The Golf Gypsy: My Mother's Words

The Stapp Family at the Country Club about 1966-67
Jonya, Johnie, Helen, Letty

Monday Evening

(June 1967)

Dear Letty,

Just read your note since your phone call and am I glad Mabel is two doors down from you. (Mabel Hotz was my childhood dream golf mother, and one of the first women inducted into the Oklahoma Golf Hall of Fame.)

Back story:

That Monday, June 5,  I qualified for the Women' Oklahoma State Amateur held at Oakwood Country Club in Enid. However, I did not qualify for Championship Flight and my opportunity to win the state championship dissolved,.  My disappointment led to tears of frustration and for me humiliation. 

I had played golf for two years on the men's golf team at NEO. I held a 2 handicap and could play to it on the difficult MGCC course, but my nerves won that day. I was 19 years old. That evening, from the hotel  room in Enid, I called home, collect, sobbing to my mother. 

NOTE: My researching curiosity won out and I searched for the write up on this State Amateur. We played Oakwood CC at 6,529 yards for that championship. I suppose that comes from not having forward tees. I qualified for President's fight and took runner-up after Jarita Askins beat me 2 and 1. 

I would go on to play in the WOGA Championship in 1968 for the last time as a youngster, who felt the weight of winning for her father, her mother, and every member of the country club.

Mother continues:

Letty, the 91 is no disgrace--golf is just a game for some, but it is a way of life for us, and that is why we take it so seriously. Daddy makes his living at it, but you probably won't and neither will Jonya. Just remember that at the end of the day, being a good sport and associating with all those nice people is most important.

You saw Billy Casper (in Tulsa at Southern Hills) smile when he missed a putt and smiled when his opponents made one--you have been looking for an ideal to follow--I think he would be the one I would choose if I were 19 again. He also does not drink and I want you to be a clean pure girl athlete.

Daddy was at the river fishing when you called. In fact he is not back yet.

Just as you told me you "bombed out" and I was thinking you shot a 110-112 or something like that, Jonya sat down by the phone with blood streaming all over the place. She had used an old razor and sliced about two layers of skin from her ankle. I had to put Merthiolate on it and she yelled so loud that on top of your disappointment I thought I would have a nervous breakdown. 

We are calming down watching TV now and I'm getting my nerves put in their proper place now.

Letty, if you are still nervous tomorrow go to a movie. Maybe Louise (Stekoll Johnson) or Rinda (Koppitz) would like to go with you. It is best to get out of this world sometimes. A good book might do the same therapy. 

None of the Miami players did any good at the Hill Blast  tournament in Bartlesville, But just think Ben Hogan bought Daddy's team and we mingled with movie stars and golf stars for two days. 

Are the Bell's there? Tell them all hello--

I got Dad to stay home all day and he is rested. Now if I could get him to a movie.  I'd really be living. 

Well it's time to put Jonya's T.V. dinner on. She has stopped bleeding.   

Remember darling--the golf does not matter.  It is the gladness of your mind that is really life.   Smile win or lose.

Love,

Mama cita

 (Mother loved to use the Spanish language and thus my sister, Jonya, is fluent in Spanish, and spent her life living out some of Mother's dreams.)

Little did we know that my younger sister, Jonya, would go on to the Oklahoma Junior Girls Championship in 1968 Oklahoma Junior Girls Golf Championship

Luckily, like kids and children do, I lived and learned about life through competitive golf. I, also, became better golfer and competitor as it as I grew into adulthood. 

My mother's letter has traveled with me from Enid, to Ft. Hood, to Kansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and back home to Oklahoma. Her words have never left my heart and to this day I seek a good book or sometimes a movie to escape my worries..

My parents died in 1989 and I miss them everyday, but I must add that Dad has certainly entertained my mind when I am playing golf.  He gave me the nickname of Tizzy, does that tell you something about my scattered brain as teen?  

Our Fall-Out Shelter

 

 

Only a few days ago we visited graves and attended parades to remember and celebrate the lives of our men and women who have given their lives for each of us in the United States of America and many European countries. My mind traveled back in time to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, a time that created fear in the hearts of many Americans. 

I created a post on Facebook--

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

and then continued to think and recall the fears of war during my childhood.  Would I be dead some day soon, before I could even drive a car?

Beginning in mid-1950's my father and our family would drive to the Miami Country club to open the doors for people in the neighborhood seeking shelter from the storm. One year we learned afterwards that the three story dark red brick Fullerton home on East Central and Elm st. had been hit. I knew the Fullerton's were not in the shelter that night, and it worried me that Billy, my classmate, could have been hurt. The news the next day reassured us that no one was injured and that the storm hit the north side of the house. Otherwise, it was an exciting time for the kids because we were allowed to run in and out of the men's and women's basement locker rooms. 

KGLC blared loudly on various radios that people brought with them.  Depending on the length of time in the basement Dad would sometimes sell pop or other snacks to the families. 

 

History changed. After the Civil Defense became active, the club was no longer used as a place of shelter and the talk of our parents centered on building "Fallout Shelters" that could also be tornado shelters. 

1961-63 became a pivotal time in our history, and my parents, along with the Dahl family and others in town, took the Soviet threats seriously. Driving the Muntz, Dad's race car, my father made it an adventure to find a suitable shelter and safety for his family.

The awning covers the bomb shelter entrance.  

By summer of 1962 a "fallout shelter" had been dropped into the ground at 209 H NE.  Mother filled it with the proper foods and toiletries. (We didn't know all the dangers.)   It was my job to remind her to change the foods every six months.  It was a schedule we kept throughout my high school years.  And, yet, I only wished to live to be 16 and legally drive a car. On a personal note, there was a multiple choice question on my driver's test December 26, 1963 that asked how low we should let our gas tanks drop before refilling. The correct answer was refill at a half-a-tank. The logic being that we would need that much gas to drive to the caves in Missouri for safety.

In retrospect our naivety stuns me. I grew up in a culture of families who had survived world wars, early pandemics, and the devastating recession/depression of the 1930's. We planned to survive and live. There was a great future ahead for all who worked.

Our optimism can be seen in our history as the Civil Defense advised schools and communities to build shelters. I don't personally remember the short movies showing how to conduct air-raid drills.

However, I vividly recall hiding under my desk in fifth grade at Roosevelt and looking out the window wondering if I would see the atomic bomb go off before it killed me. In junior high and high school we were instructed to go to the hall ways and duck and cover. As a young girl wearing tight skirts and blouses, I found it difficult to squat properly and remain in position any length of time. I wasn't the least bit worried about dying, I was more concerned with my slip showing. 

This Getty Image is much larger than our reality.

Our bomb shelter was a steel tank dropped into the ground covered with cement, much like our present day tornado shelter buried in the corner of or garage, with a ladder and opening a foot above ground. The square opening and steel top with lock inside to keep strangers out made it challenging to lower food and supplies to the shelter. (During those years girls did not wear jeans. I had summer shorts or dresses.)

Our shelter contained a bathroom at the far end, two pull down bunk beds on each side of the tank, built in storage units under the beds (built by my father). Any wall space left over contained food, water, first aid items, and decks of cards to play. I do not recall how the shelter was lighted, but we did have a battery powered radio. We sat on the beds or the storage unit underneath. Mother put Tang in the shelter instead of Kool-Aid because we learned from experience that we would not drink Kool-Aid without sugar added, and Tang was ready to mix, sugar, flavors, and water.

Mother kept a list of all items purchased in the construction of the shelter.

Over the years we made several trips to the shelter when the tornado sirens blared, otherwise, I invited friends over and we spent the night in the deep deep darkness of the shelter, creating memories that we would live to tell about. 

 The heyday of the fallout shelter occurred during the administration of John F. Kennedy, which saw both a rise in international tensions and Kennedy's advocacy of shelters as part of the American response. During the Berlin Crisis of 1961, precipitated by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's aggressive moves toward West Berlin, Kennedy gave a nationally televised speech explaining the gravity of the situation. He also endorsed the construction of fallout shelters, saying, "In the event of an attack, the lives of those families which are not hit in a nuclear blast and fire can still be saved if they can be warned to take shelter and if that shelter is available." If further inducement for building shelters was needed, it was provided fifteen months later by the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the world came closer to nuclear war than it ever had before.

* https://www.encyclopedia.com/media/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/fallout-shelters