3 minute read
Walker’s Boys
from October 2022
Gò0dNews for Everyone
Walker’s Boys
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by Deck Cheatham
We are Walker’s boys.
We came, embarking upon careers, searching for a foothold in golf, in the world. We are the golf professionals hired by Walker Inman, Jr., the once Head Golf Professional at Scioto Country Club, home course to Jack Nicklaus, a Ryder Cup, PGA Championship, U.S. Amateur, a U.S. Open and two Senior U.S. Opens. Each of us passed through, taking what we could of wisdom and learning, each receiving the lessons needed in those early years when upward filled our vision.
On June 23, 2022, Walker Inman passed from this life into the life eternal.
And here we are, crossing a bridge we knew we would cross, but one none of us wished to cross. And so, on July 23rd, we gathered to honor a life well-lived, to carry on, to pass on the same love shared by Walker and say the words Jesus spoke, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
It all started with those words, “Pro, you’ve got the job.” And in hearing those words, life opened to us, trajectories changed, dreams blossomed into realities, new possibilities unfettered before life’s quagmires would come. We began, some naïve, uninitiated, not yet baptized by the world, and some, a bit more worldly, ready and willing. Each came to seize an opportunity, to take the brass ring and claim it as his own. Quarried from worlds apart—South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and more— each offering our rearing, our unique personalities and yetto-be-widened perspective. And in the taking, we received so much more.
When we heard those words, we did not know we would become part of a family. Yes, the Scioto family, but also adopted as an Inman. Walker, Georgia, Lisa, Natalie, Walker III, and Cara were as much father and mother, brother and sister to each of us as our own parents and siblings. Unrealized at the time, Walker chose us, as Jesus chooses us, to enter this new beginning, loved and cherished in the same way parents love their children, as God loves us. Walker and Georgia knew no other way.
The Reverend Luther Beecher wrote these words:
“I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sun and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, ‘There she goes!’
Gone where? Gone from my sight—that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the places of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone says, ‘There she goes!’ there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, ‘Here she comes!’”
Gullah believe when someone passes, their soul goes to heaven but their spirit lives on. Walker’s spirit lives on through each of us.
We are Walker’s boys.
About The Author Deck Cheatham has been a golf professional for some 40 years. He lives with his family in Dalton. He is a guest columnist for the Rome News Tribune, The Daily Citizen, and the Calhoun Times. Email him at pgadeacon@gmail.com.
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