{"id":1547,"date":"2024-10-27T11:06:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-27T11:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=1547"},"modified":"2024-10-27T11:06:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T11:06:00","slug":"my-father-and-arnold-palmer-embodying-honesty-and-respect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=1547","title":{"rendered":"My Father and Arnold Palmer \u2013 Embodying Honesty and Respect"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By MIKE MAGEE<\/p>\n

My father and Arnold Palmer had a great deal in common \u2013 and none of it involved golf. They were both men of faith and lived into their 80\u2019s. My father was Catholic, and Arnold Palmer was Presbyterian. But on the day that Palmer died (September 25, 2016), Benedictine Archabbot Douglas R. Nowicki o<\/a>f St. Vincent\u2019s Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, was at his bedside.<\/p>\n

Nowicki and Palmer\u2019s friendship dated back a half century.<\/a> He and his wife would often attend 7:30 a.m. Sunday Mass at the abbey.<\/p>\n

At the time of Palmer\u2019s death, the Benedictine monk said,\u00a0\u201cArnie sort of appealed to everyone. There were no barriers, race, color, creed \u2014 those were things that never entered into his mind. He was welcoming to everybody and treated everyone with tremendous warmth and respect.\u201d<\/p>\n

But eight years and one month after his death, Palmer\u2019s daughter, Peg Palmer Wears felt compelled to rise up and defend her father\u2019s honor. In the Latrobe Airport, named after him, Donald Trump (according to FOX News) \u201cdiscussed the golf legend\u2019s manhood and how other players would react to Palmer in the showers.\u201d Specifically, in an effort to relate to the local audience, Trump said, \u201cHe was all man. This man was so strong and tough, and I refused to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there; they said, \u2018Oh my God, that\u2019s unbelievable.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The reaction from his daughter, a registered Independent from North Carolina, was swift. She labeled <\/a>his words, \u201cdisrespectful\u201d and \u201cinappropriate\u201d\u2026 \u201cappropriating someone he admires to bolster his own image, people deserve better.\u201d Her words in defense of her father, who was no longer there to speak for himself, called to mind my sister Sue\u2019s Eulogy to our father. It focused on the values and qualities in him that she admired \u2013 honesty, hard work, compassion, integrity, humility, kindness, and love for others.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

In one memorable turn<\/a> in Church the day of our dad\u2019s burial, Sue said, \u201cHe taught us honesty<\/strong>. I was a little girl when Dad first impressed upon me the importance of honesty. He related a story to me about his own childhood. He had gone to the store and when he paid the shopkeeper there was some question about the amount of change he was due. He said more. The shopkeeper was uncertain but took Dad\u2019s word because he said, \u2018He had never known Bill Magee to tell a lie.\u2019 He finished that story by saying to me, \u2018There is nothing more important than honesty<\/strong>. People may not always like what you have to say, but if they can believe you then\u00a0they will always trust you<\/strong>.\u2019 That was a lesson Dad taught over and over again.\u00a0His personal honesty and his integrity were beyond reproach.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

I believe my sister Sue and Peg would see eye to eye. Sue said of our Dad, \u201cHe was\u00a0hard working. <\/em>He was\u00a0a man with heart.<\/em> He was\u00a0a gentleman.\u201d<\/em> In Mr. Palmer\u2019s defense, Peg said much the same. When asked what her dad would have thought<\/a> if he were alive to hear Trump\u2019s remarks, she replied,\u00a0 \u201cHe would have thought \u2018He\u2019s not as smart as we thought he was\u2019 and walk out of the room. What would my dad think of Donald Trump today? I think he\u2019d cringe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both my father and Arnold Palmer were lifelong Republicans, conservatives, served in the military, were great admirers of Ronald Reagan, and attendees at Catholic Sunday masses. But I believe they were also wise enough to know that no policy gain \u2013 on federal funding of private schools, or limits on abortion and contraception, or lower taxes, or conservative Supreme Court Justices \u2013 would ever be enough of a rationalization to signal to an evil and dishonest man like Trump that the traits he embodies are acceptable for America.<\/p>\n

Trump needs to be surrounded by vast sea of MAGA hat wearing admirers for affirmation. How antithetical to the man who\u2019s name he took in vain last week. In contrast, Archabbot Nowicki <\/a>recalled a visit with Mr. Palmer at the Bay Hill Golf Club in Orlando, Florida this way: \u201cHe had given one of our commencement addresses. He talked about the importance of decorum. He said, \u2018That means when you enter a room that you take your hat off.\u2019\u201d At the club, a man \u201ccame into the dining room and had his hat on. Arnie said very gently to him, \u2018Will you please take off your hat?\u2019 He had that respect for people.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Bill Magee and Arnold Palmer were alive today, I believe they would never vote for Trump \u2013 Never, Never, Never!<\/p>\n

Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and a regular contributor to THCB. He is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside America\u2019s Medical Industrial Complex<\/a> (Grove\/2020).<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By MIKE MAGEE My father and Arnold Palmer had a great deal in common \u2013 and none of it involved golf. They were both men of faith and lived into their 80\u2019s. My father was Catholic, and Arnold Palmer was Presbyterian. But on the day that Palmer died (September 25, 2016), Benedictine Archabbot Douglas R….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}