CityView Magazine

54 August 2022 Youth Orchestra & String Sinfonietta Registration is OPEN! To learn more or register by September 7, visit us at fayettevillesymphony.org! Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961. Read more of his columns at CityViewtoday.com. BILL KIRBY JR. A golden day of putting for the Lone Star boys T hey've been at this putting competition for 50 years, dating back to their high school days. It's more of a brotherhood than a competition, however. "It got more special every year," says Chip Howard, 69, when joining with longtime pals Randy Lavercombe, Ray Hurley, Jeff Paul, Brad Sewell, Paul Vance, Rick Fambro and Ben Haralson for their annual sojourn of one-upping one another on a Putt-Putt Fun Center course. "It's become a tradition." ey are Texans, and they've been at this for 50 years testing their putting skills at Putt-Putt franchise courses in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Savannah, Georgia; Estes Park, Colorado; and Casper, Wyoming, as well as Lone Star courses in Garland, Carrollton, Mesquite, Richardson, Austin, Tyler, Fort Worth, Webster and Houston. is year, they chose Cumberland County, where the late Don Clayton founded the franchise system in 1954 near Fort Bragg Road and Bragg Boulevard. e old course is no longer there, but the boys from Texas got as close as they could to the home of what once was known as Putt-Putt Golf Courses of America/International by staging their 54- hole competition on June 8 at the Putt-Putt Fun Center on Footbridge Lane at Millstone Shopping Center in Hope Mills. "ere will be a group of seven individuals that will be playing Putt-Putt at our park in Fayetteville-Hope Mills," said David Callahan, president of Putt-Putt LLC, in an email about Howard and his buddies. "ey are traveling from Texas, and this year is their 50th anniversary of playing together. ey decided to visit Fayetteville to memorialize this occasion. I plan to meet them and share more information about the company with them. Would you be interested in meeting these folks? I would welcome your participation." 'Oh, so close!' ey were seven of the most down-to- earth men you ever would want to meet and forever young with putters in their hands. ey were animated. Every putt mattered. Just like the professionals, Howard used plenty of body English to coax in every putt for a hole-in-one. "Oh!" he lamented when a putt rolled just shy of the cup. "So close!" e holes-in-one didn't matter all that much. is was about the camaraderie of old friends from high school and college just being together. "Ray, Jeff and I started it for the first three years," Howard says about Hurley and Paul. Others later joined the competition. "We started in 1972 in Garland, which is a suburb of Dallas. e fourth year, we made the mistake of inviting Rick Penny. He was an All-American in college and a retired high school basketball coach. And our winningest player with 23 victories." Penny couldn't make the trip for the 50th anniversary. Fambro was with his friends in Hope Mills, but he didn't take part in the competition because of a minor health matter and wound up at an urgent-care clinic. Otherwise, it was game-on for the 50th anniversary trophy. When the day was done, victory belonged to Howard with a 54-hole score of 117 and a six-stroke advantage. And it likely was a storyline for the weekly aernoon sports talk broadcast he does on WZNE radio in College Station, Texas. e broadcast, he says, is called "e Zone." Howard says there is a lot of conversation about those Aggies of Texas A&M University. "We're just nine guys who love one another," Howard says, "and Putt-Putt." ey're not going to win any Professional Putters Association national championships or amateur championships. Nor does that matter. ey are just the best of friends and always there for one another in the best and the worst of times. "It gets more special every year," Howard says. "e first one in the group to be gone, we're going to have the trophy named aer him." Epilogue Don Clayton was like a surrogate father to me. He taught me the joys of his business, his sport of putting, and politics, too. When he died at age 70 on April 17, 1996, I was among those who carried his coffin to his resting place in Lafayette Memorial Park. He would have been delighted in knowing the Lone Star putters were in this community. "God just smiled on us one more time," I can hear him saying. "God just smiled on us one more time." As for their visit to our community, Howard says it was the perfect place to celebrate the golden anniversary of their competition. "Because this is the home of where it all began," he says.

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