Published: July 20, 2008 12:32 am            

Brief encounters leave lasting impact

Life is a series of chance, brief encounters between people.

On nearly a daily basis we meet and interact with people, having conversations of varying length and significance, then we part, perhaps to never see one another again.

Such it was on a recent trip to the Hawaiian island of Maui, home of $4.60 per gallon gasoline ...

He lived modestly his whole life, a laborer working in a small mountain town in western Canada. He raised three daughters and he and his wife provided enough, but nothing extravagant.

Then two years ago, with his wife battling dementia, it became time to sell the house and move into an assisted living center. So he did, and turned an $8,000 investment into more than $400,000.

To celebrate he took his wife and daughters to Maui, where they had a wonderful time, so wonderful, in fact, they decided to do it again this year, likely for the last time, given the age of the parents.

All had a good time, that is, except his wife. In her state of dementia, anything unfamiliar is disturbing. The condo they stayed in, the new clothes her daughters bought her, all bothered her. She spent most of her time sitting in the condo they had rented, unhappy.

But on this day, a breakthrough. She donned a bathing suit and emerged on the arm of one daughter, joining another daughter and her husband at the swimming pool. Uncertain, unsmiling, she nonetheless agreed to at least put her feet in the hot tub, which she proclaimed “too hot.”

At least one sister fought back tears as she proclaimed the moment, “a real breakthrough.” They decided photos were in order and enlisted a fellow guest from Oklahoma to take family photos, all gathered around mom dangling her feet in the hot tub.

“We don’t know how much longer we’ll have them,” one sister said, indicating her parents, “but we have this time, we have this beautiful day.”

And so they did.

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Kirk Nelson, head golf professional at the Makena Golf Courses in far south Maui, grew up in Del City, so when he found out a couple from Enid were on his property one recent afternoon, he was delighted.

He said he has fond memories of Enid, centering around the Tri-State Music Festival. He was a singer, it seems, during his school days, and would come to Enid every year to compete.

Those trips, it seems, included annual visits to Ti Juana Restaurant, where he and his fellow Del City students would sing before their supper.

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When your golf bag is orange and black with Oklahoma State University logos all over it and when one of your clubs has a Pistol Pete head cover, you tend to attract attention.

The response from several people was along the lines of, “Boone Pickens has given you guys a lot of money to work with.”

Indeed he has. Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens has given OSU, his alma mater, hundreds of millions of dollars for both athletics and academics.

The athletic donations, of course, get the most attention, like the $165 million he donated in 2006, money being used to build the school’s athletic village and to remodel and upgrade the football stadium that bears his name.

Talk of OSU’s athletics turned to the golf program, prompting one golf course assistant to credit the Cowboys for producing new PGA Tour superstar-in-waiting Anthony Kim, a two-time winner on tour this year.

The OSU grad involved in the conversation was forced to admit that Kim actually attended the University of Oklahoma, but quickly pointed out that pros like Hunter Mahan, Charles Howell III and Scott Verplank were OSU products.



Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle.