The Caddie School For Soldiers

While raising four children with my wife,  I spent thirty five years writing novels and screenplays for the best publishers in New York and the best producers in Hollywood, trying to bring truth and beauty into the world, after winning The Iowa Writer's Workshop's most prestigious fellowship. In 2019 I created the world's first residential caddie training school in Scotland, to give lost soldiers from these last two wars the chance at a new life and a meaningful profession that enables them to provide for the people they have pledged themselves to.  

Soldiers from these last two wars are taking their lives in staggering numbers. Our school restores their hope and their belief in themselves by training them and finding them jobs as professional caddies. We have held two sessions of the school and have saved the lives of 13 soldiers from the U.S. Canada and the UK. Our soldiers, who were crippled by PTSD and very close to giving up on life before they attended our school, are now working for the Links Trust in St. Andrews, Scotland and for Dumbarnie Links, earning a living for the people they have pledged themselves to. Each soldier we save, goes on to become a better, husband, wife, father, mother, son or daughter and a more productive member of society. 

The Veterans Administration publishes a statistic that every day in America 22 soldiers commit suicide. In the UK another 78 soldiers end their lives each year. And In Canada another 63 soldiers end their lives. These are soldiers who went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan and saw combat. Many of them had been diagnosed with PTSD and were treated with therapy and medication. At the core of their suffering was a loss of belief in themselves. Something happened to them that caused them to lose their belief in themselves. When you work as a caddie, you earn the trust of a stranger at your side. And each time you earn the trust of a stranger, you begin to earn back some belief in yourself. It is a simple but profound equation. Our soldiers arrive at our school almost as ghosts. They spend a month living together and training together, and as the month progresses, they become the people they were before war crippled them. We have room for 6 or 7 soldiers at each session of our school. We hold one session in February in Scotland, and another session in October at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin. 

We bring together soldiers from the US, the UK and Canada who are suffering from PTSD to spend one month living together and sharing all their meals together with one mentor, a soldier himself, who has worked to rehabilitate hundreds of soldiers suffering PTSD. They form a family, a new band of brothers. Every day they are trained to become professional caddies, by David Gilchrist, who was twice named Caddie Master Of The Year in Scotland when he worked at Kingsbarns.  We provide a healing for all of these soldiers, and then we find them jobs as professional caddies in Scotland, Canada and the US.  Our soldiers are currently working for The Links Trust in St. Andrews, Scotland. Dumbarnie Links, in Levin, Scotland. And this winter four of our soldiers will work at Old Collier in Naples, Florida. Within the next year we intend to place two of our caddies at Whistling Straits in Kohler, Wisconsin. Because soldiers are motivated by a strong desire to serve and to lead, they make exemplary caddies as they shepherd golfers across perilous and beautiful ground.

Our community of soldiers is part of a larger community because these soldiers are husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers. When these soldiers are lost in a world of PTSD, their shattered lives end up shattering the lives of so many people who care about them and who live in their presence. Each time we save the life of a soldier who has been crippled by PTSD, we effect the lives of all the people his life embraces. And even strangers who coincide with the soldier's life. Our school not only gives these soldiers the training they need to begin a meaningful profession where they can earn a living, it also provides the soldiers a family that sustains them after they have completed their time at the school. Most of these soldiers who have been psychologically wounded in war, have also been stripped of the close-knit family they were part of when they were at war. We give them a new family at the school that nourishes their soul and renews their hope and their faith in life. That hope and faith is what they take out into their communities.

We have had a great deal of international publicity about our school including features by SKY SPORTS and the BBC World Service. This has increased the public's awareness of the problem of soldiers committing suicide. It has also prompted foundations in America, Canada and the UK, who work with troubled veterans to send soldiers to our school. We know that our school and the work these soldiers go on to do as caddies, is saving lives and increasing the public awareness of what these lost soldiers are going through, and why they are suffering such mental anguish.

In the summer of 2018 I first learned that soldiers were committing suicide in large numbers, not only in America, where 22 a day end their lives, but also in Canada and the UK.  I had worked as a caddie in Scotland in 2008 when I was at a particularly dark time in my life, and the work helped heal me. So I began to contact veterans organizations and foundations who could send me their broken soldiers. I raised $43,000 for our first session in Scotland, hired the best caddie master in scotland to train these soldiers, rented a big stone house on the North Sea, found a golf course where we could train, hired a soldier-counselor to live with us, hired a cook to prepare a nice dinner each day, rented a coach for our local transportation and pulled together a hundred other details to establish the world's first caddie school for soldiers. The point of origin was a small town in Pennsylvania in the 1950s where the WWII fathers were the fathers of my boyhood. My father was one of them. I established the school to honor them and their sacrifice.

At our first dinner together when the school convened in February 2019 I told the soldiers about my father who enlisted in the army the day after Pearl Harbor, and came home from the war and married Peggy, the girl he loved best. She died nine months later, sixteen days after giving birth to twin boys. My father was so lost in his sorrow and grief that he spent that autumn sleeping on her grave. In the morning, his buddies from the war would take turns picking him up and taking him to the coffee shop, to try to get him to talk.  All his life he told me that those soldiers saved his life. When I first saw these soldiers, after months of correspondence, I realized something and said to them: “In many ways, YOU ARE those soldiers who saved my dad’s life when he was heartbroken and lost. YOU ARE those soldiers who came to the cemetery in the morning and picked him up.  And, we’re here now so I can properly thank you for that.” In many ways each of these soldiers reminds me of my own father who was lost for so long in his anguish. 

The fact that I worked two seasons as a professional caddie in Scotland and then caddied for my son on his first pro tour, gave me the credential I needed to establish the caddie school for soldiers. But it is my passion to help soldiers as a way of honoring my own father that defines me and explains why I established the school and was able to draw so many people to its mission. Having had books published by the most distinguished publishers in New York, enables me to be invited to speak at places like The Chicago Club and Inverness Golf Club where I can tell the story of the caddie school for soldiers and also raise money. My ability to write about the school and our soldiers in a compelling way, has attracted world-wide media attention which also helps me raise the money we need to operate the school. I want to expand the school from two sessions a year to six so we can help more soldiers. Because of my contacts in the golf world, and because of the success of the school, I am in a very good position to achieve this goal.

When the present adversity of the pandemic forced golf courses in Scotland to close this cast the lives of our soldier caddies into uncertainty. A few of these soldiers slipped back into the darkness of depression that was drowning them before. I have spent hundreds of hours these last three months, writing to them, talking with them on SKYPE, to try to keep their spirits up.  And just last week I leaned on everyone I know in the world of golf in America and I have now found winter work for our soldiers at Old Collier golf club in Naples, Florida so the soldiers will be able to make up for the work they have lost in Scotland this season. This new opportunity has given the soldiers hope. It took me three days to make all the arrangements and the management at Old Collier has even offered to cover the cost of work permits for our soldiers. This relationship that I have established will mean that all of our soldiers can work the winter season if they choose. Two months ago I needed $37,400 for our third session in February 2021. I now have raised those funds.

I think the fact that I began the caddie school for soldiers with nothing but a dream and a vision, and was able to make that dream a reality, best demonstrates my leadership ability. In less than two years we have held two sessions of the school' we have a third session planned for Whistling Straits in October and a fourth for Scotland in February. I raised all the money to finance these sessions. In this same period of time I have earned the support of the OnCourse Foundation in the UK, the B.L.E.S.M.A Foundation in the UK, the Soldier On Foundation in Canada, the Veteran Golfers Association in the US, The Gary Sinise Foundation, and the Folds Of Honor Foundation in the US who now provide scholarships for the children of every soldier who attends our school. And I have also engaged the support of the BBC, Sky Sports, and a dozen newspapers and magazines.

By establishing the world's only caddie school for soldiers we are giving a new direction and meaning to the lives of soldiers who have been lost and unable to proceed productively through life. Our support and training enables them to become productive members of their communities.

    At a time when I was at the bottom of my life, I found peace and meaning while working two seasons as a caddie in St. Andrews to prepare to caddie for my son on his first pro tour. That experience and the belief that soldiers would make exemplary caddies because of their loyalty and toughness led me to establish The Caddie School For Soldiers. I have never been a soldier but the fathers of my boyhood were all World War II soldiers who taught me what was required to become a decent man in this life.  I created this school to honor those soldiers, my father among them— and to honor this new generation of soldiers who embrace their same qualities of service and sacrifice, and who carry themselves with the same humble nobility, and who have given so much for the rest of us. I have seen how our school has improved and even saved the lives of some splendid soldiers who were drowning in loneliness and who had lost all belief in themselves. My theory of change is simply to help one person at a time recover his/her belief in him/herself.  With this new belief, they can then go out into the world and make a positive difference in the lives of everyone they encounter.  This is how you change the world for the better. 

We currently hold two sessions of the school each year and serve a total of 13 soldiers.  with additional funding from SOLVE we will hold six sessions of the school each year and serve approximately 40 soldiers.

My goal is to expand the school from two sessions a year to six.

Each session of the school costs $47,000. I have only been able to raise enough to cover two sessions of the school each year. I need to find approximately an addition $200,000 a year. 

At the moment I am trying to find an agent to take the documentary film we produced about the school and sell it in the marketplace to one of the media platforms like Netflix, Amazon. Et al. 

The ONCourse Foundation in the UK and America sends me soldiers. The Veteran Golfers Association in America sends me soldiers.  Soldier On Foundation in Canada sends me soldiers. B.L.E.S.M.A. Foundation in the UK sends me soldiers.  Folds of Honor provides scholarships for the children of every American soldier who attends our school. The Kohler Family provides use of their golf course facilities in Scotland and America.