Coming Full Circle
Ed Dougherty, who spent time at Fort Lewis, brings a gaggle of Champions Tour pros to a clinic in Lakewood.
Just over 37 years ago, Ed Dougherty left the U.S. Army and Fort Lewis with a weathered set of Wilson Staff golf clubs and the rest of his life in front of him.
Never in his wildest dreams did he think he'd return to the area as a professional golfer.
"I can't believe somebody's asking me for an autograph near the course where I started to play golf," he said with a huge grin.
"It's a pretty humbling experience."
Dougherty, along with fellow Champions Tour golfers Dana Quigley, Allen Doyle, Jim Thorpe and Lonnie Nielsen hosted a free clinic at American Lake Veterans Golf Course in Lakewood, Tuesday. The pros are in the area for the Greater Seattle Boeing Classic. But instead of spending the morning playing practice rounds at the TPC at Snoqualmie Ridge, the five pros, along with emcee Tom Randall, showed off their swings, passed out free golf gear, gave free tips and elicited plenty of smiles and laughs among the 150 people in attendance. "I was very thrilled with the turnout," said Dougherty, who owns a PGA tour win and two Champions tour wins on his lengthy resume. "I was very apprehensive (Monday) night because what if we do something like this and nobody comes."
His fears were quelled earlier as the golf course's little parking lot overflowed with cars and the small driving range was packed with people. How the event came to happen involves a mixture of nostalgia and fortuity.
A year ago, following the inaugural Boeing Greater Seattle Classic, Dougherty and his wife were driving from Seattle to Portland. As he headed south down I-5, he decided to show his wife some of the roots. “I told her I’m going to show her where I started playing golf,” Dougherty said, He pulled into the old course at the Fort Lewis without a detour or directions. In the cool of the summer evening, Dougherty and his wife walked up and down the same fairways he did in the months following his returns from Vietnam.
“They wouldn’t let me play baseball, so I had my dad send me his old golf clubs”, Dougherty said. “ I just thought golf was something I could do to help me get through the army.”
It was all a little too much for Dougherty, who, with his Popeye sized forearms, still looks like he could crank out 100 push-ups at the behest of a superior.
"It was a little bit of a tearjerker,” he said. "I kept thinking that I didn't have dreams this big 37 years ago."
The next Sunday in Portland, as Dougherty walked around the putting green, he heard somebody say, "Well, Eddie's been in Vietnam, let's get him over here" Dougherty turned around to see a young man — Tim Gorden — in military dress, having recently returned from the war in Iraq. Gorden and his father, Chuck, a retired general in the U.S. Army, were honorees at the tournament.
"The first thing I told (Tim) was congratulations for coming home safe," Dougherty said "Because it wasn't quite the same attitude when I came home from Vietnam" Dougherty then told the younger Gorden about his days at Fort Lewis. To his surprise, Tim informed of him of his father's former rank.
After the initial meeting, Dougherty and General Gorden talked briefly following the final round of the tournament.
"He handed me his card and I told him, 'Since you're a general, there's no rules for the ruler so you can get things done. I'd like to come back and do something at the base,'" Dougherty said Gorden took Dougherty's phone number and didn't forget the offer, but he won't quite take the credit for the event "I'm not the one who got this started, he was," Gorden said "I couldn't be happier with how it worked out" Gorden now hopes Dougherty's group will be back again next year.
"I'm going to talk to him about it," Gorden said "It was such a great turnout These Champions Tour pros are the greatest guys in the world" When asked if he'd make another return to his roots, Dougherty didn't hesitate.
"In a heartbeat," he said "I'd come back in a heartbeat"
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