishing a round of golf that only I would ever remember. No card would ever show the score. Our match would vanish into the air.

“Call me sentimental if you like,”  my father said, taking my arm as we approached the Valley of Sin, the dangerous swale that guards the front of the eighteenth green. “I think it’s been a hell of a journey.”

“You’re just being sentimental,” I replied. “The showers were much worse than expected.”

“You’re talking about the trip,” he said. “I’m talking about the journey.”

Poem May 2026

POEM

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FLOATING

A hawk drifted over as I backstroked

through the neighborhood pool.

It glided more effortlessly

than I’d imagined possible,

circling and diving on the breeze

without thrash or beat of wing,

so I puffed up my chest

and floated awhile, wondering

if he’d spy me and swoop down

to make a meal of my laziness.

Maple seeds helicoptered

into the depressions

between ripples, bobbing expectantly.

Drowned, fat caterpillars

littered the blue between lanes.

There are graveyards

where the bones rest

less tranquil than that afternoon,

but I ripped it into lines,

and still I am ripping it into lines,

looking for sad, explosive meaning,

proof that I skimmed

that particular magnificence

and didn’t go under.

— Ross White

Golf Town Getaway

GOLF TOWN GETAWAY

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Golf Town Getaway

From city to country and back again

By Jenna Biter 

Photographs by John Gessner

Mary and Mike Patterson have breezed between their Raleigh home and Pinehurst golf retreat for going on two decades. “It’s an hour and 15 minutes door-to-door,” says Mary Patterson. Because the drive’s short, the Pattersons can come and go as they please. “It’s just a nice getaway,” she says.

The couple purchased the ivy-colored farmhouse in the Country Club of North Carolina in 2008. “It’s funny, we drove down the driveway, and I looked at Mike, and I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know about this house — the first thing I need to do is change that orange trim,’” Patterson says. “But I’ve grown to like it.”

In fact, there was a lot to like. The house is right-sized, in the ballpark of 3,000 square feet, and well-placed, tucked down a curlicue of a driveway with a picture-perfect lake view out the back. A wide wraparound porch steps onto a lawn that slopes down to the glittering water. The fourth hole of the Dogwood golf course lies on the other side.

“We looked on and off here for years,” Patterson says, recalling the process. Mike became a member of CCNC years before they bought. From regular trips to play golf, the Pattersons knew they liked the community — and the golf — well enough to buy in. “You can’t get better golf than around here,” she says matter-of-factly.

The neat little farmhouse had been on the market for a while, and in hindsight, Patterson is not sure why they hadn’t considered it sooner. “When we did, I thought, ‘Yeah, this would work,’” she says. “Most of the houses here are traditional homes: formal living room, formal dining room, den, kitchen, breakfast room. We just didn’t need that.” They wanted something more compact.

An entry hall leads into the house, revealing an open living room/dining room/kitchen configuration that flows onto the back porch with the enviable view, birds swooping and soaring over the lake.

The wooden floors came from an old tobacco barn. “The beams, I’m not sure where they got those,” Patterson says, motioning to the rustic wood running intermittently overhead. The couple replaced an old beam fireplace with limestone that counterbalances a burly brick range hood across the way in the kitchen. Earth-toned ceramics from Seagrove potters decorate the counters. The urns are for show, but the serving bowls see plenty of use.

“We got furniture from a mixture of consignment shops and antique shops — I love a deal,” Patterson says. That includes a set of 10 matching dining chairs she’s particularly proud of. “I thought, ‘I cannot get these in my car fast enough.’”

The home reads traditional with a touch of English flair. Staffordshire dog figurines accompany guests in the living room, as does a real-life miniature goldendoodle named Biscuit. Whites and creams warm the space and the rest of the home. In the master bedroom, an off-white four-poster bed and a black and white abstract painting by Raleigh artist Gerry Lynch softly contrast with sea glass-colored walls.

“We made a few little changes to make it our own,” Patterson says about the structure of the house. “And it just works perfectly for us.” They removed a wall to add a bar and transformed the first-floor guest room into a sprawling entertainment space complete with a TV, seating area and a pool table backdropped by a dozen or so old Perrier advertisements featuring golf cartoons. One frame shows a golfer staring down at his ball impossibly and perfectly wedged between the ground and a falling-down fencepost with a caption that reads, “Rule XII: When a ball lies in or touches a hazard, nothing shall be done to improve its lie.”

Through a nearby hallway, there’s a generously sized and especially appreciated laundry room. Up a set of wooden stairs are mirror-image guest rooms with equally splendid views of the lake. A fourth bedroom is just a short walk away in a detached-garage-turned-guesthouse with a second floor perfect for visiting grandkids.

“It just kind of all came together,” Patterson says. “You know, it’s comfortable enough, but it has the look, too.”

On the Cusp

ON THE CUSP

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On the Cusp

Karina McMillan: Lumbee artist and generational talent

By Liza Roberts

•

Portraits by John Gessner

hen the artist Karina McMillan was growing up in rural Robeson County, she spent long days outside in the woods and in the surrounding fields of cotton, soybean and tobacco near her house, and long hours with her family, steeped in the culture of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Never far from her side were the ballpoint pens and paper she used to draw all of it, and all of them.

“One of my first memories is my dad telling me, ‘If you don’t know how to spell something, draw a picture,’” McMillan, now 27, recalls. “I didn’t really know how to spell a lot of things, so I would just draw.”

One day in kindergarten at Hawk Eye Elementary, she drew a picture of the school’s mascot. She was surprised that her teachers made such a fuss over her hawk, hanging it in the school’s lobby, even turning it into a postage stamp for the campus mail system.

More than 20 years later, McMillan’s hawk is still hanging in the school’s lobby, and a standard-issue blue Bic ballpoint pen is still her favorite way to draw. Her subtle, shadowed, soulful portraits of Lumbee and other Native people and their landscapes may look painted from even a short distance, but up very close, the fine detail of McMillan’s hashed and feathered pen strokes becomes clear, emerging from an image as the grooves of a fine-grained woodcut do. In some of her works, she uses acrylic paint in bright hues for backgrounds, clothing and textile patterns, and to create glowing haloes for her subjects.

“Karina McMillan’s work is extraordinary,” says Sara Segerlin, director of the Gregg Museum of Art & Design at N.C. State University. “Her paintings carry a power that goes far beyond color or technique. She brings forward portraits of resilience, memory, pain and strength, stories that refuse to be forgotten.”

McMillan’s work has been exhibited and won awards and recognition all over the state and beyond, and is primed to find a larger audience, says Nancy Strickland Chavis, director and curator at the Museum of the Southeast American Indian at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Indeed, Chavis says, an artist like McMillan emerges from her region just once in a generation.

“She will define what this era of native art is for native artists,” Chavis says. “I think that she will lead the way for her age group, moving forward along with other greats like Jessica Clark (Lumbee, in her 40s), and Gene Locklear (Lumbee, in his 70s), to really push the envelope on what the possibilities are.”

McMillan’s Mother Nature, a portrait of a Lumbee woman holding ears of corn rendered in ballpoint pen and acrylic paint, exemplifies the young woman’s technical virtuosity and her ability to depict her people authentically, Chavis says, without the “tropes” deployed by some artists painting Native Americans. She notes that the woman McMillan depicts in Mother Nature is immediately recognizable as Lumbee, and the corn she holds represents the corn reclamation program currently underway to return ancestral strains of corn to the Lumbee people.

Chavis says the portrait is characterized by humility and gentleness, and resonates deeply with audiences who see true reflections of themselves within it. “When I saw it, I lost it,” says Chavis, who is also a member of the Lumbee Tribe. “We don’t have a lot of artists that are doing the type of work that Karina is doing.”

Chavis awarded the piece best in show at her museum’s annual 9/9 Native South Juried Exhibition last September and purchased it for the museum’s permanent collection.

Corn, pine cones, birds and animals native to Robeson County are among the images that appear in McMillan’s work, as are other symbols and patterns that represent her heritage as a member of the Lumbee Tribe.

Learning about her forebears and their traditions as a child made a big impact on her, McMillan says, and remains central to her identity as a young adult. Currently working as a preschool art teacher at Cary’s Ivybrook Academy, she wears a Lumbee pine cone ring on her hand and spends every evening creating works that celebrate her culture.

“I like making art about it to show people that we’re still here,” she says. “We’re still Native. We’re not riding horses and living in tepees, but we’re still here.”

It’s a timely message. Last December, the Lumbee Tribe, which has been recognized by the state of North Carolina since 1885, was finally granted full federal recognition. With a population of more than 56,000 in North Carolina, many of whom live in Robeson County, the Tribe is the largest in the state and the largest east of the Mississippi River. “The history of the Lumbee Tribe long predates the history of the state of North Carolina itself,” Governor Josh Stein noted in celebrating its federal recognition.

“The fight’s been going on since the 1800s,” McMillan says. “So I feel like now we’re finally getting what we’ve deserved for the longest time. It makes me sad and breaks my heart that some people aren’t around to see that we’re federally recognized. Like my great-grandma, my great-grandpa, they’re gone . . . but at least I get to see it. This is a big moment in history, and I’m just really blessed that I get to see it happen.”

McMillan returned to Robeson County to complete her education at UNC Pembroke after two years in college at UNC Charlotte, and to be closer to her family. It was at UNCP, she says, that her artistic voice truly began to take shape.

It’s also where she decided to embrace the humble tool that got her started and has now become her hallmark: the ballpoint pen. It’s what was plentiful and close at hand growing up, when the nearest art store was an hour away. “I thought, ‘How am I going to get these art supplies?’ I just figured, I guess, I’ll draw with what I have. So that’s why I stick to the cheap mediums like ballpoint pen,” she says.

To know it is apparently to love it. McMillan says the medium is both more exacting and more malleable than you might imagine. “If you make one mistake with a ballpoint pen, you can’t go back and fix it. So I’m super focused,” she says. “And it creates the most beautiful — to me — the most beautiful values in a portrait. It can go from light to dark. You just have to keep building up the color. There have been times where I’m working on a piece, and I have to step away from it because the ink is wet. To create more layers and more values, I have to come back later, maybe like an hour later, because it has to dry before I can build up more.”

McMillan’s use of a medium that’s easy to come by puts her squarely in the Native artist tradition. “It reminds me of a lot of Native art, made out of what is accessible, from traditional to what has evolved as modern work,” says Chavis. “Whether it’s grass, pine needles, split oak, clay, all of these things that make our traditional art are what’s accessible.”

Native American artists with connections to North Carolina, including McMillan, are the focus of the exhibit “Stories Told by Breath: Native American Voices in North Carolina,” at N.C. State’s Gregg Museum of Art through Sept. 26.

McMillan’s work — she will have 11 pieces on show — will be in good company. Other artists include Senora Lynch (Haliwa-Saponi), Harlen Chavis (Lumbee), Aaron Baumgardner (Catawba), Coda Cavalier-Keck (Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation), Amy PostOak (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) and Johnny PostOak (Muscogee Creek) of Three Sisters Designs, Rhiannon “Skye” Tafoya (Eastern Band of Cherokee and Santa Clara Pueblo), Joshua Adams (Eastern Band of Cherokee), Idalis Dial (Coharie), Tim Locklear (Lumbee), N.C. State students Ashytn Thomas (Lumbee) and Victoria Wilson (Haliwa-Saponi), and Gwen Locklear (Lumbee).

McMillan says she’s excited for the opportunity to see her work at the Gregg among other Native American artists. Segerlin, the museum’s director, says McMillan’s work should make an impact. “I hope more people will come to know Karina through her work and spend time with her iconic paintings. They stay with you long after you leave,” she says.

McMillan’s hoping for the same. “I want to be in more museums,” she says. “I’ve had art in different shows in different states, but I want my art to be all over the country, maybe even overseas. I just want more people to see it so they can see who Lumbees are, and what we are as people.”

Chavis says the young artist has every reason to believe in herself. “The sky’s the limit for Karina. Her work is so good. I think that the art world might take her to places she never imagined.” 

Captain’s Choice

CAPTAIN'S CHOICE

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Captain's Choice

Matchmaking in Pinehurst, controversy in Augusta

By Bill Case

Twice a Ryder Cup player, winner of the Belgian and French Opens and several important British tournaments, Arthur Lacey had accomplished much in golf, including meritorious service to the game as chairman of the British PGA. At age 47, with his best golf a decade in the past, the Englishman’s selection as the non-playing captain of Great Britain and Ireland’s 1951 Ryder Cup team represented a fitting capstone to a stellar career.

The appointment provided Lacey the chance to achieve a goal he had set in 1933 after narrowly losing a Ryder Cup singles match to Walter Hagen. “From that day,” he confided, “it has been my ambition to captain a British Ryder Cup team to victory.”

The ’51 matches would be played on foreign soil in Pinehurst, North Carolina. The captain could never have anticipated that his two weeks in the town would ultimately lead to his moving to America and establishing a winter home in the very place the matches were contested. Nor could he have known that his second life would include one of the most memorable rules controversies in golf history.

Captain Lacey faced an uphill battle in the ’51 Ryder Cup. The GB&I team — all of Europe didn’t join the fray until 1979 — had not been victorious in any of the four previous cups on U.S. soil. And while most of the American players had competed on Pinehurst’s No. 2 course annually in the North and South Open, this trip would mark the first time any of the GB&I players would have seen it.

But, pure and simple, the chief difference between the two squads was talent. While GB&I did boast two Open Championship winners in Max Faulkner and Fred Daly, the American team featured five men who would eventually be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame: Sam Snead (the playing captain of the ’51 U.S. side), Ben Hogan, Jimmy Demaret, Jack Burke Jr. and Lloyd Mangrum.

Sailing across the Atlantic aboard the Queen Mary, the GB&I team arrived in New York on Sunday, Oct. 21. Both teams were feted at a celebratory dinner at the Waldorf Astoria courtesy of Bob Hudson, the Portland, Oregon mogul who had previously footed the bill to bring the ’47 GB&I team to America while the financially challenged United Kingdom recovered from the ravages of war. The next stop was Washington, D.C., where Lacey’s team toured the Capitol and was greeted by Harry S. Truman at the White House. They played a practice round at Columbia Country Club on Wednesday, Oct. 24, enjoyed another reception and rushed to Union Station to catch the night train to Southern Pines.

Arriving at the town depot Thursday morning, the visitors were, according to the Pinehurst Outlook, “whisked to Pinehurst in a bus which rattled with the sound of the war clubs with which they will try to take the No. 2 championship course apart.” After a flag-raising ceremony at Pinehurst Country Club, the weary travelers checked in at the Carolina Hotel, where they, along with the members of the American team, occupied the hotel’s east wing.

With the matches commencing the following Friday, GB&I had six days to prepare. Lacey was guardedly optimistic. “We have yet to gain our first success in America in this series,” he said, “but I am sufficiently optimistic to think we have brought the best team so far to attempt this difficult task.” When asked about his duties as captain, Lacey couldn’t resist a cheeky response. “Looking after the trophy aboard ship when we return,” he said.

Lacey’s squad was offered the option of playing the “small ball” ( a minimum of 1.62 inches in diameter pursuant to the rules promulgated by the R&A in contrast to the 1.68 inch minimum prescribed by the USGA). The smaller ball flew farther than its American counterpart and tended to perform better in the windy conditions found in links golf. Lacey declined, saying, “We came here to win these matches, and since they are to be played in this country, we will play by your rules.”

Frequent blurbs relative to the comings, goings and social engagements of Pinehurst’s “Cottage Colony” residents were a staple of the Pinehurst Outlook’s reportage throughout the paper’s existence. It was no different simply because the Ryder Cup was coming to town. A week before the golfers arrived the Outlook reported that Mrs. Thomas B. Lockwood, whose primary residence was Buffalo, New York, would be arriving in Pinehurst “to open her cottage, ‘Holly Hill,’ on Midland Road.”

Mildred Lockwood was a widow. Her second husband, Thomas Lockwood, a Buffalo attorney, banker, politician and philanthropist, had passed away in 1947. She acquired Holly Hill, a house bordering the fifth hole of the No. 2 course, in 1949, and it became her lodging during Pinehurst’s so-called “winter season” of November to May. She was a member of the Silver Foils, Pinehurst’s longstanding women’s golf society.

Lacey and Lockwood would marry 14 months after the Ryder Cup. Nothing reported then or thereafter disclosed the circumstances by which the couple met. If their mutual attraction began the week of the matches — or the North and South Open, held in Pinehurst the following week — both kept mum about it.

The 1951 cup matches were a truncated affair compared to the modern Ryder Cup. The teams played 12 matches in two days of competition. The first day involved four foursomes matches. The second day featured eight singles matches. In a head-scratching schedule that would be unimaginable today, the Ryder Cup took a break on Saturday. Both teams were encouraged to attend a college football game in Chapel Hill between the University of North Carolina and the Tennessee Volunteers. London Sunday Times journalist Henry Longhurst was among those who joined the GB&I players in the Kenan Stadium press box. “I simply don’t understand what is going on,” Longhurst wrote. “All I know is that I am doing OK as long as I holler, ‘To hell with Tennessee.’” The Vols blew out the Tarheels 27-0. The American captain, Snead, was not among those attending the game. He picked up a few bucks elsewhere giving an exhibition instead.

Results from the foursomes matches on Friday suggested Lacey’s dream of an upset was just that, a dream. The U.S. won three of the four matches. The teams of Hogan-Demaret and Snead-Mangrum both won 5 and 4. The lone GB&I win, by Arthur Lees and Charlie Ward, prevented a shutout.

When the matches resumed on Sunday it was more of the same, except worse for GB&I. The U.S. won six of the eight matches, mostly by lopsided margins. The only British winner was Lees, who bested Porky Oliver. The final tally was U.S. 9 1/2 to  GB&I’s 2 1/2.

During Sunday’s “Victory Dinner” at Pinehurst Country Club, Lacey presented a silver pitcher to Bob Hudson and a silver cigarette case to Richard Tufts in appreciation of their unstinting efforts in making the British team’s visit enjoyable. Regarding the outcome, the handsome, graying Lacey simply stated, “We were beaten on merit.”

Tufts had arranged for the North and South Open to immediately follow the Ryder Cup, assuming that since the members of both teams were already in town, they would certainly want to stay to compete in the prestigious tournament. That proved true for the British team, but not so much the Americans. The PGA had recently set a minimum prize money floor of $10,000 for tournaments. Tufts balked at complying with this edict. Hogan, Demaret, Mangrum and Burke declined to enter the North and South. Several who did stay, including Snead, failed to hide their dissatisfaction. In what was perceived as a quasi-boycott, four American team members withdrew subsequent to the first round. Only one, Henry Ransom, played all 72 holes. Miffed by the behavior of the American players, Richard Tufts would discontinue the N&S, ending its storied 50-year run.

By contrast, each of the British team members played in Tufts’ tournament, as did their captain, who made the cut and played all four rounds. Following the tournament, the members of the GB&I team sailed back to England but Lacey would soon return. In July, 1952 Britain’s Golf Monthly magazine reported that Lacey had left the position he’d held for 18 years as golf professional at Ascot’s Berkshire Golf Club and was moving to America.

On Jan. 27, 1953, Mildred Lockwood and Arthur Lacey were married at the First Presbyterian Church in Reno, Nevada. According to the Outlook, after two weeks in California, “Mr. and Mrs. Lacey will be at their home on Midland Road here until the middle of May, when they will open their residence in Buffalo, for three months, later sailing for a sojourn in the British Isles.”

That itinerary foreshadowed the couple’s peripatetic travels throughout their 26 years together. Typical was their six-month trip around the world in 1955. Sailing from San Francisco, the Laceys visited Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, the wilds of Africa, the Holy Land, Turkey, Greece and England.

In their wanderings, they rubbed elbows with the rich, famous and royal. The Earl and Countess of Carrick joined them for a three-week fishing trip in Boca Grande, Florida. While visiting the low countries, Lacey played rounds with King Leopold of Belgium. Though his competitive form was waning, Lacey would occasionally work in a tournament or two during his European excursions.

Despite prolonged absences from Pinehurst and her hometown of Buffalo, Mildred Lacey engaged in an astonishing array of charitable endeavors in both locales. She was a major benefactor of the University at Buffalo. After purchasing poet Robert Graves’ original manuscripts, she donated the collection to the university’s Lockwood Memorial Library, named to honor Mrs. Lacey’s previous husband, who endowed its construction.

In Buffalo, she served as president of the Ingleside Home for unmarried mothers; chairman of the Building Committee and Fund Raising for the community’s YWCA; a member of the board of directors for two hospitals; the first female member of the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce; and the organizer and president of the Buffalo and Erie County Chapter of Infantile Paralysis. Eliminating polio was a matter of special interest to her. Her brother, Dr. Thomas Francis Jr., designed, supervised, and analyzed the field trials that validated the use of Jonas Salk’s life-saving vaccine.

Mrs. Lacey was equally active in Pinehurst. Her list of services to the community included: member of the board of directors of The Village Chapel; treasurer of the Sandhills Woman’s Exchange; secretary of the Women’s Auxiliary of Moore Memorial Hospital; and president of the Silver Foils golfing society. She worked with the Open Door Nursery School and Child Care Center in Taylortown, helping to start the charity, raising the money to sustain it, and serving as its chairman for 15 years. Today the Wyatt School Age Program in Taylortown continues the work she began.

Arthur Lacey joined The Tin Whistles, after the society tweaked its by-laws to allow dues-paying pros to enter most of its tournaments. For her part, “Queenie,” as Mildred was known by friends, was a high handicapper who participated enthusiastically in Silver Foils’ weekly competitions. In Feb. 1958, she and her husband teamed up in the Silver Foils Mixed Fourball Tournament. The Laceys tied for first before losing in a playoff.

Just over a month later, Lacey, then 53, drove to Augusta National Golf Club, where he had agreed to be a rules official for the 1958 Masters. His service in that capacity was uneventful until the late stages of the final round. He was stationed at the par-3 12th when the pairing of Arnold Palmer and Ken Venturi arrived on the tee. Palmer — who would go on to win the first major title of his illustrious career — led the field with Venturi hot on his heels, one stroke behind.

Both Venturi and Palmer struck their iron shots a bit too far, their balls landing beyond the putting surface. Venturi’s ball spun back onto the green. According to legendary golf writer Herbert Warren Wind, who was on-site, “Palmer’s ball struck low on the bank about a foot or so below the bottom rim of a back-side trap and embedded itself. It had rained heavily during the night and early morning, and parts of the course were soggy.”

When Palmer reached his ball, he called Lacey over and asked for relief from his embedded ball lie. Lacey denied the request, informing Palmer he would need to play the ball as it lay. To some, Lacey’s ruling and the dramatic — and still swirling — controversy it precipitated, would overshadow his substantial accomplishments in the game.

Under the USGA’s Rules of Golf at the time, there was no provision granting a player relief for an embedded ball. However, Augusta National could put in place a “wet weather” local rule that would allow such relief in inclement weather. Given Sunday’s rainy conditions, Augusta National had adopted such a temporary rule for that day’s play. Its precise wording is unknown. However, in a Golf World magazine article following the Masters, it was reported that this wet weather rule provided for embedded ball relief “through the green,” meaning virtually everywhere on the golf course except hazards, bunkers, and tees and greens of the hole being played.

Given the local rule, what basis did Lacey have for denying Palmer relief? There are differing accounts of his rationale. Venturi, who overheard at least part of the conversation between Lacey and Palmer, wrote in his 2004 autobiography, Getting Up & Down, that Lacey told Palmer his ball was, “not embedded. It’s only half-embedded.”

Years after the ruling, Lacey would relate a different explanation in a discussion with writer Al Barkow. The veteran golf journalist wrote that under the rule handed down by the Masters committee early Sunday morning, “Lacey was given to understand (rightly or wrongly) that a player would be allowed a free lift from an embedded lie only if his ball was on the green or fairways.” Palmer’s ball was neither.

That was merely the beginning of the debacle. More instances of “he said, he didn’t say” followed regarding whether Palmer used proper procedure in deciding to play a “second ball.” In situations like the one Palmer faced, a player could opt to play a second ball along with the first, then have the tournament committee decide which ball should count as his score. To do so, the rule stated that a competitor “must” declare his intention to play a second ball prior to playing the first ball. The competitor was further required to announce which ball he wished to count for his score. Furthermore, he was supposed to play both balls “at the same time” until both were holed.

Palmer would later say he advised Lacey of his intention to play a “provisional ball” (technically he should have said “second ball”) before proceeding. Venturi emphatically denied this occurred.

Palmer then played the embedded ball and did not recover well, finishing the hole with a double-bogey 5. He returned to the spot where his tee shot had embedded to play a second ball, and took a drop. From a much better lie, Palmer chipped close and holed his putt for what he hoped was a 3.

Venturi was visibly upset. He told Palmer he could not invoke the rule because of his alleged failure to declare a second ball before hitting his first one. “Suppose,” Venturi bristled, “you had chipped in with the other ball. Would you still be playing a second?” Palmer replied he had followed proper procedure.

But did it really matter whether Palmer verbalized his intention to play a second ball before hitting his first one? Rule 11(5) then stated, “Should the competitor fail to announce in advance his procedure or selection, his score with the second ball shall be his score for the hole if played in accordance with the rules.” This provision, as written, appears to excuse a player’s failure to announce his intentions. The sloppily written rule (later changed) seemingly permitted the “two bites of the apple” scenario advanced by Venturi.

So did Palmer have a 5 on the 12th or a 3? A 5 meant he was now a shot behind Venturi, who parred the hole. With a 3, Palmer would remain one shot ahead. The two would be uncertain how they stood until the Masters Tournament Committee reviewed the situation.

Venturi believed this muddled situation may have led Palmer to play the par-5 13th more aggressively than he might have otherwise. Venturi laid up short of the water hazard fronting the green. Palmer, after initially pulling an iron, returned it to his bag, pulled out a wood and struck a sensational shot onto the green, then holed the putt for an eagle. Venturi birdied. That would make Palmer either two strokes ahead of Venturi or even with him, depending on the committee’s ruling.

While the leaders were playing 14, they were informed that the committee had decided in favor of Palmer. An incensed and rattled Venturi imploded. He 3-putted three of the final four holes and faded to fourth. Palmer hung on for a one-stroke victory over Doug Ford and Fred Hawkins, capturing his first green jacket.

After signing his scorecard, Venturi sought out Clifford Roberts, Augusta National’s chairman, to complain that Palmer had broken Rule 11 by failing to timely announce his intention to play a second ball. “I was wasting my breath,” Venturi wrote in his book. But not wanting to take no for an answer, he asked that Roberts bring in Lacey. “Only one problem,” wrote the exasperated Venturi. “Lacey, I was told, had already left the golf course, and there was no way to track him down. There were no cellphones in 1958. A pretty quick exit from the premises, don’t you think? I certainly don’t have any evidence that Mr. Roberts, anxious to avoid controversy, made sure Lacey got off the grounds in a hurry, but it sure looks fishy.”

So Lacey became something of a fall guy in this strange episode. He, according to the tournament committee (apparently Bobby Jones and Roberts), had made an incorrect decision. But no matter; all’s well that ends well. Palmer, an extremely popular winner, had addressed Lacey’s mistake appropriately, and there was nothing more to be said.

Golf writer Guy Yocom admits to a fascination regarding the brouhaha. He maintains that regardless of how much one studies the available evidence, certainty regarding what actually happened is elusive.

Yocom feels Lacey may have gotten a bad rap. “There is a possible distinction to be made between the traditional application of ‘through the green,’ and how Augusta National applied its rule,” Yocom says. “Why would Lacey, a man with decades of golf experience at the highest level, claim the rule applied to fairways and greens only, if it wasn’t so? Officials don’t just make this stuff up.” And if Lacey made a mistake, why didn’t he acknowledge it to Barkow? “There’s no shame in admitting it,” says Yocom, “because officials make mistakes all the time.”

It’s possible, Yocom believes, that when rules officials were briefed on the local rule Sunday morning, they might have been orally instructed to construe the phrase “through the green” as applying only to balls embedded in fairways and greens, notwithstanding that phrase’s more expansive defined meaning in the Rules of Golf. That scenario would be consistent with what Lacey told Barkow.

Over the years, the dispute drifted away from public consciousness until Venturi rekindled it with his 2004 book. Lacey’s actions were criticized anew. Venturi and Palmer were still around, and the book reopened scars for both men. The sensitive Venturi was accused of exhibiting sour grapes. Writers asked why Venturi had signed Palmer’s scorecard if he felt the ruling was wrong. Other pundits interpreted Venturi’s account as an accusation of cheating on Palmer’s part. Venturi vehemently denied this. And Palmer, viewed by the golf world as a paragon of golf ethics, was hurt by any suggestion he had won his first major by skirting the rules.

When Lacey died in 1979 while working in his garden, no one in Pinehurst appears to have given thought to the Masters controversy. Locals who knew him recalled other things about him. Lacey’s neighbor and friend, Pilot columnist Evelyn de Nissoff, remembered him as a man of “pleasant personality” and “quiet humor.” She had purchased Lacey’s treasured yellow Renault, which he had brought over from England. When encountering her at the post office, Lacey would invariably inquire, “How is the Renault working out?”

From all that is known, Lacey did not appear to have been overly anguished by what happened in the 1958 Masters. If he dwelled on it at all, he kept, as the Brits say, a stiff upper lip. And though his team may have been trounced in the ’51 Ryder Cup, Lacey managed to find the storybook ending anyway.