Helping Patriots: Chuck Lewis becomes golf ambassador for veterans

Chuck Lewis had never played golf before he read about a PGA HOPE (Helping Our Patriots Everywhere) program on the Missoula Veterans Service Network. The Ronan resident (United States Marine Corps 1970-’74 and United States Navy Reserve 1980-’88)  immediately signed up for the seven-week course at the Missoula golf course.

“They gave me a donated set of golf clubs when the class ended, and I started playing golf once a week,” Lewis said. 

He even played when he and his wife were snowbirding in California. 

Last spring, he got a call from the Missoula golf course about the 2023 PGA HOPE National Golf and Wellness Week, held Oct. 12-16 at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md. A group of 20 veterans and two squad leaders, all graduates of their local PGA HOPE programs, are invited to participate in the immersive five-day event that includes advanced golf instruction from PGA of America Golf Professionals and wellness training that culminates in a golf outing at the legendary venue.

At the conclusion of the event, the 20 graduates become PGA HOPE Ambassadors, returning to their home programs with the responsibility of helping foster the game of golf. Lewis’s territory encompasses the Pacific Northwest.

PGA HOPE is a rehabilitative golf program that positively impacts more than 12,000 veterans each year. Many are dealing with physical and cognitive challenges such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Traumatic Brain Injury or are amputees.

Lewis was invited to participate “to give insight into the culture of veterans,” he said.  

During his training as an ambassador, the PGA HOPE group discussed the cultural experience for veterans in the morning, and worked on adaptive golf each afternoon. They were out on the course hitting a ball while standing on one leg or with one arm or sitting down, as a person would who uses a wheelchair for mobility. 

When he got home, Lewis said he called a veteran he knows who uses a wheelchair and asked him if he wanted to go hit some balls. So they did, and the man hit balls from his wheelchair onto the driving range and spent some time putting. 

“Sometimes he goes golfing with us,” Lewis said. “Generally he drives the cart, but I wouldn’t have ever thought of asking him to go before this class.”

As a PGA HOPE ambassador, Lewis said he’s able to talk to vets year around. He spends early fall, spring, and summer in Montana and winters in Ridgecrest, Calif., where there’s a naval base. 

Walk Across America

PGA HOPE isn’t Lewis’s first sortie into helping veterans.

His first venture was a huge one. Retired Sgt. Lewis walked 3,400 miles across the United States in 2013, and he did that to raise awareness about suicide and prevention.

The catalyst for his walk was a Marine veteran who had spent four years in the corps and mustered out on “4 June 2012,” as Lewis says. He returned to the Mission Valley and didn’t last a month before he committed suicide, and Lewis was handing the flag from his coffin to his widow.

“I started my walk six or eight months later,” Lewis said. 

(For more information on Lewis’s walk, google Walk for the Fallen or Chuck Lewis Walk Across America.)

Next was Plan Bee, established by Lewis in 2017, as a means of supporting wounded and disabled military veterans here in Northwest Montana. Plan Bee offers an educational and hands-on approach to keeping honey bees. At the end, veterans leave with their own bee hive and colony of bees.

In what way are honey bees and golf alike? Focus, says Lewis. 

He said when he “used to be an athlete” he knew how to train physically, but he didn’t know how to train himself mentally so he went to an athletic counselor. The man told Lewis to think about the number 100 – any color, any font, any size – as long as he could. After about 12 seconds of thinking about the number, he asked the counselor what he was up to.

The man told Lewis that the mind has trouble thinking of two things at the same time. You need to focus on one thing. 

Lewis put that philosophy into practice, telling his beekeeping veterans to “bee here now,” so they would keep their mind on the bees and activities of the hive. 

“Golf requires focus – focus on your grip, focus on striking the ball, and watching where the ball goes,” Lewis said. 

“When you are in a combat situation, you hear, see, and smell. Your senses take it all in,” Lewis explains. “It causes problems with families, jobs, etc.”  

But focusing, on golf or honey bees, can allow brains to release the things we really don’t need to worry about any more.

“That’s my goal for vets,” he says. “I want to do things where they aren’t hurting themselves or others.”

When he was in Washington, D.C for Golf and Wellness Week, Lewis visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall. 

“I thought about all the things I got to do in the last 50 years that those folks didn’t get to do,” he said.

With those who lost their lives in mind, Lewis remains committed to helping veterans “who are near and dear to me.” 

    Chuck Lewis gets a good shot off at the Congressional County Club in Bethesda, Md., in mid-October. (PGA of America)