Great organizations have great leadership; those qualities include honesty, integrity, confidence, passion and commitment. The PCM9GA “Golfing Niners” are lucky to have people like Bob Caldwell, who live their lives with those qualities. And talk about commitment! Bob has been secretary of this group for ten years, working both ahead of and behind the scenes to help this golf group run smoothly.
Bob’s passion for the game began in his youth, in Marion, IN, about 50 miles SW of Ft. Wayne. There the Caldwell family owned about 200 acres of land. The outer 100 acres were farmed and the internal 100 acres were dedicated to golf. Their family owned the AJC golf club, named after Alvin James Caldwell, his dad. Originally, it was a 9-hole course. Alvin James had the vision for another nine in his head. So, Bob and his dad built the remaining 9-holes, the only public course in that area. Bob grew up on golf; besides cultivating a passion for play, he grew up operating and maintaining the course with his family.
His adult work career was as a Systems Consultant for the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company, a title for what we today embrace in our computer culture as “the IT guy.” When he finally retired in 2000 and moved to PebbleCreek, his golfing background connected him with Tom Spink and about 20 golfers that were the predecessor to the PCM9GA. Bob collected scorecards and using his computer processing skills, found a system that could calculate handicaps. That early history continued to fuel his passion and commitment to support the game of golf.
For these past ten years, Bob has been the “go-to” guy that helps keep the operation running smoothly. His various responsibilities include being the Web-Master; managing check-ins for all the events; collecting monies and distributing prizes for Closest-To-the-Pin contests at each session; overall record-keeping for the organization; negotiating off-site courses and dates of play during over-seeding and early on in his time as secretary, doing the pairings. With all this work, Bob even gets to play a round of golf periodically.
Organizations are fortunate to have people who volunteer to help. Some organizations are blessed to have the kind of passion and commitment that Bob Caldwell demonstrates. The next time you see him around the golf course, shake his hand and tell him thank you!