The Old Pro:
“You can handle it, kid,” he said. At the foot of the stairs, a man six decades my senior cheered me on. He was 90 years old at the time and I was 25. I returned a mechanical smile his way and then headed for the door on my way to get another round of chemo. I couldn’t help but recognize the irony. I should be the one cheering him on, I thought. But over the course of those six months, the old man encouraged me as I headed out the door on the way to treatment. On the day I got the news I was cured, guess who was there to greet me? “I told you ‘you could handle it, princess,’ ” he said. This time, I really smiled.
“A grandfather is someone with silver in his hair and gold in his heart,” anonymous once mused, and the old man in this story is a gold hearted chap many of you likely know. Perhaps you knew him as a former golf pro at Selva Marina Country Club; maybe he coached you on the fairways, joked with you over drinks in the clubhouse or competed against you in a golf tournament. Perhaps you knew him as Captain John or you met him at the B & M Bait and Tackle shop in Mayport where you discussed the tides. He knew where all the good fishing spots were and once he took his boat to the mouth of the Fort George Inlet where he caught 21 blue fish, and a 36 pound red bass that he spent 30 minutes reeling in all alone. Or maybe you remember him at the TPC as the starter and first tee announcer. Yes, many of you likely know of John Beckmann, the Old Pro, but to me he was the guy who lived in the downstairs of our Atlantic Beach house for almost 30 years and he is the only grandfather I have ever known.
In fairness, we are not related by blood, but when you are a young child you don’t have the ability to comprehend such complexities. After mom and dad divorced, he rented the downstairs of our house and most nights John, mom and I ate dinner together until I left for college. He and mom became best friends and the Old Pro quickly became part of the Alderman/Clark brood. A handful of Thanksgivings and almost every Christmas morning he spent with us. “Ho, Ho, Ho,” I can hear him say and that is how you knew John was on his way up the stairs. His presents to us always came in the same wrapping: white envelopes with ten scratch off lottery tickets inside. We’d head to our prospective corners and for decades we faithfully scratched our tickets in hopes of a hefty prize.
He called me his princess, a title I thought was solely mine, but turns out there are quite a few princesses in his kingdom. We watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy together and yelled out at Alex Trebeck- fumbling for the What is or the Who is in the form of a question. I watched him and mom compete at cards or hash it out over politics year after year. And I listened with rapt attention to stories of his younger days even though I had a hard time imagining him as young.
A native of Savannah Georgia, I learned how he and his five brothers, the Beckmann boys, all broke into the golf business as caddies at a time when Calvin Coolidge was still president. Husband to Helen, father to Bonnie and grandfather to Sarah, I also heard stories about his years as golf pro at Robbins Air Force Base, at Riverside Golf & Country Club in Macon, Lady’s Island Country Club in South Carolina and his final tour as pro at Selva Marina Country Club for sixteen years. He played with sports legends including Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus to name a few. He had at least one TV show and he even acted as journalist, writing a six part series for the Florida Times-Union about how he thought the touring pros would probably play Selva Marina’s course during the Greater Jacksonville Open golf tournament in 1965. But the names and stories I heard most included the ones about his friends like Gene Nordan, Stan and Patsy Milestone, John Holmes and Paul and Virginia Shields, just to name a few. 
THE JOVIAL GENTLEMAN: Genial, ever smiling, carefree, and kind, the Old Pro told us jokes and his jokes always kept you on the edge because he told them in such a way that they could be true. It was only at the punch line that your shoulders would ease and then he’d laugh heartily. I find that latter facet incredibly healthy and he still chuckles at his own stories. And then there was that time I had just learned to drive. How excited I was to cruise down Third Street with this newfound freedom at my fingertips. With the turn of the key and a tap of the gas pedal I was off except that I forgot about Beckmann’s car behind mine and ‘crunch.’ I’m not sure how I told him but he never chided me about that, or the late night talent show practices, the dreaded drum set I insisted on banging at all hours or the dog I had who liked to do laps upstairs with his thunderous paws.
WINNING THE LOTTERY:A few weeks back, our family learned that the Old Pro would be moving to Seattle to be nearer his daughter. My mind traveled to December as I pondered that you just never know when it could be your last Christmas with someone.
Beckmann came sauntering upstairs. “Ho, Ho, Ho,” he said before he doled out white envelopes filled with lottery tickets to us. Folks headed off to their corners but this time my big sister, Kat, sat with him. They went ticket by ticket. His eyes might not be as strong as they used to be but she was his eyes. His hands and back might not be as strong so she was his arms. She explained each ticket, the amount they could win and the strategy. From afar, I watched the two of them, so present and lost in their own world, and I hoped that one of them or us was going to hit the jackpot after all those years. Wouldn’t it be poetic that this time we won? But then it hit me last week as I pondered coming home to a home without my Old Pro there.
While we might not have physically won the lottery, we sure won the lottery in the Old Pro and no matter where John Beckmann lives he is always and forever in our hearts.
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