And the most exceptional part of his show Wednesday wasn’t even when his sidekick, Mr. Bucky — a white, melt-your-heart-cute, 20-pound terrier mix — correctly barked out the answers to math and golf questions, did a two-legged victory dance or even gave high-fives to celebrate his tail-wagging smarts.
All of that was pretty cool as many of the 200-plus kids in attendance agreed, but the most remarkable thing that happened at the golf exhibition celebrating the First Tee of Greater Miami Valley was summed up best by Jana Dalton, the head PGA pro at Kittyhawk:
“Ten minutes into this, you didn’t realize anymore that he was paralyzed. He was just a guy hitting one great golf shot after another.”
Or, as the grinning Walters once said after he followed yet another of his beautifully-soaring shots, with a ground-scuffing one liner:
“That’s the story of my life — bad jokes, good shots.”
And some “wonderful lessons,” added Marco Brown, a retired City of Dayton police officer who showed up with his 7-year-old grandson, Jeron Brown, a second-grader at Rosa Parks Elementary and a participant in the First Tee program at Madden Golf Course.
Accident on golf course
A junior golfer of note while growing up in New Jersey, Walters went to North Texas State on scholarship and led the golf team to four straight Missouri Valley Conference championships. After graduation — with his eyes set on joining the PGA Tour — he finished 11th in the United States Golf Association Amateur Championship and played on mini-tour events around the country and abroad.
Then in July of 1974, he was playing on a course in New Jersey when he came down a steep hill and the brakes on the cart he was in failed. He hit a tree and suffered a severe spinal injury.
Diagnosed as a T-12 paraplegic, he was told he would be forever wheelchair bound and never play golf again.
“At first, I was so devastated, just so down ,” he admitted after Wednesday’s crowd had mostly left. “Sure, a lot of people had it worse than I did, but when it actually happens to you, you feel like you’re in the worst possible situation. But as rotten as I felt, when I came back out to the golf course, I felt a little better and I was determined to find some way I could keep playing.“
He first tried hitting balls while sitting in his regular wheelchair and then he started to experiment with a seat that might shift to the side of a golf cart he was in.
“I realized I could hit the ball, but the problem I had when I first sat in that seat was that I knew I’d never play as well as I had before,” he said. “That really bothered me a lot. Then one day it hit me. I was looking at it all wrong.
“The reality of my situation was that it wasn’t getting better and it wasn’t going away, so I should probably just try to make the best of it.
“So then I focused on, ‘How did I play today? Did I get any better?’ From that point on I saw I was getting better and I felt better about it.
“And (after the accident) three little golf courses had benefit tournaments to raise a few bucks for me. By the next summer I was playing golf again — I had the beginnings of the (swivel) seat I use now — so I wanted to show them what I actually was doing because of their help.”
At the first course, he hit some shots off the first tee, told them his story and got “a nice applause.”
Before he went to the next one, he remembered an exhibition by fabled trick shot artist Paul Hahn Sr. he had seen as a 15-year-old teenager:
“I’d sat in the front row and thought, ‘Wow, that was cool.’ But I never thought I wanted to try it — I mean, I was going to be on the PGA Tour.
“But then after all this happened, I remembered how (Hahn) had hit balls off a three-foot tee. I asked my dad — he traveled with me for 17 years — if he could make me a tee like that and he did. I started hitting balls off it and everybody went crazy.
“I thought, ‘Hey ,maybe I’m onto something here.’ I got an old 16-millimeter tape of Paul Hahn doing his show and read books and looked at tapes of other trick shot guys. What I could do of theirs I borrowed, and as the years progressed I made up my own trick shots.”
Over the past 37 years, he’s done over 3,000 shows around the world, has been befriended by the best golfers in the game — guys like Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods and even Ben Hogan — and has been named one of just 11 honorary lifetime members of the PGA of America. Three of the other honorees are former U.S. presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.
One of his most meaningful accomplishments came in 2009 when he was named a national ambassador of the First Tee program, which not only introduces kids to golf, but uses the game to teach life skills and leadership.
“All these years doing this,” Dalton said she watched Walters sign autographs for a line of kids 30 feet long. “Can you imagine how many people’s lives — how many kids’ lives — he’s touched?”
Mr. Bucky causes squeals
Wednesday, Walters put on his show for kids from the First Tee programs at the three City of Dayton public courses — Kittyhawk, Madden and Community — as well as youngsters from the city’s Parks and Recreation youth camps and the YMCA Mentors Matter program.
The event was sponsored by Jersey Mike’s Subs and gets year-round support from the Dayton Foundation, the City of Dayton, the YMCA and especially the Brian Hafer Foundation and Lexus of Dayton.
To hit his shots, Walters slid himself to the edge of his swivel seat so his legs touched the ground and then he used his hands to wrestle them back into the proper stance after each swing. As he hit one remarkable shot after another, he gave some inspirational insights and, of course, kept delivering the one-liners with his assistant and straight man, Mark Stephens, whose brother Brian pitched for Wright State from 1999-2002.
Walters does some 90 shows a year and right now he’s on a swing of nine shows in 10 days: Monday he was in Lebanon, Tuesday in Columbus, today he’s in Chicago, then it’s Toledo and Battle Creek before heading to the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville.
As Walters told the kids what happened to him, they grew quiet and listened intently. But when Mr. Bucky joined the show, they squealed in delight.
“Right after my accident I had a dog,” Walters said. “I was so down and the dog really lifted up my spirits. I never did think of teaching her any tricks, but I’ve had three since and I’ve taught them to be service dogs and be in the show.
“What I know about dog training could fit on the head of a pin, but Bucky is a great companion and he really does help me in real life. If I drop something, he’ll get it. He gets the paper in the morning, even puts stuff in the recycle bin. He’s learned some really cool things.”
As has his master.
“If you have a dream and it doesn’t work out, never stop dreaming,” Walters said “Just get a new one, keep it in your head and your heart and do everything you can to make it come true.”
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