Mary Mom
Have a cookie!
Mary Rolfing Bogue
The first green at Pebble Beach Golf Links severely slopes from back to front, and a slippery putt from above the hole requires nerves of steel just to keep the ball on the green, much less escape with a two-putt. The putting surface is sandwiched between three cavernous bunkers, a penal patch of blinding white sand capable of ruining your round before it even starts. I’ve been fortunate to play a full round at this cathedral of golf enough times to use both fingers and toes, but every time I stroll down the fairway of Hole #1 I make sure gaze upon the understated house standing guard above the green and deliver a prayerful “thank you” to a very special woman who called it home, a wise lady who did more to shape my early life than almost any other person I’ve known.
In June 1974, I moved from Schiller Park, a gritty township of middle-class Polish and Italian families located within eardrum-shattering distance to Chicago’s O’Hare airport, to some off-the-beaten-path patch of Earth I had never heard of called Carmel, California. The reasons behind the move didn’t concern me; all I knew was my parents and I were packing up and heading West to some squirrely little toadstool the old Rand McNally maps didn’t even bother to highlight in yellow (indicating a big, real-life metropolis). I was more than a little upset with dear old Mom and Dad, as I was changing schools for the tenth time, which some might consider a lot since I had just graduated from the eighth grade.
We settled into a brand-spanking new two-bedroom townhouse on Rio Road, located near the mouth of Carmel Valley. Dad decided it would be wiser to pay $275/month to rent the place versus buying it for $46,000. The Crossroads and Barnyard shopping centers didn’t exist back then, but located less than a three-wood from my front door was a Sambo’s restaurant, better known as the primordial, ground zero hangout for any hungry and hormonal Carmel High School student. It’s now a bustling Starbucks, a commercial and cultural transition indicative of how much these politically correct times have changed. But man, how I miss the $1.99 hamburger combo meal.
The cozy townhouse was home for my freshman, sophomore and junior years, and then, as many of you know, the world literally changed overnight. Dad’s bankruptcy forced us to move 26 miles to Salinas, and I spent the first semester of my senior year driving to school, going to class, playing varsity football and basketball, working nights at a Carmel Baskin and Robbins, and then driving home. By December 1977, I had acquired a plethora of life experiences which would help me later in life. I had also acquired mono.
Enter Mary Mom.
Peter Rolfing is a former high school classmate of mine. If his last name sounds familiar, especially to those tuning into this week’s U.S. Open golf championship, it’s likely because Pete’s older brother Mark Rolfing is a noted television golf analyst and commentator. A stud football and baseball player blessed with warm eyes and an easy smile, Pete was voted by our class as Most Likely to be George Clooney; girls wanted to be with him, and guys wanted to be like him. But Pete has never been one to read his own headlines; he’s humble, gracious, and kind to a fault, and truly one of the nicest and most thoughtful gentlemen I’ve ever known.
I truly believe the source of all things good about the Rolfing boys (middle brother Steve Rolfing raises llamas in Montana) emanates from their gracious yet spirited mother, a bonified angel from Heaven named Mary. A small, delicate woman with bright eyes and a mega-watt smile that rarely left her face, Mary Bogue (she remarried after the passing of James Rolfing in 1961) was without hesitation the most warm-hearted person I’ve ever met in my life. Mary viewed the world thru the rosiest of rose-colored glasses, and I can’t remember a single time when she didn’t see the good side of anyone or anything. A stake in a family-owned business helped her to live in a place like Pebble Beach, but Mary was the last person on Earth who would ever flaunt her good fortune. I offer as proof the puke yellow Vega station wagon Pete drove in high school—a car so ugly it was banned in most English-speaking countries. Or so I’m told.
Mary, or Mary Mom as every friend of the Rolfing boys has ever called her, learned about my predicament and immediately reached out to me. To aid my recovery and relieve some of the stress caused by my daily grind, she generously offered a spare bedroom in her Pebble Beach home during my last semester in high school. The choice before me was simple; share a windowless bedroom with my brother Nelson next to a dingy Taco Bell on the outskirts of the Lettuce Capital of the World or wake up every morning to the pulsating rhythm of sprinklers humming alongside Hole #1 at Pebble Beach Golf Links. The only time I ever face an easier decision was when The Pretty Blonde asks me if I want another slice of her meatloaf on my birthday.
Mary Mom saved my life. Not only was I able to recover my health and return to school, but more importantly, Mary Mom helped me to find myself. Trust me, no one should ever feel sorry for a snotty-nosed teenager growing up in the cushy confines of Carmel who suddenly found himself sleeping in a zip code only the .001% could afford. But the fact was I had more on my plate than I could handle. The life I had known had been turned upside-down, and my family was in a tailspin. I was a rudderless ship, and the road map I was going to navigate after graduation looked about as promising as the 10% unemployment rate that existed at the time. Going to college was out of the question; my parents were broke, and I didn’t have the financial wherewithal to even contemplate an answer.
However, for the monthly rent of a pint of pralines and cream ice cream, Mary Mom sat in her living room chair counseling me during countless afternoons, usually with Colonel Fannon, the house’s feline Commander-in-Chief snuggling across her lap, dissecting the State of Lee Geiger. Overcoming my annoying habit of drooling over the view of the first green, the second fairway, the tennis courts, Stillwater Cove, Carmel Bay and Point Lobos, Mary grabbed my psyche by the collar and shook me until I got my life back on the rails. She instinctively knew what I was made of and refused to allow me to feel sorry for myself, instead imploring me to pick myself off the floor. “No one but you can solve your problems, Lee” she would say to me while laser-staring a hole through my eyes, “but I know you’ve got what it takes to solve them.” She implored me to apply to college and told me to stop worrying so much about how I was going to pay for it. She wasn’t offering any financial guarantees, mind you, because that was not her style. She simply wanted me to find some self-respect, to take responsibility for myself. Just like she asked of her sons.
Mary Mom believed in me. And it’s because of her that I am where I’m at today.
Thank you, Mary Mom. Thank you very, very much.