Inspired by a fallen friend, two young men’s fundraising efforts united a community
Written by Ted McIntyre
Photography by Chris Gallow
"Good evening, Dave, or should I say good morning. It is now 12:48 a.m. and Edward and Andrew are still going strong. They are on round seven and Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Mike Smith has just arrived with glow-in-the-dark glasses that make him look like Mr. Magoo. He is travelling with them into the wee hours of the morning for moral support. Golf writer Scott McLeod has been here since about 10 p.m. and has caddied for Edward for a few rounds. What a sport he is! All of our volunteers keep saying how much fun they are having out on the course with the guys."Cathy Goodfellow
It had been a little under 13 hours since Cathy’s 24-year-old son Edward Goodfellow and his best friend Andrew Fazackerley had teed off at Rivendell Golf Club in Verona, a town of approximately 400 that is bisected by Highway 38 a little more than a half-hour’s drive north of Kingston. The two Royal Bank employees were well into a 24-hour golf marathon conceived as a way to raise funds for the Southeastern Ontario Cancer Clinic. Legs were growing heavy and it was about to start raining, but the spirit of Rivendell would carry them through the night.
Edward and Andrew were inspired to take action after the loss of a young family friend of the Goodfellows, Jessie Arthur, to leukemia and all the tragedy that cancer had wrought on friends and family. “I saw the advertising on TV for the Canadian Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, and I wanted to come up with an idea of my own—something new,” says Edward. “I wanted to bring golf into it because it had always been my passion in life. So I came up with this concept of playing golf for 24 hours straight and walking while we play. I asked Andrew if he’d like to golf for 24 hours, and he said, ‘When do we start?’”
Cathy Goodfellow took the plan and expanded its scope. With all in place, they figured on raising an estimated $10,000, which, when augmented by government programs, would be close to $100,000. As of the end of July the number was already $175,000 and counting.
“When Edward first told me about the idea, I said, ‘If you want to do it, I will promote it,’ because it’s something that I love to do,” Cathy says. “We came up with the name Strokes Fore Hopes for the event. We wanted the money to go locally to the Kingston Cancer Clinic. We also discovered that we qualified for an initiative from the government; that they would match the funds we raised nine-to-one. So while we were watching the Masters in April, I started sending out email after email to everyone I could think of: Titleist, Callaway, a lot of Canadian golf magazines and the Golf Association of Ontario. The local newspapers took off with it, and Andrew’s sister, Krista, who had just graduated in graphic design at Ryerson, created a fabulous website for us that had a lot of people talking about it.
“Our first real positive response was when Titleist said they’d give us two golf bags, and asked specifically if the boys would carry them on their journey, which was very cool. Something that touched me as well was Callaway, who emailed back that they couldn’t support us because they had a charity of their own, but wished us well and wanted to know how the guys did.”
“When it seemed like the boys’ initial desire to carry their clubs all the way was going to be physically unrealistic, Ken, a member who had been watching Edward and Andrew from afar, offered to caddy for them. They quickly agreed. Another member, Rod, who was having supper with his wife and a friend of hers, saw what was going on, jumped up from the table and carried the other bag. His wife travelled back to Kingston—a bit of a drive—to take her friend back and then returned to pick up her husband. This was the kind of thing that went on all night. Our motto is ‘Together Everyone Achieves More,’ and certainly this has been a huge team effort. I don’t think I will be getting much sleep tonight but there will always be time tomorrow.”
June 19 was a cool, damp, sheet-metal-grey day. But 100 people showed up at Rivendell to pay $10 apiece for the kickoff breakfast provided by the club. All the money went to Strokes Fore Hopes, while additional funds would be raised through-out the next day at the silent auction table. GAO Executive Director Dave Mills, who would read Cathy’s riveting emails through the coming night, took part in the ceremonial tee-off with Mayor Gary Davison, Rivendell co-owner Ken Harper and the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Mike Smith. They all striped their tee shots down the middle, leaving the stage for the intrepid twosome.
“Normally you don’t have to hit driver there since there’s a creek you can reach, but we were nervous and thought, ‘What’s the biggest-faced club we can use here,’” Edward laughs. “Fortunately, we both hit good drives.”
The gallery was deep, although it was maybe as much a therapeutic exercise as a supportive one. Kerry and Bill Arthur couldn’t be there, though. It was still too soon; the wounds of losing their daughter too raw.
“She was very athletic, full of life,” Cathy remembers of the beautiful 14-year-old who passed away on March 8.
“Jess gave me this bracelet in February,” Cathy relates, rubbing the school-bus-yellow rubber band on her left wrist. “It says ‘Hope, Faith, Courage and Strength.’ That’s how we came up with the name of this event, Strokes Fore Hopes. Hope is what we all need to cope with whatever we’re dealt. Edward and Andrew would never tell you, but they’ve been dealt some hard knocks in life. Andrew’s dad died in a car accident before he was born, and my oldest son, Joe, was killed in a car accident eight years ago July 23rd. So these guys are very compassionate toward other people’s troubles, and they just wanted to do some-thing to make a difference to families and patients who are struggling with cancer.”
Rivendell members for 15 years, Edward, a four handicap, and Andrew, a three, had become part of a family. And the feeling grew as the day went on. “Every time we passed by the clubhouse, there were people cheering us on,” Andrew says. “I got choked up a couple times.”
The pair posted a blistering pace early on, turning the first nine in 55 minutes. The pro shop and kitchen staff had alerted members and greens fee players of the event and to please let Goodfellow and Fazackerley through. “People we’d never met before were wishing us well, cheering us to push on,” Andrew recalls.
The first group they encountered was the ceremonial foursome as they approached the 18th hole. Edward struck his second shot on the par-5 to four-and-a-half feet and knocked it in for eagle.
They kept score for first five rounds or so; Andrew minus-three on the front and four over on the back in one early session. “I think I found the secret of golf—just step up
to the putts and hit them,” he smiles.
“Putting’s not exactly my strong suit.”
Mother Nature also cooperated as the rounds wore on. “Actually, that was a concern of ours,” Edward admits. “‘What if it’s 30 degrees and we’re going to golf for 24 hours?’ It worked out for us that it wasn’t your typical golf day, though, so the course wasn’t busy and we were able to fly through the first five or six rounds.
“But as the night progressed, the temperature dropped. And then it started raining. Sort of a misty rain from 1:30 a.m. to 3:30 a.m. Nothing serious. But you could feel the dampness in your joints. That was about round seven. We knew it would be considerably harder at night, so we took our time. Our feet were getting wet and we had to keep changing our socks.”
Equipped with two dozen Twilight Tracer balls, which flashed for five minutes after being struck, the intrepid duo fought their way around the bends and rolls of a course that had become much less familiar under the cover of darkness. “Those balls were hard as rocks,” Andrew laughs. “And when you’re looking down at it and it’s flashing, your depth perception is way off. We probably lost seven of those things.”
“It seemed like the community dove in and wanted to be any part of it they could,
Dave. It just seemed to snowball, with people asking how they could help and what they could give. We had friends who gave thousands of dollars. There were so many people—Sandra Reynolds helping out with breakfast…and the golf course staff, who were instrumental, including superintendent Brent Hamilton. There was not one or a few key people. We were a team of a lot of strengths. I remember the the cold night in March when I went to talk to Rivendell’s General Manager Jim Lansdell. I said, ‘I want to bounce something off you and don’t say anything until I’m finished explaining what we would like it to be.’ I didn’t get far before he said, ‘That sounds great.’ These kids have such a great reputation around the golf course that people knew they could make it work."
A few solar lights in the fairways and glow sticks on the flags that Krista, Edward’s father Rick and girlfriend Erica had strategically placed aided play and, no doubt, added a measure of comfort amid the occasional howling of coyotes somewhere off in the distance. But it was the personal touch that kept them going.
“We had people riding with us all the time. It started out as two, which turned to four, then six, then 10 or 12 at some points,” Andrew says. “Friends and co-workers and their kids drove for half an hour just to see us for 10 minutes.”
“Members kept bringing us out dry clothes and warm food to eat as we walked,” Edward recalls. “To have the support we had as we golfed…it was overwhelming. We could not have done it without them.
“There was one member, Dave Marvin, who walked or rode with us for six of eight rounds. He wouldn’t go home. And when he did, he couldn’t sleep, thinking ‘I know they’re out there. I can’t leave them,’ and he’d come back, flagging the ball for us so we’d know where it went.”
Also marching by their side when he wasn’t keeping watch from his home alongside the course was Fred Wood, a retired businessman and cancer survivor who loaned the team his cart, which was equipped with headlights.
Yet another of the club’s extended family and a cancer survivor herself was Donna Fox. “She was a young mother accompanied by her 14-year-old son Daniel, and the dad, Rick, carried a set of clubs while she rode in the cart,” Cathy reflects. “These things kept happening. People came through the night and bid on the silent auction items. And if they were not there physically, there were definitely there spiritually, helping give the boys that extra boost.”
Around three o’clock in the morning, the twosome teed off of No. 15 and began the steep descent toward the green when the lights from Woods’ cart traced the outline of an apparition advancing toward them through the mist. The hair on the backs of Edward and Andrew’s necks stood at attention as they realized that it was Bibi Wansborough, a delicate sixty-something club member who had known Edward and Andrew since they first joined Rivendell. On a night where insomnia understandably ravaged the region, Wansborough got herself dressed, climbed into the car with her husband and made the 20-minute drive through the night to the course. “I just wanted to support you,” she told them, as she trudged through the dampness with the small group while her husband waited in the clubhouse.
Another such illuminating moment had occurred earlier in the round. “On No. 5,
it was pitch black, and I’m driving the cart with the headlights,” Cathy observes. “Suddenly, in my view, there was Mike Smith with his arm around Edward. We’ve known Mike since he was 10 years old, playing ball with my older son. He was there supporting Edward as a family friend. Seeing that in my headlights was really something for me.”
Smith, whose antics had kept the mood light through the longest hours, was by their side again as they closed in on their 10 a.m. deadline. Lynda Wolsey, one of the community presently battling cancer, walked the final few holes. The significance of the group’s addition was not lost on the young men. Wolsey was the secretary of student services at the local high school, and had seen them through good and bad.
Were it all not a sufficient journey already, the group realized as it approached the final hole for the last time that they were arriving too early. “We actually finished our eight rounds with 35 minutes to go,” Edward notes. “Everyone was expecting us at 10 a.m., so we went back to the 17th tee and played two more holes for a total of 146 holes,” Andrew says. “You know, we wanted it to be a marathon, which is 60 kilometres, but it ended up being over 80 kilometres when you walk 24 hours at Rivendell.”
And they finished with a flair. “On the very last hole, I hit my second shot into the creek in front of the green,” Edward notes. “One of the staff members was weed-eating the creek. I could see my ball, but it was covered in long grass. So I had him come over and ‘whipper-snip’ around my ball, with like 50 or 60 people there watching.” Goodfellow then stepped up and promptly hit the pin, then made the putt for birdie.
The timing was perfect. Two classes of Prince Charles Public School students had just arrived, courtesy of a local bus company that donated a bus and driver. Banners reading “Way to Go Strokes Fore Hopes” were supported by little feet racing down the hill toward the green.
People cheered and cried—sometimes at the same time. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
“Having Lynda finish with us on 18 was pretty special. And it was great having Craig Revell’s grandparents there since we’ve known that family forever,” Edward says of the prodigy who was taken too soon after passing away of cancer two years ago.
“Mike finished up with us, too. But when we were done he just disappeared. I think he didn’t want to take any of the spotlight. I think he knew that there were a lot of kids there, and that he’s a big celebrity here, but he wanted it to be about the event. His girlfriend didn’t have a vehicle, but she ran from her house—about three kilo-metres—to make sure she was there when we finished.”
What a difference a day can make.
“Acquaintances became friends, and friends become better friends,” says Edward, whose thoughts were with his grandfather, Ed McFadgen, who had to leave the course due to illness before play concluded. “He taught me how to play,” Edward says proudly. “He was beside himself that he had to go. But he was definitely there in spirit.”
Muscles—some Fazackerley and Goodfellow never realized they had—begun to seize by the next morning, but there was little time to recover. The two, whose timing was impeccable, were scheduled to pair up in the club’s alternate-shot match-play competition. The match, naturally, went three extra holes. Recalls Edward: “I remember saying to Andrew, ‘We better win here, because I can’t go on any longer.’”
They did win. Needless to say, though, they rode a cart that day.
“I feel very fortunate for many reasons to have been involved in this wonderful event.
I am very grateful that I got to meet you, Dave, and to get a glimpse of the GAO family. Golf is such an amazing sport. I love everything that it does for the whole person. If you get a chance to go on The Golf Channel website, under the Father’s Day contests, Edward wrote a story about my father—his namesake—and how he influenced him in his life. They posted his story along with a picture. Golf is certainly a sport for all generations!
“This was an experience that I will never forget and it is hard to put into words how amazing it was. I truly believe that Edward and Andrew put one foot in front of the other because the community and the Rivendell family carried them.”
Truth be told, for a remarkable 24 hours in June, they all carried each other. OG
