Laura SmickleyLaurie Smickley
Signal Mountain
Retired
Family members introduced Laurie Smickley to the game of golf.
The introduction didn't come under ideal circumstances.
About 18 years ago her brother, Rick Vander Lind, was dying of cancer. He was a great golfer, she said, and one goal she had during his all-too-short fight with the disease was to play a round of golf with him.
"If he can do it, it can't be that hard," she recalled thinking while knocking a bucket of balls high and hard on the range Monday at Moccasin Bend Golf Course.
She quickly learned the difficulty of the game.
It's even more difficult to learn when one's children are in high school, as was the case for Smickley back in the 1990s, and it's even more difficult when there's a living wish on the line.
The sad news is that she never played that round with her brother. He died too soon for them to play together on courses in Wisconsin or Michigan, where they spent most of their lives.
"It would have been nice," Smickley said.
But another brother, Mike, kept encouraging her to play the game. So did her her husband, Bob.
They've been playing together as a couple and as a family -- ranging from alongside the lakes of Michigan to beside the coasts of Florida -- in Rick's memory ever since.