The Golf Game to Remember
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| Ponca City Country Club |
Quite often
my life lessons occurred as much off the course as on. On Saturday, June 4, 1966 I took a bus ride from Miami to Tulsa with a two hour layover before going on to Blackwell, Ok to meet my guest family. I learned how to rent a locker at the Bus Station to store my golf clubs and suitcase, while I ventured forth in the big city, alone, looking for a restaurant. I may have broken a few social norms when I seated myself in a fine dining room in a bustling department store, a few heads turned and I smiled.
On a Sunday morning June 5, Janice and Vicki Bell and I played our practice round at Ponca City CC in preparation for qualifying for the 1966 Women’s Oklahoma Golf Association State Amateur Championship, and my first adult tournament. I had taken copious notes on how to traverse the trees, hazards, and bunkers that I’d be facing. With my guest family, the Jack Bell family, I rode back to their home in Blackwell, Oklahoma for the evening.
While the family took their son, Rocky, to a ball
game I stayed at their home. Not being
one to sit, I grabbed my pitching wedge and shag balls and walked over to the
school yard across the street to practice.
My practicing on the school playground was distinctly disturbed by the turbulent murky green boiling clouds
building in the Southwest. Thunder roared in the distance and the hair on my arms felt the static in the air. My history and fascination with weather reminded me that Blackwell had once been nearly wiped off the map in the ‘50’s by a tornado.
I knew enough about clouds and weather to realize that this storm was
nasty, and moving toward me.
After gathering my shag balls, I headed inside and awaited my family. In the kitchen I opened a coke bottle on the cabinet top and began to pour it into a glass when I saw the tornado out the west facing window. It was a flat horizon with acres of farm land and fences that I faced. In the distance the tornado touched down tearing a barn into shreds before my very eyes. The sirens rang and the coke I was pouring found it’s way to the counter top not the glass. I noticed my hand was shaking.
I ran to the bedroom grabbed my precious notes along with my golf clubs, and hide in the hall closet. The storm raged outside and I shivered by myself inside. After minutes passed there was a banging at the front door and my heart thought I was being lifted in oblivion. Voices yelled, ”Letty, where are you?” Voices of Vicki and her mother, Corky Bell, flooded the tiny closet space and I saw light and friends. I crawled out that day only to have them put me in the car to drive to safety. More tornadoes were forming in the sky and the Bank in Blackwell had a basement. I held my notes closely (the golf clubs abandoned in the closet), only to realize that Jack Bell liked to chase tornadoes.
With extra coaching from his wife, Corky, we made our way back to the bank and settled down in the basement for the evening. In time, we all walked out of the bank to dark but clearer skies, and discovered that all was well. No one had been hurt and the only damage was to several barns and trees on the west side of town.
There must have been electricity in the air the next day as I qualified with a low round of 76 on June 6, 1966. I didn’t win medalist honors, but I didn’t need to. I had lived through a tornado by myself, and played one of my best rounds ever the next day. I thought I could conquer the world.
The next day an "old lady" of about 50 beat me on the 17th hole and sent me into Consolation flight. I do not remember the outcome because I remained on cloud 9 having played the best game of my life on June 6, 1966.
That same summer I shot my first par round on the front nine at the Miami Country club. At that time Hattie Wall and I were the only two women to have shot par. A few years later my sister, Jonya, also shot par 36 on the front nine. ( I believe we called them the White Tees. They were the farthest ones back from the creek on hole #2.) When the club burned in 1984 everyone lost everything inside the building. Of all of the memories the only thing I wished to have back was that tiny wall trophy that showed Hattie Wall, Letty Stapp, Jonya Stapp as having shot a par round of golf on the difficult nine hole golf course.
The memory of walking off hole #9 with Ron Robinson as my playing partner remains strong, because I made that last putt for a par round, instead of three putting!
Curiosity led me to reread the story of the 1955 Blackwell, Ok and Udall, Ks tornado outbreak. Tornado description: The tornado continued north and moved through the east side of Blackwell causing complete destruction in much of the east side of town. Nineteen people were killed in Blackwell as well as one person to the northeast of Blackwell. The tornado passed east of Braman, then turned to the north-northwest and dissipated to the southeast of South Haven, Kansas as shown in tornado track map for north central Oklahoma and south central Kansas. As this storm passed to the east of Braman, another tornado developed about 4 miles north of Peckham that moved into Kansas and eventually killed 80 people in and near Udall, KS. Both the Blackwell tornado and Udall, KS tornado were rated F5, although the Udall tornado produced minimal damage in Oklahoma.
