Clear Creek donation helps PGA Hope Ambassadors spread the word

By Ken MacLeod

When South Central Section PGA Hope ambassadors Carter Check and Waco Blakley participate in golf tournaments and events throughout the section, they can now do so in style.

Unveiled Wednesday at LaFortune Park were two Club Car Tempo Lithium Ion cars donated by Shawn Anderson, a member of the ownership team of Clear Creek Golf Car and Utility Vehicles. The patriotic wraps were donated by the South Central PGA Section led by executive director Brian Davis.

“As one of the largest local sponsors of the South Central section, we want to do everything we can to support all of the PGA Reach initiatives,” said Anderson, himself an Army brat growing up who was born in Germany and lived in Texas, Indiana, North Carolina, and Colorado before his parents settled in Oklahoma.

“PGA Hope is an amazing program. Getting to know Carter the last few years has been really fun. Those guys are super passionate and doing everything for exactly the right reasons.”

Check and Blakley are both veterans, with Blakley having fought for the U.S. Marine Corp and Air Force in both Iraq and Afghanistan and Check serving in the U.S. Army, are absolutely passionate about using golf to build connections and community and help alleviate the truly horrifying rates of suicide among their fellow vets, which Check estimates the actual number to be close to 34 per day.

Their South Central Chapter of PGA Hope will be the first in the country to have its own golf cars, Davis said.

The program offers golf through a developmental curriculum taught by PGA professionals who are trained in adaptive golf and military cultural competency. The program is funded through the PGA of America’s charitable foundation, PGA REACH, and supplemented by PGA Section foundations, so the cost of programming is free to all veterans. There are currently more than 215 PGA HOPE chapters across the country, and the program will positively impact more than 7,500 veterans annually including more than 400 in the South Central Section, one of the largest geographically including all of Arkansas, Oklahoma and the southern half of Kansas.

Both men work fulltime at the Eastern Oklahoma Veterans Administration Health Care System, Blakley as a process improvement coordinator and Check as a chaplain. Both said they were grateful to Clear Creek and the section for the cars and would put them to good use.

“The No. 1 killer of our military population is isolation and loneliness,” Check said. “Programs like PGA Hope foster community and connection. They directly counteract isolation and loneliness. Anything to get them off the couch and get them involved with others,  it directly counteracts everything that is a major risk factor that drives them toward suicide. So it’s super important.”

Check and Blakley explained that by getting veterans involved in golf, – and many of them are now passionate about the game – it not only lowers the suicide rate among veterans, but consequently among their families, as the rate of suicide among family members of veterans who have died by suicide is also extremely high, 175 percent higher than the population at large.

“That’s the beauty of something like golf,” Check said. “The beauty of having purpose in your life is it gives you the power to walk around potential problems almost as if they didn’t exist. When you play golf, you can’t be thinking about what happened 10 years ago. If you are, you’re not going to be really successful. If you can play a full 18 holes and realize that you have the power within yourself to not focus on what was but what is, then you realize you have the power to do this anytime, not just when your are golfing. It creates a sea of hope and that’s what the magic of this program is.”

Now they can spread the word in style by taking the cars to events throughout the section.

“It’s really cool to have these and just gives us more opportunity to talk about Hope and share the program,” Check said.

“We’re most certainly the first Ambassadors to have a partnership like this,” said Blakley “Veterans Day parades, tournaments, everywhere we can go these will help us spread the word about PGA Hope.”

PGA Hope classes are conducted regularly at many courses in Oklahoma including LaFortune Park, Indian Springs CC, Bailey Ranch in Owasso, Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City, Gaillardia CC in OKC, Windy Trails in Altus and Fort Sill GC. To learn more or sign up, go to www.southcentral.pga.com.