Since establishing the school in 2019, we have run numerous training sessions and changed lives of veterans across the world.
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Our GalleryHOPE FOR EVERY VETERAN
Every story has its point of origin. The story of The Caddie School For Soldiers began with this photograph 74 years ago.
I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania in the early 1950s where the World War II soldiers were the fathers of my boyhood. My own father returned from the war in the Pacific and married the only girl he ever loved. Her name was Peggy. Nine months later she gave birth to his twin sons and then died. He was shattered and spent that autumn sleeping on her grave. In the mornings, soldiers he had gone to war with, would swing by the cemetery and take him to the coffee shop in town to try to help him talk through his grief.
When my father finally told me this story about how the WWII soldiers had saved his life, it was 1998 and he was dying of a brain tumor. I set out to write a book about my mother's life and death and her brief love story with my father. Of Time & Memory was published in 2000. During my research I discovered that Peggy was only nineteen years old and that she was dying slowly through her pregnancy but rather than save her own life, she chose to carry her twins to full term. She died sixteen days later. She had made her doctor promise never to tell anyone so that my brother and I would not have to go through life knowing we had caused her death. And because she was afraid if my father knew that she had chosen her babies over him, he might not be able to be a good father to us.
When I learned this I became haunted, day and night, and a great darkness settled over my life. Somehow I found my way to Scotland and it was working there as caddie that saved me. Each round of golf I caddied gave me the chance to disappear from my own story and enter the story of the golfer at my side. Gradually that feeling of being haunted lifted.
Fifteen years later when I learned of the soldiers haunted by what they had been through, I knew that working as caddies could save their lives as well. I began to see that my own darkness and the years of being haunted had prepared me perfectly to minister to these soldiers. And so, in 2018 I established the school to honor the World War II soldiers who rescued my father from desolation, and to honor this new generation of soldiers by preparing them for a profession as caddies where they could rise above the darkness into the light. Embraced by a new family of brothers, we have restored the lives of many soldiers. And our graduates have worked as caddies all over the world, from Royal Liverpool, The Old Course, Dumbarnie, Royal Portrush, Cabot Cape Breton, Streamsong in Florida, Cabot Citrus Farms, Royal County Down, Royal Lythum & St. Annes, and Chambers Bay where they have proved themselves to be exemplary in every way.
My father grew up very poor, without indoor plumbing, and his teeth were rotten. His first week in boot camp all his teeth were pulled and he was fitted with dentures. He was so pleased with what he called his Army Teeth because he could smile for the first time without being ashamed. Each session of the school ends with our soldiers caddying in the Sgt. Richard Snyder Cup. Before the tournament begins I always show the soldiers this photograph of my father and Peggy on their wedding day, November 26, 1949 and I tell them that in my whole life I never saw him smile like he is in this photograph. Once he lost Peggy he never really smiled again.
Don J. Snyder
