Local charitable endeavors benefit from PGA’s presence
KAYLA Reed’s teenage years were tough.
She had what she describes as a “really bad family situation.” Her older brother, who was the man about the house, was murdered in front of the family’s North St. Louis home.
“I witnessed that, it was really traumatic,” she said. “It really put me in a tough spot.
“I was struggling with depression and anxiety. I was considering suicide. I didn’t know how to deal with those thoughts or how to talk to somebody, I guess.”
And then, in her freshman year at Miller Career Academy, Reed found an unlikely salvation: golf. She got involved in a program run by the Gateway PGA Reach Foundation, the charitable arm of the Gateway Section of the PGA, which was setting up junior league golf programs throughout the city. She never had been exposed to golf before, but something about it clicked for her.
“Every time I played golf, it gave me something positive to think about,” Reed said. “It always helped me to focus on which direction I wanted the ball to go, how far or how short do I need to hit it? It gave me a way to think positively about the best outcome. I’m always thinking of that. I have to be quiet, I have to take a deep breath and make sure I’m not thinking about anything else but to hit the ball straight and not get frustrated. I guess you could call it therapy at the time. It made me think differently.”
Reed hasn’t played much golf lately, but the lessons learned changed her life. She is about to start her junior year at Mid-American Christian University in Oklahoma City, where she’s majoring in psychology.
While the world’s best golfers will descend on St. Louis this week for the PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club, which starts Thursday, the PGA has a presence here all year round through its charity, PGA Reach.
By the end of 2018, the group will have given more than $780,000 to fund programs aimed at youth, veterans, diversity and inclusion, mostly targeted for North St. Louis.
“We’re able to try and help some kids who may not have an opportunity by exposing kids in the inner city, in North St. Louis, not just to the game of golf but the business of golf as well,” said former Cardinal Ozzie Smith, the president of the Gateway chapter of PGA Reach. “Education is at the core of what we’re trying to do, which is that the longer we can keep kids in school, hopefully the better citizens we’re able to produce.
“That’s the crux of what PGA Reach is all about. Now we have a leg with the military, getting them back into society, doing little things to make a difference in people’s lives.”
PGA Reach, which has become a national program, has its roots in St. Louis. In 2011, when Bellerive officials were bidding to host this year’s tournament, the PGA asked them what they could to have a lasting legacy in the community. From that, PGA Reach was born.
“Joe Steranka, the CEO of the PGA of America, came to Bellerive and we began talking about hosting the championship,” said Ed Glotzbach, president of Bellerive. “The PGA had never had a philanthropic outreach that was part of their golf championship. He thought it would be really good thing if we were able to do that. We said we could bring members of Bellerive together to start a program they could take together with their championships. A couple of us met, said we think we could probably do that. We were highly motivated, not just by the prospects of helping get the championship, but several of us had worked philanthropically before and knew there were needs. We could use the championship to not only bring the event here but have some lasting
impact.”
The initial thrust of PGA Reach in St. Louis was on keeping kids in school, and the group worked with the Boys and Girls Club of Greater St. Louis, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri, Hope Education and Urban St. Louis K- Life. While many of the programs dealt with in- school and after- school golf programs, others have nothing to do with golf.
The Big Brothers and Big Sisters were starting to work on a program called ABC Today, an “early warning system” that focuses on students’ attendance, behavior and course performance. They needed funding to expand the program from its testing stage in Cape Girardeau to bring it to St. Louis Public Schools. PGA Reach provided it, and the program has shown strong results. Though it didn’t directly involve golf, it involved kids.
“I found that to be an interesting decision on the part of PGA and an enlightened one,” said Becky Hatter, the local president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters. “It wasn’t like an obvious decision for them to make, but I think where they linked in to ABC is the understanding of discipline. Golf is a very disciplined game. You’ve got to work at the sucker. It’s a game in some
ways you never master. I think they got the discipline of ABC. Their investment in St. Louis was not simply in the world of golf, although that is a huge contribution. They wanted it to be better for all kids. ... Without PGA Reach, ABC Today would not exist where it is today. They took the original plunge and said go do the innovation.”
Another non-golf program PGA Reach has been involved in is helping to launch the Best Buy Teen Tech Center at the Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club, which helps underserved teens learn technology skills.
The success of the program in St. Louis led the PGA to take the PGA Reach concept and go national with it. Klotzbach and his team have met with other PGA chapters to talk about how to implement the program in their community.
When the program went national, veterans and diversity were added to the group’s targets. The veterans branch is called PGA Hope.
Mike Street of Wood River was in the Marines for almost 19 years before suffering a traumatic head injury, the result of an improvised explosive device in Iraq. In addition to the head injury, Street had post traumatic stress disorder.
He told his counselor he was thinking about taking up golf and
was hooked up with a PGA program that has him playing golf with other veterans once a week.
“A lot of veterans coming back have to deal with post traumatic stress,” Street said. “They stay in a hole and isolate themselves. I did. I just had disengaged myself from my family and society. Now, I look forward to every Thursday. It gets me around other people. You’ve got veterans there from all different branches, different eras, and it’s not like a counseling session, but they say, ‘Have you tried this? It worked for me. If it doesn’t work, try this. Keep searching, keep plugging at it.’
“In almost every aspect, it’s given me, like the name, hope, something to look forward to. A lot of veterans are on fixed incomes and couldn’t afford to play golf every week. This gives us the opportunity to make some outstanding lifelong friends.”
The arrival of the tournament is a big thing for the Gateway chapter of PGA Reach. Its big annual fundraiser is a golf tournament, but Bellerive will be giving a portion of its proceeds from the tournament to the group, giving their funding a big boost.
“It’s everything,” said Ali Wells, executive director of the Gateway chapter of PGA Reach. “An idea, a thought that, poof!, burst into a PGA championship, the largest sporting event in St. Louis history. This means the world to us.”