My Story--The Fire 1984

 

 

          It was 4am before the flames were high enough to rouse the neighbors.  Sirens rang as truck after truck sped through the streets to reach the raging fire.  The neighbors stood in nightgowns and thrown together layers of clothes, starring in awe as the 1927 Tudor structured clubhouse burned out of control like an angry lady poking a stick at mad dogs.

          With water hoses surging full blast from all angles, photographers shot pictures of the fire in the night, while word spread throughout Miami, Oklahoma that the club was burning.  Shortly after sunrise it became clear that flames had reached the fifth floor and were screaming through the roof.  Windows had exploded floor by floor, and the town had turned out to see the event, like a circus train unloading lions and tigers.

          It wasn’t known how or when the fire started on if anyone was inside.  The housekeepers from time gone by no longer lived on the fourth floor.  Cars had sometimes been left overnight by members too drunk to drive.  Had the men gone home or stayed behind to win a hand of cards?

          For me, the club was like a home, my touchstone of who I was, who I could be, and eventually who I would become.  We moved to Miami, Oklahoma in 1954 a few years after the flood of ’51.  As a child of five my greatest regret was that we missed the flood, but oh did I ever soak up the stories and seek out proof of flood lines on homes at every outing.

Ladies on the practice green on the north side of the country club.1960's

          My dad was the golf pro at the Miami, Ok. Golf and Country club  and the greatest teacher I would ever know.  In turn, I played golf and loved the fresh air, but it took hours of my life to prepare for tournaments.  Practice was my life as a teen, whereas, my sister was a natural and still has an easy flowing flawless swing. (I must confess we both worked hours on the practice tee. Golf is never easy, even for a person with natural swing.)

 

1967 South-side main entrance with our blue station wagon that would take me to college in 1967 sits to the left of the entrance.

         I went to work in the golf shop at thirteen.  Tuesday through Saturday I opened the shop by sun up in those summer months.  From 2:00 till dinner I played or practiced my golf game. By the time I was a full-fledged teenager I had very little time to drag main, shop with friends, watch “As the World Turns”, or date. What I did have were the friends I made at golf tournaments in those years and the experiences of playing at the highest level of junior golf in 1960's before Title IX.

          Part of me always wanted to be like everyone else, but the other part was willing to stand alone and just be me.  I didn’t know who me was or would become.

          At nineteen, 1967, I left home for college at LSU to complete a teaching degree. Being immature, thinking I was smarter than my professors, I came home in the summer of 1968 married and left home for Ft. Hood, Texas.  Five years later I was a mother of a beautiful child, but divorced, uneducated, and alone. I left home again, and worked my way through college and degrees.  As a librarian, teacher, and mother I began to entertain and teach through storytelling and puppetry.  And we laughed.

          The stories told, laid the next layer of asphalt for the road I would take.  I found those universal truths of stories to be healing for the human spirit.  Listening to the laughter of the crowd rejuvenated me.  Listening to my daughter mimic me as she retold those stories to her dolls and friends, also made me realize how our children watch in detail our every move.

          It was the stories that led me home that weekend the club burned.  On a Sunday July 16, 1984 I drove from Norman, OK in a green Toyota loaded with kids, puppets and books and drove straight to the club.  I needed to feel the soil of my soul and show my children a part of me.  On the horizon I saw only two chimneys.  One four story chimney stood in the center of the broken brick shell, ashes smoldering, people still standing rows deep in the drive way watching. The second chimney stood alone on the west side of the building that connected the dance floor and porches to the main building.  Fire trucks and traffic blocked my entrance.

 

North-side from the putting green.

          I parked on the street and walked quietly cautiously toward the smoldering structure, my broken lady. My children ran ahead. 

 

July 23, 1984 Dad, Johnie Stapp, myself, daughter Katy Rains, and stepson Michael Watt.

     When my father saw me, the tears he had held off since the wee hours of the morning fell down his cheeks in rivulets flowing haphazardly.  The hugs and tears came from all directions.  All any of us could do was stand, stare, until at last we began to share.

          On Monday after teaching summer school at PSU, I returned to the club and parked near the yellow tape on the south side.  I followed the tape around a giant circle to the north-side and the entrance to the pro shop.  No lives had been lost, but, oh, so many memories danced in the clouds.  I stood outside the yellow tape. Then I heard a choking voice coming from the ashes that were heaped where the golf shop once stood, supporting the lofty building. From an angry grumble I heard these words,  “Where are you?  I know you’re here.  You’ve got to be here.”

          Quickly, I crossed the line and hollered, “Who are you?  What have you lost?”

          A deep angry voice returned, “It’s John.”

          “Dad?" I rushed through the door frame,  "I thought you were at home.”  

     Stepping into the ashes of golf shop door, I saw a bent over white-haired man swinging a rake wildly at a pile of ashes.  I thought for a moment his khaki jumpsuit was streaked in blood, but my imagination was vivid and dried red paint had the same effect.   Then I realized it was another man, named John, not my father. 

          “Oh my gosh, John, this is Letty Stapp, the pro’s daughter.  What have you lost?”  I asked fearfully.  He stopped, turned at me, and hollered,  “I’ve lost my putter.  She burned up, but I know I can find the mallet head.  Come here and help me, now.  You know where my bag was stored.”

          With two of us digging, and my clothes already covered in ash, we found the mallet head, no wooden shaft, no grip, nothing else to be retrieved.  With rake and mallet in hand we walked to the outside of the ropes and behind the yellow tape.  No words were spoken as we turned to look at shell.

          At last I said, “You know she was my home, my touchstone.  I can see myself and your children, all of us up there in the attic playing and spying on the world below.”

          “It was my home, too,” he replied.  “My father, James Coleman,  and George Coleman had her built.  I grew up there.  I know every nook and corner like the back of my hand.”  One by one we shared our stories through tears and laughter that spanned six decades.  Secrets had been shared.

          Then he placed his arm around my waist and said, “I’ve always said a man is just as old as the woman he’s touching.”  I laughed, for he was known to be a fox around women, but I knew that for a few moments in life we were both younger and shared a deep feeling for a burned out building called home.

 

*A true story by Letty Stapp Watt, as told for three decades on storytelling stages throughout the Midwest. 

**Later that week John Robinson drove to the farm where my parents lived and asked dad to remake his mallet head putter. It took a few weeks before my father found a wooden shaft that would work. 

***Sadly, my mother had finished updating the Miami Ladies Golf Association scrapbooks and delivered them to the ladies locker room a few days before the fire. Without pictures in that scrapbook I thought I had lost a part of me, but the memories floated back easily. In retirement, I took up the mantle (or mallet head) and wrote the history of my club from 1916 to 1984.

****Luckily, the club rebuilt and there are more stories to share. Click on this link to read our history: Miami, Ok. Golf and Country Club Stories

A Father--Daughter Story

Letty, age 4, captured on 8mm film, practicing on a hot summer day in Independence, Ks. 

As I write on this hot summer day (103 in the shade), I am reminded of my childhood years at Miami Country club teeing off at 2:00 in the heat of the day, after I finished working in the golf shop. I believe we called those days "scorching hot," rather than suffering the effects of the "heat dome." There was no air conditioning downstairs in the golf shop, but we did have a huge wall fan that pulled in the fresh air through the golf shop and kept the downstairs locker rooms cool and dry.  Old Bill and I would take turns, when no one was in the shop, and go stand in front of the blowing air to cool down our bodies. 

Occasionally, on Thursday afternoon's Dad would ask me to join his group of Kenny Richards, Marion Zajic, and Charlie Trussler, Doc Jackson and others. By 1965, after graduating from Miami High school, my handicap stayed in the low single digits. Playing golf with the men and having to hand over a 50 cent piece, if I lost a bet, made me a better competitor. Having a low handicap, also, opened the door for me to play in the USGA Jr. Girls Championship at Hiwan Golf Course in Evergreen, Colorado.  

Dad and I drove through Wichita, Kansas to pick up his sister, Della, and drove on to Evergreen, Colorado that day (without AC in the station wagon). Imagine our delight when we arrived in the cool mountain air. I played one practice round at Hiwan with dad and took copious notes along with the handout from the pro shop.

 

The two days of qualifying were the greatest eye openers of my short life. My tee shot could not reach the fairway. The fairway began 100 yards off the tee box. Dad and I had practiced it and so I knew to use my MacGregor 5 wood to hit out of the rough. Because I had been chipping golf balls in the evenings to clean up the driving range I was, and still am, very good at hitting the golf ball close to the pin.  I one putted many greens in those two days, but often finished the holes with bogies, not  pars.  Even though I did not make the cut line, I met some of the most dynamic young girls from all over the country, including Canada.

 

We played the golf course at 3,544 yards on the front nine, 3,568 yards on the back nine for 7.112 dynamic massive yards.

That last day I watched as my dad allowed tears to trickle down his face when I posted my score. They were tears of pride not disgust. Discovering how proud my father and his sister were of my game of golf and fortitude that day made me feel like I could climb a mountain. I had never won a championship in our Oklahoma Junior events. My dream was to make people at the club proud of me. Attaching dreams to goals is not easy for a teenager. 

On a humorous note, I realize that my short game became my strength because the temperatures in July and August soared to the high 90's and 100's regularly, making it, too, miserable to hit hundreds of golf balls in the afternoon.  Salt tablets and gallons of water from water spigots on the golf course kept us going. Mother learned about serving Tang in the mornings to her active family, and that helped us better survive the heat. 

Golf Gypsy: My Mother's Words explains how much my mother suffered through those growing years with Jonya and me. 

L to R: Rinda Koppitz, Vicki Bell, .., Janice Bell.. 
Letty Stapp On the steps of the Broadmoor
Golf Course and Hotel (1966) 

During the summers of 1966 and 1967 I traveled with friends to Colorado Springs to play in the Broadmoor Ladies Invitational tournament. We never had the money to stay at the hotel, but we did manage quite well in a nearby stucco cottage motel sitting by a fast flowing stream from the mountains. During those summers my game was strong and solid, but the head game didn't develop until I was well into my fifties. I missed qualifying for Championship flight over and over. However, I learned that the other women in "President's Flight" or "A flight" with me were just as discouraged at their plight as I, and so the competition remained strong.

*Instagram: @golfgypsyok 

I found three old 8mm films that my father took at MGCC and elsewhere. I have converted them over the years to VHS, CD, and now a Flash Drive. This last attempt took several hours of viewing to see what we wanted to save. In the process, I discovered these old family videos from the early 1950’s when my father was the pro at Independence CC, Kansas. The blurry attempt came when I paused and took a photo of the picture on the screen, but the moment is captured and I felt proud of that childhood swing…which I would dearly love to have again. 

 

Taking Aunt Della

1965, 2013 The course and I have both changed and matured.

Our trip to the Solheim Cup in August also included a trip back in time for me, when we took a day to ourselves and played Hiwan Golf Course in Evergreen, Colorado.  I tried my best to remember the course from my only national level golf tournament, the  USGA Junior Girls Championship, held in July 1965 at Hiwan when I was 17 years old and a recent high school graduate.  I found an old typed information paper that gave a description of each hole, and I realized that we had played the course at 7,000 yards.  No wonder my boldest memory was of never flying the ball far enough off the tee shot to reach the fairway!  My fondest memory was that I putted like a champion, not well enough to qualify for match play, but I made putts back in 1965.  

While my brain puttered around looking for memories my heart thumped. Suddenly, I realized that my Aunt Della, my father's sister from Wichita, also traveled with dad and me to Hiwan in 1965.   Aunt Della, or Pheobe as dad had nicknamed her when they were children, loved chocolate

Aunt Della and Grandma 1947.

sundaes; dad and I loved malts, so every evening we treated ourselves to ice cream.  One afternoon the three of us went exploring the mountainside.  Finding an old abandoned lodge I watched with glee as my father lifted his sister, Phoebe, through an open window. Upon gaining her balance she walked over and let us in the door as if we'd made reservations. I giggled to my self-conscience teenage self, as I watched the two of them play and pretend like little children in this gigantic lodge.  Heavy white dishes lined the shelves, dust covered the kitchen, very little furniture remained in the living areas, and an occasional critter ran across the floor.  I didn't realize how sick and frail Aunt Della was until she died within the year.

Today while walking and playing like a child, picking up sticks, looking for sea shells, and watching the birds on the beach here at Hilton Head, South Carolina, and after forty-eight years passing, I realized that I'd taken Aunt Della on nearly every trip I've ever made since she died.  I'd never made that connection until this year.  After she died, I inherited a tiny diamond necklace that she had designed.  Della was always an artist at heart, and a great photographer who once studied under Margaret Burke White, and had known other artist in Taos, New Mexico in the 1940's.  I often wondered if she'd known Georgia O'Keefe, so I guess I'll just believe in my heart that their spirits were kindred.  

I looked down at the tiny diamond necklace that has traveled the world, and my heart thumped, once again.  I knew Aunt Della was smiling down and enjoying the view of the ocean, a rare treat for a girl who grew up in the heart of Kansas during the depression.  Della would have loved the beach, I know my dad always did.  As the years flow forward and Jack and I criss-cross the continent, I'll be taking Aunt Della,  storing up memories for another story, and taking pictures to share.  

Where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Calibogue Sound at Sunrise and high tide.