The Fire Within — New York's bravest share a special bond: with golf, with each other and with this year's Open venue

Golf Digest, June, 2002 by Dave Kindred

Somehow, three months after the attacks, golf came to that place of terror sanctified as Ground Zero. There among the ruins, New York firefighter John Gaine saw two men in loafers and khaki slacks. Hearing soft Southern voices, he said, "You guys aren't from around here, are you?"

Thousands of men and women from hundreds of places walked on the vast, dusty, acrid jumble of debris. They'd come, unbidden, to do the sad, dangerous, necessary work of search, rescue, and recovery.

If golf mattered to anyone, it could have mattered only as a reminder of a world that used to be. But as Gaine stood by his Special Operations Command truck, one of the Southerners, Bill Golden, said he'd come to invite firefighters to play golf in South Carolina. "We've seen what you guys are doing here, and we want to help," said Golden, who carried a proposal. "We'd like you to bring the Ronaldson to Myrtle Beach."

"The Ronaldson" is an annual New York firefighters' golf outing that has drawn as many as 1,800 players each summer in memory of Alfred E. Ronaldson, a special-ops firefighter killed in a fire March 5, 1991.

To take the Ronaldson south, Gaine knew, someone would have to sweet-talk its organizer, Kevin O'Brien, a special-ops man who'd finished his promised 10 years running what he called "the firefighters' Woodstock, rock 'n' roll, good times."

What Gaine didn't know was that O'Brien himself had invited the South Carolinians to Ground Zero. Because September 11 had changed everything, O'Brien hoped the Ronaldson could be done one more time, grander, more meaningful than ever.

But he needed reassurance. So when Gaine said, "Come on, Kevin," O'Brien challenged him: "Give me one good reason, John, why we should do it again."

Gaine swept a hand over Ground Zero, moving it across all those weary, dispirited heroes working the pile. "We need to say thanks to all these people."

Listeners nearby began to applaud, and O'Brien looked around, and he loved the moment, and he said sweet firefighter words he had hoped to say. "All right, you bastards," he said, "you got me."

So firefighters from New York and across America would gather at Myrtle Beach in May for the 11th annual Ronaldson.

A course for everyday folks

Now comes the firefighters' United States Open. Let's call it that. It's played on a course a firefighter can afford five minutes from the firehouse on Main Street of the little Long Island town of Farmingdale.

From the first tee, players can see the charred buildings of the Nassau County Fire Training Academy.

The Black Course at Bethpage State Park has been a world-class test for years. But some part of its appeal to the U.S. Golf Association is its identity as a public course with a daily fee below $40. "The People's Open," they're calling it, and in these times there's no better example of blue-collar/working-class/everyday folks than firefighters--such as Skip Schumeyer, once an FDNY firefighter, now a Farmingdale volunteer, a regular on Bethpage's five courses.

"Some people get there at 7 o'clock the night before and camp out," Schumeyer says. "I'm too old for that. I get up at 4 or 5 in the morning, go out there as a single and wait for a spot."

For the Open, Schumeyer has rounded up 132 firefighters from Farmingdale and New York to work as marshals at the 17th hole and two practice putting greens. Another 90 marshals working the 18th hole will come from Chief Mike Gilroy's Nassau County training academy.

Jonathan Barker, the USGA's Open manager: "As it happens, the firefighters were invited before 9/11. We wanted the 4,900 volunteers to represent the community here. But, certainly, after 9/11, it's even more appropriate."

America is in the tank for firefighters. We've seen New York's warriors in their numbered, swoosh-brimmed helmets and reflector-striped turnout coats. We've seen all those ruddy, beefy faces, those sweetheart roughnecks, gritty, profane, bawdy, brave.

Seems every other one is Irish or Italian. They're sons and grandsons, nephews and brothers. The job is a calling for men and women who believe the rewards, if intangible, are greater than the risks, palpable always. We saw them, most of us did, for the first time on September 11, 2001, and we saw them in shades of chalk and gray, covered by ash and fatigue, ghostly silhouettes moving slowly and silently in smoke and sorrow.

Kevin O'Brien's company out of Roosevelt Island arrived at the World Trade Center before the second tower fell. When the tower came down, it brought fearsome rolling thunder and a windstorm carrying concrete and steel.

"I stumbled over something," O'Brien says. "It was a body. Under stuff. I grabbed an arm and lifted it up. It was my best friend, Tom McGoff, a lieutenant in 217. He said, 'Am I in hell?' I said, 'I think we are.' "

Schumeyer and another 25 volunteers left Farmingdale that hellish morning to drive into New York. Such was the traffic chaos that the hour's drive took three. They were at Ground Zero the next 28 hours. "There was so much dust, even at 2 in the afternoon," Schumeyer says, "that it was dark, literally black."