He is a smart caddie with a flashing future. And then that terrible Tuesday

The boundaries between members and staff are not dense and rich in the best clubs, the most confident clubs, just like the ones you will draw with the brand new Sharpie. It’s porous and more like the line you draw with Sharpie on the last leg.

So, at the off-the-scenes National Golf Connection at Southampton Township on the eastern end of Long Island. There are staff at caddy, conference halls and professional shops, who know that club members are almost like family members. There are also club members, some of them industrial captains (using quaint and faded phrases), who can find promising young employees on the club’s employment list. Nelson Doubleday, a famous book publisher and owner of the New York Mets, knew the territory. Jimmy Dunne has been working in this fertile soil for many years. Mike Bloomberg also owns it in his own way. A company is only as good as its employees. All the better business schools have taught this.

If a person has the confidence and willingness to surpass and surpass, golf clubs and courses are a good environment for bosses to see themselves. Who doesn’t want to hire someone with these qualities? The people who avoided (“do!”) were taken from the 1975 dance Disco (“hustle”) and turned it into a life motto.

Enter Kevin Williams, aka Big Kev, which is a huge, sporty and beloved kid who is busy with NGL style. Throughout the 1990s, he was first a student at Shorem Wading River High School in Suffolk County and then worked for four years at Boston College—he worked as a caddy in the country. Sometimes he would drive to work with his dad, Mike Williams, a high school math teacher who works at NGL Pro Shop. Big Kev has mathematical genes and is always helpful for caddies. As the best caddy (and athletes) did, his attitude has never been like this. In high school, he was captain of his golf team, basketball team and baseball team. Good grades are also good. Excellent results. He played golf at the Jesuit School (Jesus School) in the Chestnut Mountains of Boston.

This has been going on for a long time. In the 1950s and early 1960s, there was a brat at the Brae Burn Country Club in the Boston suburbs called Peter Lynch. The young Peter served as Fidelity President D. George Sullivan, who paid tuition to Boston College, earned his money, later worked for Fidelity and became one of Wall Street’s greatest investors. Lynch once talked about Sullivan: “Excellent people, big dump trucks, bad golfers.” Lynch has the noisy genes and mathematical genes. This kind of thing is still going on today. We only hear later, when someone pulls the ace out of the river.

Big Kev cycles regularly in the country’s Seminole President Barry Van Gerbig. A wealthy socialite, Van Gerbig once picked up Ben Hogan at a house he rented in Palm Beach, Florida and took him to practice with Seminole. One day, Hogan said to him, “What you have, you haven’t made money in this life. It’s time to make you your own man.” These sentences inform Van Gerbig’s rest of his life. Van Gerbig likes Big Kev.

Kevin conducted an internship with Wall Street company Salomon Brothers after one of his BC summers. However, with the company’s ownership changed hands in the late 1990s, the internship fell into a dilemma. Van Gerbig calls his successor Jimmy Dunne, president of Seminole, to see if his company, Sandler O’Neill, has a summer position. Dunn did it. Big Kev shot 73 on a company outing at Deepdale Golf Club on Long Island on the summer day. In those days, Sandler O’Neill made a joke that the job application form lists blanks for your golf obstacles. Golf is good for sales anyway, and it has always been. “When you graduate from BC, if you want to work here, there is one,” Dunn told the kids.

You can call it the old boy network at work. This is. This is also the way the world is. It all goes beyond golf and Wall Street. When Charles Blair MacDonald tried to connect the National Golf ball, he called on some of his wealthy friends in Chicago and asked them to write a check and join his club. Seed money. The first is Robert Todd Lincoln, president of railway car maker and operator Pullman Palace. Robert Todd Lincoln is not from a golf family. His father was President Lincoln.

Kevin Williams graduated from Boston College in Magna Cum in 1999. That summer, he sold bonds full-time at Sandler O’Neill. The following year, just before Christmas, he proposed to his high school girlfriend Jillian Volk, because they both sat on the lap of Santa at Macy’s. They set a wedding date for December of the following year.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Jimmy Dunne played in the U.S. mid-term qualifiers at Bedford Golf and Tennis Club. Senior math teacher Mike Williams in his class. Kevin Williams is in the office of Sandler O’Neill on the 104th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Kevin calls Jillian with devastating news and the North Tower is hit by a plane. But he is very good. His building was evacuated. A few minutes later, Nanta was hit. The rest of the day was chaotic. The remaining week, the remaining year. Aftershocks have been felt so far.

Once, on that terrible Tuesday, Mike Williams called Jimmy Dunne and said, “They found Kevin!” He later called Dunne. “They did find Kevin Williams. It’s just not our Kevin Williams.”

Mike Williams traveled 30 or 40 times to the scene of the Gemini Tower Rubber in the next few months, looking for any remnants of his son he could find. He and Dunn said it every day.

The Williams family offered two funerals for the eldest son, following the second following the September 11 attacks, partially recovered from Kevin’s once large and vibrant body. “The second one is harder than the first one,” Mr Williams said Wednesday afternoon. The first one is impossible.

Mike and his wife Pat were at the National Golf Connection Wednesday afternoon. When September 10 arrives, it is usually. They punch a casual five holes from 14 Tee to the house. Over the years, they will drive to New York City and attend the 9/11 memorial service. But over the past few years, they have changed the pattern. They found that this day, as the lower part of Manhattan developed, there were too many. Too many celebrations, and other things. And it is not enough to focus on the lost lives and the evil behind these deaths. They spend every September 11 in Montauk, the easternmost fork in the southern part of Long Island. Just like the end of the earth, solid and beautiful, not for the faint of heart.

The September 11 attacks claimed nearly 3,000 innocent people’s lives, including 66 Sandler O’Neill employees. Two of these 66 are from National Golf Courses Caddy Yard, Kevin Williams and John F. McDowell, who start from the back of his nose, with Axg, are thin and you can cut paper on it. In the club’s Taj Mahal Caddy’s cottage, both men have a plaque that pays tribute. “But as the years go by, fewer and fewer people know these people even less of their stories.” He was suffocating, thinking of Big Cave and the Axe, and the day that took life.

The Wee Uphill walk from the Nationals sunk 16 green to the overhead 17 T-shirt is as adorable as any walk from golf. The 16-year-old green is a gift of 4 poles, and is the shape of a punched bowl. Even a mediocre second shot can be bypassed near the hole when the pin is in the middle of the green and gives you a half-birdie putter. The 17th tee is another gift, an elevated t-shirt that offers spectacular bay views in short 4s, and the pop-up tee shot can still be over 200 yards and leave you with a thrilling ball. You can punch those two holes in eight shots. You can really.

Whenever Dunne walks from 16 green to 17 t-shirts, he holds the driver in his hand, pounding a small round stone, wearing the driver’s head, and titanium on the poured cement. If the club is a little scratched, he doesn’t care. If a little spark emanates from the soles of the club, it’s just right. There is a cross on the top of the stone, drawn in a way that looks like the Middle Ages. Three letters: Cave. They looked like Romans, their way of drawing. Big Cave. Pat and Mike Williams stopped at the stone on Wednesday afternoon, took photos and did some gardening.

More than 20 years ago, the baseball stadium at Walman River High School was renamed the Kevin Williams Memorial Field. It won the award because it is a well-maintained baseball field in Suffolk County. The Williams family does a lot of work themselves. The Kevin Williams Foundation has sent thousands of impoverished children to summer sports camps. Jimmy Dunne has been a major supporter of other countries.

Mike made Kev’s tribute. He picked up a wonton soup container, placed about 9/11 dust at the bottom, poured in the cement, drew the cross as the cement became hard, and threw the three letters away, removed the plastic shell, and buried it on the cylindrical monument, implanting it into the bed of the titleist professional.

For Jimmy Dunne, every day is 9/11. When the actual day rolls on September 11 each year, this day gets more attention. Answered a question Wednesday night at a small dinner in Dunn’s Midtown Manhattan and found himself talking about Kevin Williams. He receives similar questions from time to time. When Dunne posted his opening address at the University of Notre Dame in 2021, its first few minutes (emotional and improvisation) were related to Big Kev.

Mike and Pat Williams have two adult children, a daughter, Kelly and a son, Jamie, who is now in their 40s. Kevin will be 47 today. Mike did not pay tribute to the stone alone. Jamie has been next to his father all the time, including growing it. Jamie is also a caddy on the National Golf Course. For years, he worked at Dunne’s old company, now known as Piper Sandler. Mike still worked at National Golf Links when she retired from teaching, playing games and outings. He and Jimmy Dunne have been talking. Long-term employees and long-term members. They talk about Yankees. They talk about golf. They talk about on-site maintenance and course maintenance. Actually, they were talking about Big Kev.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments via michael.bamberger@golf.com.