Nelson's charitable legacy: 100 years and 100,000 lives improved

The first time then-PGA TOUR Commissioner Tim Finchem went to Dallas to speak at one of the Salesmanship Club’s weekly luncheons, he looked out over an impressive crowd of about 300 people.

“I said, boy, that's really flattering that all these people would come out to see me speak,” Finchem tells the story on himself. “Byron Nelson came over, and I said to the then-current president, ‘I'm really flattered.’ He said, "Tim, this is the way it is at all our luncheons. Get over it.’”

Imagine, then, what Finchem, now retired, might think this week. Thursday would have marked the opening round of the AT&T Byron Nelson, but unfortunately, the tournament has been canceled in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

THE IMPACT OF BYRON NELSON

During what would’ve been AT&T Byron Nelson week, PGATOUR.COM is celebrating the tournament’s legendary namesake and his impact on golf with a series of stories. Previous stories include:

• His impact on my life and career, by Tom Watson

•His impact on the modern golf swing

• His impact on winners of his event

On Friday, we’ll take a look at his impact on the PGA TOUR’s record book.

Instead, Peter Lodwick, the president of the Salesmanship Club -- which has helped the AT&T Byron Nelson raise more money for charity than any other PGA TOUR event -- has decided to resume the lunches. Only this time they’re doing it virtually, like so many these days on Zoom, with two speakers to rally the troops.

At a safe distance, of course.

“I would just tell you it's been very hard on our members not to be able to meet,” Lodwick said recently. “... We have the same program, the same format. We're going to have speakers and we'll have over 400 attend. We had a town hall to discuss recent developments on our tournament side and we had over 400 join that call.

“So, people care, they're involved, and they're engaged.”

This year’s AT&T Byron Nelson was going to be a special one, too. But the plans to celebrate the Salesmanship Club’s 100th birthday, as well as Lord Byron’s signature 1945 season that saw him win 18 events, including 11 consecutively, have been put on hold.

“This whole tournament was supposed to be a celebration of the the 75th year of his accomplishments, and then a reminder about all the good work we've done in those hundred years for our charity,” Lodwick says.

Turns out, these two go hand in hand – Byron Nelson and the Salesmanship Club, which has raised more than $160 million to help transform the lives of troubled children. Officials of the civic organization went to the World Golf Hall of Famer in 1967 and told him they wanted to hold a golf tournament the following year at the course in Dallas he helped develop, Preston Trail, and call it the Byron Nelson Classic.

“I was flabbergasted,” Nelson said in a 2002 interview, cognizant of the fact that there had never been a tournament named after a player. “And I knew the work they did, so, of course, I was very honored. So, we had a big kickoff luncheon in the largest ball room in downtown Dallas with right over 1,300 people.

“Governor John Connally … was there, and Glen Campbell did some entertaining and so various people, big people were there -- even my mother was there that afternoon. So that's the way it got started.”

Nelson was extremely proud of the tournament, particularly the money raised for charity by the Salesmanship Club. Until his death in 2006, Nelson was a fixture by the 18th green on Sunday, with his beloved wife, Peggy, to greet the players as they finished their rounds.

Nelson once ranked his association with the event as being “better than winning the Masters or the U.S. Open or even 11 [wins] in a row. Because it helps people.” And that’s where the Salesmanship Club, a group of more than 600 businessmen and women whose core value is “never say no,” comes in.

“Make no bones about it, I say a lot of times, my golf record is wonderful, and I am proud of that,” Nelson once said. “But I am more pleased at this stage of my life to be connected with a group of people like this and for what they do, the rehabilitation of children and ... helping them with their problems.

“I feel very proud with that and I am very pleased about it and I am sure that from all we have known and talk about, why, I am sure that when I am dead and gone, why, they will still be doing it.”

Tom Watson, a four-time champion of the event, had often heard his long-time friend talk about the work of the Salesmanship Club.

“They were trying to help these kids get on a good life track,” Watson says. “He was very, very proud of that fact, that the tournament raised so much and helped so many kids.”

Lodwick met the legendary golfer the first year he worked at the tournament in 2004. It was late in the day, and he and his then-5-year-old son saw Nelson riding down the fairway in a cart, handing out autographed programs to the kids. Nelson stopped and spent 5 or 10 minutes with them.

“No cameras, nobody around,” Lodwick says. “(He was) just an incredibly kind and generous, thoughtful and caring man. ... My son still has that program and I'll always have that memory.”

Now that he’s seen the organization with the cornerstones of fellowship, commitment, respectfulness and humility from so many different vantage points, Lodwick says it’s difficult to overstate what Nelson means to the Salesmanship Club and its efforts to raise money for the Momentous Institute.

“He was and still remains a great inspiration and a regular inspiration to everything we do,” he says. “I mean, we're truly honored to be affiliated with a man of such character and a such accomplishment. And I think it's absolutely true to say that we make every effort to try to reflect his values and honor his legacy. It's really important.”

The Salesmanship Club’s charitable efforts began 100 years ago by funding a camp for orphans. What has become the Momentous Institute now offers a three-pronged approach that includes a school, as well as therapeutic services for children and families and research and training.

“We serve 5,500 children and family that are directly impacted by the Momentous Institute through our school and our therapy session,” Lodwick says. “We also, through our research and training, have been able to extrapolate our programs far beyond Dallas-Fort Worth. ... I'm told that we've impacted over 100,000 lives that way.”

Finchem often used the AT&T Byron Nelson and Salesmanship Club as a model for other tournament organizations. All have figured into the PGA TOUR’s $3 billion in charitable contributions – but none so much as the event named after Nelson.

“I've said this a number of times publicly around the country, community organizations in city after city have looked at Dallas and seen what can happen when a tournament gets integrated with the community, and we see more and more tournaments that are reaching their potential now in terms of giving back,” Finchem said in 2009.

“Twelve years ago, it was made part of our mission statement. We took the step of saying as a policy we would not add any tournament to the Champions Tour, the (Korn Ferry) Tour or the PGA TOUR going forward that wasn't organized for a charitable purpose with 100% of the net proceeds going to charity. It's that important to what our culture is today.

“And so much of that is because of Byron, in his nice way, pushing and pushing and pushing to focus on charity. And we owe him a great debt of gratitude to get us to this point.”

The people who live in the Metroplex owe the Salesmanship Club the same kind of gratitude. This year will be difficult for the men and women sporting those iconic red pants. The tournament they poured their best efforts into isn’t being held at Trinity Forest this week.

Don’t expect the group’s commitment to charity to waiver, though. In its 100th anniversary, the Salesmanship Club has proven it can endure and maintain its goals of helping all children achieve their full potential.

“We've gone through wars, depressions, recessions and now pandemic,” Lodwick said. “And the resiliency of the club and its memberships is pretty humbling to see. So being able to draw upon that history is actually pretty inspiring.

“Yeah, it's been really disappointing, but our partners and our sponsors and our donors understand what we're trying to do and they're supportive even in these tough times.”