Ties that Bind

Having taken up the game of golf in my early forties, one of the benefits that I never anticipated was how golf enabled me to forge a relationship with my son.  I was reminded of this when I came across the following story of another father-son relationship forged on the golf course.  I hope you enjoy it.

A Father, A Son and A Mulligan: How Golf Brought My Dad and I Together

By Gene Wojciechowski

People Magazine

June 21, 2026

Whenever I read a book, I turn first to the Dedication. I always want to know who mattered most at the moment before a blank page received a name.

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald made no effort to avoid the gravitational pull of his rebellious but devoted wife. He wrote simply, "Once Again to Zelda." In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens chose Lord John Russell and cited his "many public services and private kindnesses." And in The Great Santini, Pat Conroy paid homage to Frances "Peggy" Conroy, "the grandest of mothers and teachers" and to Colonel Donald Conroy, "the grandest of fathers and Marine aviators."

I was the son of an Air Force man. Six feet tall. Blue eyes as cold as dry ice. Stood as straight as an I-beam. He could have been on a recruiting poster.

My dad went to bed on the evening of Sept. 25, 1973, with the jalousie windows cracked open just enough to let the soft, humid Fort Lauderdale air sneak between the glass slats and into the master bedroom, if you could call it that. The room had to suck in its stomach to make enough space for the queen-sized bed and the two pieces of treasured Drexel mid-century furniture: a highboy gentleman’s chest with a fold-down front flap, and a hip-high seven-drawer dresser and mirror. The collection had survived moves from Schilling Air Force Base in Salina, Kan., to Seymour Johnson AFB in Goldsboro, N.C., to Milwaukee during my dad’s tour of duty in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, to Homestead AFB in Homestead, Fla., and at last, to a modest cinderblock and stucco three-bedroom ranch house on a canal that is part of the 300-miles of inland waterways in the so-called Venice of America.

This is where the retired Lt. Col. Chet Wojciechowski was in the second act of his life, the career Air Force officer now at sea level. He and his nomad family were trying to establish roots, much in the same way the creeping stolons of thick St. Augustine grass had managed to burrow in the sand and dirt surrounding our cul de sac home. For one of the few times since he had first enlisted in 1942, he would take orders from no one, with the exception of our mom, the formidable Vera Wojciechowski.

A Boston Whaler was planned as a companion for the dock. There was talk of a backyard pool under the palm trees. To supplement his military pension, he was double-dipping at the post office. What an odd transition. He had begun as a navigator on bombers, then to ballistic missile crew commander, then to reconnaissance intelligence. He had served in the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Cold War, where in 1969 he scrambled to a Homestead runway after a Cuban Air Force pilot had flown under U.S. radar and delivered a Soviet-made MiG-17 fighter jet, along with an asylum request.

And now, at last, our version of the Great Santini, hard-ass extraordinaire, unflinching in his standards and demands, unforgiving of a hair strand that dared touch a male ear, unwavering in his expectations of excellence, was happily delivering the mail, or tending to every detail of his white house with the Key Lime pie-green trim work, or doting on his wife, or trying to find a connection with his four children, with me being the oldest at 16. Time was now under his command, as much as it could ever be. In my case he decided golf would be the Bowline knot tying father and son together.

I resisted because that’s what indifferent teenage sons do. We fought a war of silence, partly because of his military demeanor and partly because of my adolescent resentment over the countless times country had taken precedence over family. At times our conversations consisted only of him stopping outside my closed bedroom door as Led Zeppelin’s "Misty Mountain Hop" strained against the phonograph speaker. Robert Plant never had a chance when my dad ordered, "Turn that shit down." I did as told but took my time turning the knob to the left. Civil disobedience.

But he bought me a set of MacGregor persimmon woods, some second-hand Hogan irons and arranged for lessons. He played Tommy Armour Persimmons and Wilson irons. All I wanted to do was drive the cart — and I barely wanted to do that.

Little by little, there was a thaw between us. Golf was the Sterno to the ice. We didn’t talk much during those rounds, but I could sense his pride after I hit a drive past his or dropped my first-ever birdie putt. His swing was as you’d expect: determined, powerful, furious. He was a 16 handicap but had a scratch attitude.

One morning during a round at a high-end public course, I took a corner way too fast, all but ejecting my dad’s toupee-wearing friend from the passenger seat. I barely escaped as the cart turned on its side. I braced for the sound and fury of my dad, who was in a nearby cart with his older brother. Incredibly, he pulled to the side, inspected the accident and began to laugh. We pushed the cart upright and proceeded to the next shot. The thaw was complete.

My dad went to bed the night of Sept. 25, 1973, but never woke up the morning of Sept. 26. The moment I touched him I knew he was gone. A half-smoked Salem sat bent and stubbed out in the squared glass ashtray on the nightstand.

I sent my sisters and brother next door to the neighbor’s house. I called my mom at Holy Cross Hospital, where she worked the midnight shift as an ICU chief nurse. Like my dad, she was former military, an Air Force lieutenant who had been stationed in Nagoya, Japan, in the early 1950s to help train that country’s hospital nurses. She had witnessed the devastation of post-World War II Japan. She had seen heartache and loss in the ICU. There was empathy, but also a sense of professional detachment. But not this.

An ambulance was summoned. My mom’s car soon screeched to a stop in the driveway. She ran inside and as she did, I could hear, "Chet!" He was 53.

He died in his sleep of a widow maker heart attack. In his honor, we tried to recover from that morning but never would. It was the scar that refused to heal.

I quit playing golf. I grew my hair over my ears and to my shoulders. I never checked the mailbox.

When I went away to college in the fall of 1975, I left the clubs and leather golf bag in the utility room. But that next summer I decided I was done grieving. I became a regular at a Muni course and range. That was forever ago, but it is through the game that my dad still speaks to me.

His Tommy Armour woods and my MacGregors are stored in my Wheaton, Ill., basement. The Drexel dresser and highboy chest have been refinished and occupy a guest room. A framed photo of him and his flight crew hangs next to my desk.

I have two grandsons and our Bowline knot is golf. On the car ride to the course, they sometimes choose the music. I never tell them to turn the shit down.

In my upcoming golf novel, All Carry, the publisher gave me a Dedication page. The choice was as easy as a two-inch tap-in putt.  ‘To my dad, Chet, who put the first club in my hand.’

Gene Wojciechowski is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com. He has authored or coauthored eight books, including Cubs Nation, My Life on a Napkin (with Rick Majerus), I Love Being the Enemy (Reggie Miller), Nothing But Net (Bill Walton) and his baseball novel, About 80 Percent Luck. He lives in Wheaton, Ill.