Here’s why you don’t have to be a golfer to play in a charity golf tournament on Hilton Head Island
On any normal day, Legendary Golf is four acres of miniature golf where locals and visitors of the Lowcountry can choose between two 18-hole courses, read Bible verses at each hole and work on their putting stroke.
On Saturday, however, it was the location of the first charity miniature golf tournament to benefit Operation R&R, a nonprofit on Hilton Head Island that helps military families that have been separated by deployment and gives them a chance to reconnect in paradise.
What started as two or three military families in a condo owned by Dr. Grant Evans, the director of Operation R&R and a chiropractor with The Sport and Spine Institute, turned into a charity that’s helped upwards of 1,500 families, according to Evans.
“It wasn’t really ever supposed to be this big,” he said.
Evans said Operation R&R brings in deserving military members from four local bases to spend a virtually free week’s stay with their spouse and children on Hilton Head Island in donated homes and condos from September to May.
“It lapsed into helping (the families) deal with the multiple reintegration issues that these families have to deal with because of multiple deployments, such as the suicides, the divorce rates, the post-traumatic stress disorders, childhood separation anxiety issues,” he said.
Retired Lt. Col. Holly Gifford Bosworth said the organization has an immediate need for homes, condos and rental properties to be donated in the off-season. She said the efforts also benefit Gold Star families (parents and spouses who have lost a soldier or service member on active duty) and bringing them to the island helps them work through “the new normal” and their grief during their stay.
“This environment helps them work through that grief,” she said.
With so many charity golf tournaments held on the island every couple of days, Evans said the organization decided to try something different with Ed and Lori Berry, who serve on Operation R&R’s board of directors and own Legendary Golf.
“We just decided instead to have the first-ever held miniature golf tournament on Hilton Head so that it would involve non-golfers, children, families, etcetera., since our charity kind of deals with families as well,” he said.
As of Friday morning, the event had received more than $10,000 in donated prizes to raffle off, according to Lori Berry. By 1 p.m. Saturday, $6,500 was received from organizations and families sponsoring holes at Legendary Golf and they had far more sponsors than the available 36 holes, she said.
“For a first-time charity event, it’s a great support from the community,” she said.
Retired Lt. Col. Bob Reuter, a member of the Military Officers Association of America Hilton Head Chapter, attended the tournament Saturday with his wife, Karen, and said they had donated a portion of a timeshare for military families to use.
“It’s a good cause,” he said.
When Karen Reuter got a letter from the family they sponsored after their stay, she said reading it made her cry.
“It meant so much to them to have a nice space for their family to finally be able to spend some quality time together without all the pressures they face in everyday life,” she said. “And I just felt really good that it meant that much to them, and it’s an easy thing to do.”
For more information to donate or sponsor a family at your residence, visit www.orrusa.org.
Note: This story will be updated with a total of donations collected.
This story was originally published September 24, 2016 at 8:29 PM with the headline "Here’s why you don’t have to be a golfer to play in a charity golf tournament on Hilton Head Island."