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Introduction

 

When I was young I had zero interest in my family’s history. I thought little about what my parents had gone through when they were young, though both had grown up during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Their childhood must have been filled with many challenges. My dad enlisted in the Navy in 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was stationed in the South Pacific. He told my brother Bobby and myself, when we were children, that he had not seen military action when he was on active duty. Though years later, when Dad was long gone, the inside flap on his Blue Jacket Manual, the Navy manual of rules and regulations, were hand scribbled notes on all the places he visited during the war.

Iwo Jima. Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Okinawa.

Could he have been at these locations, sites of the bloodiest battles in World War 2, and not seen action? And, if he had not seen action, could he have possibly not known what had happened? Tens of thousands of young American soldiers had died.

I don’t think so.

You see, like most young people, I was too selfish, too self-absorbed in my own life to be concerned with what had happened to my parents in their youth. Let alone be interested in my Grandparent’s life and what they had lived through. The rest of my family’s history? Ancestors who lived before my parents and grandparents?

I never gave them a second thought.

My grandparents, on my mother’s side, who we visited every Sunday during the late 50’s and early 60’s lived in a two bedroom, one bath house that fronted the Great South Bay in Nassau County, Long Island. In the summer months my younger brother and I swam for hours in the canal in our back yard. During winter months, when the canal froze, we’d skate and play ice hockey. Plus, our grandparents were the ones who gave Bobby and I our first adult sized bicycles, so we would happily ride for hours. I looked forward to our Sunday visits.

Did I know anything about my grandparent’s life? Where they had grown up? Where they met and fell in love? How they survived and raised their kids during the Depression? Their likes and dislikes? What they did for work? Or what were their hobbies? And on and on and on.

I knew nothing about them, nor did I want to.

One of the memories that I still have of them was that they were two old, overweight people with white hair. Neither talked much, and it seemed that they didn’t say much to each other. And since there was only one bathroom in their house and the toilet emptied into a septic tank, then into a leach field in the yard, it always stunk to high heaven in there. That’s what I remember. How the bathroom smelled.

That changed when I was about fifty years old. I’m a voracious reader, I’ve read 100+ books a year for the past 55 years, and by reading I had grown and learned. I learned how to be less selfish. How to think of others, and their feelings, before I thought of myself. How to look at things from another person’s point of view. How to empathize. How to give back. How to be of service to others.

I wanted to learn more about my parent’s and my grandparent’s lives. I wanted to learn about my heritage, about my ancestors. Did Dad see action in World War 2? I wanted to find out. Up until that time I had believed that my grandparents last name was Doyle and that they were of Irish descent. Then my mom, your great-grand-mother, who lived to the age of ninety-five, told me one day that her father changed their last name from Azzaretti to Doyle in the 1920’s because Italians in New York were discriminated against and denied work because of their nationality. And that before moving to the States in the early 1920’s he was a chef in Milan.

How fascinating! What was that like for him? My grandfather was a real person. He had a life.

I wanted to know more.

In a flash, my heritage had changed. Until that point I had believed that I was 100% Irish. (My dad’s parents had immigrated from Mayo County, Ireland, around 1900.) Now, I find out that I’m at least 25% Italian.

The only one still alive that could tell me more was my mom, Edna. And the only knowledge that she had was what was inside her head. Nothing had been written down.

But, as old people tend to do, their bodies give out and they pass away. And when they do pass, all of the knowledge and wisdom that they’ve accumulated from decades of living and learning disappears with them.

A shame.

Let’s talk about wisdom. By definition it is experience, knowledge gained, good judgement, common sense and insight. The only way to gain wisdom is to grow old and learn from what life teaches. Life is difficult, and once a person understands that and is open to learning does one begin to accumulate wisdom.

Old people tend to be wiser than the young. Plus, they can pass down wisdom to the generations after them and save the young, possibly, (if the young are willing to listen) of having to go through some of life’s difficulties.

So, when I was fifty, I started to ask questions, look deeper, write letters, join DNA sites that tell you without a doubt who you are related to, all in an effort to learn more about my ancestors and their lives. In my late sixties I started thinking….. My wife and I are blessed with seven wonderful grandchildren. Wouldn’t they, hopefully someday, want to know more about their parents and grandparents? Amelia, my wonderful wife, has two grown children Kristen who is forty and Nick, thirty-six, and, at the time of this writing, four grandchildren. Emmitt who is thirteen, Asher is twelve, Tyson is almost two, and another grandson who will be born in several months’ time. My son, TJ, or Thomas James Lyons IV, and his wife Teresa have three children: Tommy 5 who is six, (Or Thomas James Lyons V) Lily who is four and Leia just turned two. (Both Lily and Leia are named after Star Wars characters.) Someday they may want to know more about the lives of their grandparents. And, if they took an interest, say, at the age of fifty, well, then Amelia and I will be long gone. Who could tell them about our lives?

It got me to thinking and an idea took seed in my brain.

I could write a book about “dear old gramps”, as Tommy 5 playfully calls me. I’d write about my life and the life of others in our family history, just in case, someday, our grandchildren show an interest in the lives of their family ancestors. Then they’d have a book at their fingertips.

Now I am in my mid-seventies.

It’s time to write this book.

 

Much of my life revolves around the game of golf. I’ve been playing the game for 60+ years. I’ve been fortunate enough to have had some success at the state, and the national, level. I was never good enough to make it to the PGA tour when I was a young man, but you couldn’t tell me that. I thought that I could practice, practice, practice ….. get better at the game …. and join the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, Tom Kite, Tom Weiskopf, and many other of my idols out there on tour.

At the time, I was not good enough. Not even close. But, that didn’t stop me from keeping my head in the clouds. It didn’t stop me from dreaming. Nor did I let it stop me from trying my best, to achieve my dreams.

I was almost good enough to get out on the Senior PGA tour, a tour for the best golfers in the world fifty plus years of age, in 1999, when I turned fifty.

The best players in the game could beat me when I was in my twenties. That doesn’t mean that they can still beat me when we are all in our fifties. (Let that sink in kids.)

During my lifetime I’ve made eight holes-in-one and I’ve made five double eagles. (A two on a par five) I’ve qualified for prestigious USGA national events. I carried a plus handicap (better than a scratch golfer) for a dozen years. I’ve played in four Senior Tour Qualifying schools and, one time, in 2000, I almost made it through to the finals.

Golf imitates life.

To be good, really good at golf, takes dedication, years of hard work, the ability to handle multiple failures, plus the ability to bounce back from those failures.

Just like life.

The game takes many years to learn how to play properly. There are no shortcuts on the road to playing great golf. You have to put in the work and the time.

Just like life.

You have to dig your golf game out of the dirt by hitting tens of thousands of practice balls. You have to hit tens of thousands of chips, putts, pitch shots, full shots. Plus, you have to learn from your mistakes and improve your technique, mind, attitude, and your results. There are no shortcuts to being successful at golf. It takes hard work.

Just like life.

Life is difficult, kids. Don’t forget that. It’s supposed to be difficult. But, as soon as you realize and accept that life is difficult, you’ve already turned the corner; you’ve taken the first steps towards improving your life.

It’s difficult to succeed in life, in your work career, your marriage; it’s hard work to succeed at your relationships, hard work to be a good parent. Once you accept that, and the sooner you put in the time and hard work, the better chance you’ll have of success.

Just like golf.

The harder and more difficult the journey, the more joy, fulfillment, and happiness you’ll get back when you succeed.

 

Playing golf well teaches and prepares us for success in many walks of life. Golf teaches: patience, discipline, perseverance, resiliency. As this book continues we’ll go over multiple examples of each. You have to be determined, you can never quit, or skimp on effort. You should plan, prepare; the game humbles us and it teaches us good morals, work ethics, and it tests our character and promotes honesty.

All of the above attributes are necessary to succeed in golf, and to succeed in real life.

There are no shortcuts.

A great man, now deceased, named Sandy Tatum, once described golf as a “life extender.” Sandy, in the mid 1940’s played on a national golf championship team while attending Stanford University. He was also involved in the design and building of Spanish Bay Golf Links in Monterey California, having worked with golf pro Tom Watson on the project. Plus, he helped restore Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco from a badly conditioned public muni course into the remodeled championship course that it is today which hosts PGA tour events, major championships and international golf competitions as it does today.

Sandy played good golf well into his nineties. To do that you have to pay attention to your health. You have to eat healthy, stay slim and fit, exercise regularly, maintain flexibility, core strength, and balance, practice as often as an aging body will allow, then go out and play the game often and with joy.

You could accurately say that one of the ways to live a long healthy life is to strive to play the best golf that you can play for as long as you can.

Golf is a life extender.

 

Since much of my life revolves around the game of golf, what better way is there to tell you kids more about “dear old gramps” than to chronicle my sixty-five-year-long love affair with golf, within this book? It is impossible, I believe, for me to describe my life-long connection to the game with anything less.

If I can pass down a slice of wisdom, maybe just one nugget of good advice, that may save one of you the pain of having to learn a difficult life lesson the hard way, then writing this book will have been well worth the effort.

 

Love,

“Dear old Gramps.”

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