Tell me about your introduction to golf - what inspired you to try it, when and where did you learn, and who taught you?

I started playing golf when I was about thirteen years old. I bought myself a few golf clubs and one of my Dayton Daily newspaper route customers took me to Kitty Hawk Golf Course to get me started.  I really liked playing sports of all types, so in some ways, this was just another one to try, but it was watching Jack Nicklaus playing on TV that provided the real spark. Jack was the longest hitter on tour, but his ability to hit long irons was especially exciting.  Probably because I wanted to “be like Jack”, I’m pretty good at hitting a 3-iron, unlike most men my age that have four or five woods in their bag to avoid the longer irons.  Two of my original clubs were Jack Nicklaus signatures, including the wedge I still use, having had it re-shafted and regripped numerous times.  Not many people have a fifty-three-year-old club in their bag.

Most of what I learned about golf came from those TV broadcasts and the rest by playing lots of rounds over the years.  There are a lot of rules to golf from who hits first to where you can and can’t ground your club to different types of hazards.  You also learn that searching for your ball next to a pond in Florida can lead to an unexpected encounter with an alligator.  Fortunately, the gator was not looking to eat at that moment.

I taught myself the mechanics of the swing from where I wanted to place the ball in my stance based on the club I was using and how I wanted to hit a shot.  Being the analytical type, I figured out that the golf ball doesn’t know that I want to hit a low ball or that it knows I’m keeping my elbow tucked in.  The golf ball only responds to the clubhead and as it’s striking the ball it has a direction, velocity, and acceleration along all three axes, and a spot on the clubface where it contacts the ball.  Knowing how to manipulate those ten variables teaches you what you need to hit a high fade or low ball into a wind, not that actually doing those things is easy, but it’s better trying to convince your golf ball verbally.  Learning to hit shots from a sand trap took a while, mainly because Kitty Hawk had bunkers filled with heavy and packed brown sand, and the only way to hit the ball was chipping it.  When I started playing courses with light and fluffy sand, chipping failed miserably. I learned on TV that the proper sand shot did not involve hitting the ball, instead, you hit the sand and the sand propels the ball up and forward.  You enter the sand two inches behind the ball and make a full golf swing, adjusting how hard you swing to get the distance you need.  I now refer to green-side bunkers as “my happy place”, I’m that confident that I’ll put the ball somewhere near the hole.

I’ve been fortunate to play a number of gorgeous golf courses including Pinehurst, the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, Wailea in Maui, Firestone in Akron, Bay Hill, TPC Sawgrass, and Innisbrook in Florida, and Valhalla in Kentucky.  But playing Pebble Beach stands out as my favorite with its epic views of the Pacific Ocean trying to distract you from focusing on your next shot.  I get to relive that experience yearly when the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is broadcast, remembering the good shots, the ones that ended up over a cliff, and the birdie I made at the par-5 fifteenth. 

When, and how, did you get your first car?

As best as I can recall, I bought my first car during my freshmen year at Wright State University, so that’s most likely early in 1975.  I had used my mother’s big yellow Chevrolet station wagon, but really needed my own car so Mom didn’t have to go without as much.  I had a modest amount of cash saved, less than one thousand dollars, so I searched for something no more than that and found a light blue Opel Kadett with a manual transmission offered by a guy on Greenmount Boulevard in Oakwood that looked like a good fit.  

While not that many young men at the time could drive a stick shift, I had taught myself that art on my older brother Greg’s Chevy Vega, not that it was a very smooth process.  I remember grinding the gears, drifting backward a bit when starting up a hill, and the many times I stalled the car and listened to the car horns of unappreciative drivers.  I knew the drill.  Rev the engine a bit, let out the clutch until it starts to grab, and work that balance to slowly get going.  But I was getting nowhere.  Out of desperation for a solution, I had Greg explain what was really going on and learned about the operation of the clutch plates, how the clutch pulled apart when pushed and how the gears in the transmission had to line up at matching speeds to smoothly transition from one gear to the next.  That’s all it took.  Now that I knew what I was trying to accomplish, the rest was easy.  Almost like magic, the grinding and drifting and stalling disappeared.  I have a similar story about skiing, but that’s really off-topic.

Dad drove me to Oakwood to help me with my first car purchase.  What I learned that day was my Dad really liked to negotiate, unafraid to get up and walk out if needed.  It would have been a really good idea if he had let me know that beforehand as I wanted to strangle him when I thought I was going to miss out on my “dream car” because he couldn’t get another few bucks knocked off the price.  All ended well and I drove home with the car I would drive through most of my college days, lasting until I bought a Volvo 164E after I started working full-time at Wright State.

 

If you could go back in time and give your teenage self some advice, what would you tell him?

I asked myself this very question two and a half years ago and wrote my younger self the following letter and published it on my Life Experiences blog on my sixty-third birthday.  I don’t think I can say it any better now.

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October 8, 2018

To: Paul Moorman @ 18

From: Paul Moorman @ 63

Dear Self,

Happy birthday!

If the theories we’ve learned about time travel are true, you will never be able to read this letter, but in case this does somehow fall into your hands, I’ll try not to give too much of our future away. But hey, now that you know you’ve made it to our sixty-third birthday, maybe I’ve given too much away already, but I’ll try to be careful. You’ve already figured out that the co-ed Chaminade-Julienne is really different than our all-male Chaminade. You’ll get through it and have stories to tell the rest of our life. College will be much better. We’ll really hit our stride.

The simple message of this letter is “don’t change a thing”. Not that life won’t throw us curve balls along the way and there are things I wish we could have avoided, but any deviation might derail the life we have now. We have a wonderful wife who is truly the love of our life, our friend, our travel companion and our soulmate. We have two awesome children that we’re immensely proud of. So does our wife. I guess that gave away a little history. Worth the gamble.

We’re in pretty good shape at 18-years old and we are about to have the best suntan of our life. Our senior picture will be our best photo ever. Our passion for running, albeit interrupted at times, will be lifelong. It’s not really exercise to us, just a way to relax, think and enjoy the landscape. We’ll run some long ones, we’ll run some pretty fast ones, but mainly we’ll just run for fun. Certainly don’t change that.

Most of the plans we’ve made over the years did not work out. That’s good, because things worked out even better. Our expected career choice did not pan out, but what we end up pursuing is so much better. That cute girl in class doesn’t work out either, the first of a few like that. But don’t change a thing, because we’re waking up every morning with the best one.

Back in your day we’re pretty much a mountain vacation guy. Our career will change that as we travel, more at times than others, and we explore a decent chunk of the world. We’ll play some scenic golf courses, stand at the top of majestic ski slopes and watch sunsets settle over beautiful beaches. So while life will be challenging, and at times stressful beyond belief, it’s not without its share of really fun experiences.

We retired a month and a half ago because we wanted to and could afford to do so. We’re healthy and looking forward to the freedom and adventures. Our career morphed over the years and we can continue to play with, oops almost gave that away, into retirement.

I’m going out to check the mailbox for a letter from our 85-year-old self. But if there isn’t one there, I’ll just assume time travel really wasn’t solved or we’re just too busy to write.

Hang in there. Don’t change a thing. Everything works out the way it’s supposed to. And it’s pretty great.

Happily ours,

Paul @ 63

Tell me about some of your favorite Easter memories. What made them so special?

Easter is the celebration of Jesus rising from the dead and a cherished holiday, its only rival being Christmas.  The entire family would dress up in their best clothes, attend Mass at Our Lady of Mercy and go out for brunch.  Our family did not eat out very often so that in and of itself was special.  It’s also a kind of unofficial start to spring, so by Easter, the days were getting longer, temperatures warmer and we were a couple of months away from our summer break from school.  

A day or two before Easter my siblings and I would get to color a few eggs for the Sunday afternoon hunt and deciding what color, or better yet, colors to use caused much deliberation.  A hard-boiled egg would be suspended on a copper wire which was bent to hold the egg on its bottom half.  If one color was desired, the egg would be carefully rolled off the wire at the bottom of the glass of dye where it would lay submerged, soaking up the dye.  The dye started out as a tablet, the proper amount of vinegar was added, and we would stare at the tablet as it slowly dissolved.  Deciding how long to leave the egg covered was crucial.  Too little and the egg would be pale and have to be dunked again.  Left too long, the egg would soak up too much dye and be darker than desired.  A bi-colored egg would require a strong and steady hand, holding it half-submerged for several minutes, allowing it to dry, and repeating the process on the remaining white side with another color.  I think making the Easter eggs was more fun than trying to find them after our parents hid them.  Inhaling vinegar to this day always takes me back.

My children grew up with the same thrill of coloring Easter eggs.  When they were very young it was easy to hide those eggs in places that they would initially overlook but obvious when they slowed down a bit.  But there are only so many places to hide eggs outdoors and they quickly learned where Dad liked to place them.  I had to get creative and discovered that kids, like all humans, don’t naturally look up and any hiding place above eye level was the same as being invisible.  The first year using my new method resulted in a very long hunt and a couple of frustrated kids.  They eventually caught on, of course, and like many things that make childhood special, they outgrow it and move on, but the memories last forever.

What was the hardest class you took in school (K-12)? Looking back, why do you think it was so difficult for you?

I was a pretty good student and really didn’t have all that much trouble with any of the classes I took through high school. I remember that early on I was very good at handwriting and spelling and would compete regularly with two girls in my class for who was the best. Math and science were always interesting to me and I would apply myself in those subjects the most. I was serious about school and for my entire third grade, if memory serves me correctly on the grade, I finished all my homework assignments in the minutes I had between one class and the next, never taking anything home. The only issue I had in grade school was my fourth-grade teacher, Sister Terrance, who had an issue with the top ten or so children in her class, and that was told to me by my father after a parent-teacher conference. He said to behave but agreed she was a piece of work. In college, I managed a 3.84 GPA, basically five A’s for every B, and nothing less than a B, although it was close in English and music. I’m not saying I’m all that smart, but I did apply myself and did pretty well. But one memory stands out to address the above question. The hardest class was Algebra II in high school. But not the entire class, just one chapter. I was cruising along ahead of schedule and hoped to begin calculus, which looked, and is, really cool. But one chapter took me three months before I could pass the test and move on. I don’t remember exactly what that chapter was about, but I think it had to do with factoring equations. After I squeaked through that, I finished the remainder of Algebra II without an issue. I think this algebra chapter was so difficult because I was trying to remember how to do the work instead of actually learning what I was trying to accomplish. That lesson served me well in college. I would work extra hard, particularly in the first few weeks of a semester, to completely understand the basics of what that class was teaching. Towards the middle of the semester I would ease off a bit as the material added to the stuff I really knew well and by the end of the semester, I was cruising along with good grades and at best needing only a half-decent score on the final exam to get an A. Finals week was the easiest. I would spend an hour or so reviewing details and then relaxing, confident that I knew the material hands-down. My way was 180-degrees opposite of how most people approached a semester, but it worked very well for me.

Growing up, who was your favorite aunt or uncle? Why was he/she so special to you?

There are a lot of choices to pick from with my Dad having two brothers and three sisters and my Mom having three sisters and one brother, not counting the oldest brother she never knew, who died before he turned five months old.  But the choice of favorite has to go to my Aunt Loretta, my Mom’s next oldest sister and six years her senior.  Like my Mom, Aunt Loretta was a very kind person and was always willing to sit down and have a chat.  Perhaps she is my favorite because we share the same birthday, October 8, and that somehow made her extra special.

Loretta married Joe Ryan and had five children.  Pat and Larry were much older than I was, but their two daughters, Mary and Nancy, were fairly close in age and are two of my favorite cousins.  Sadly, their first daughter, Barbara Ann, died ten days after being born.  It seems so sad, but losing a child was common back then.  Perhaps Grandpa Maurice and Grandma Clara helped her through her grieving, having been through it themselves.  Loretta outlived her husband by a dozen years before joining him in late 1984.

Being my favorite led me to name my daughter Laura after Loretta, although I don’t believe I ever told her mother that.  While searching for baby names similar to Loretta, my first choice was Lara, Superman’s Kryptonian mother’s name.  That didn’t fly, but my second choice, Laura did.  Besides being a lovely name, I figured that having a name that included two of the most difficult sounds for a child to make, L’s and R’s, would help in her speech development.  Who wouldn’t want to say their own name properly?