Mother’s Day weekend Keep Moore County Beautiful had its fourth annual Marge Owings Memorial Golf Tournament with 328 golfers playing over two days at the beautiful Donald Ross designed Mid-Pines Inn & Golf Club.

This event, the largest golf benefit in the state for the third year in a row, has been called “The Masters Tournament of the Sandhills.”

Who was Marge Owings?

I first met Marge as a classmate in the seventh grade. She was the unofficial leader of the girls in athletic events. Several years later in high school the newly created Girls Athletic Association announced the awarding of a letter sweater for the first member to swim the length of the Panama Canal. Every day and every week, after school, girls would be in the pool swimming laps. Many weeks later Marge was the first girl to swim the Panama Canal and win her letter.

She was the student lifeguard at the municipal pool that summer of 1940 and that’s when I began wanting to swim a lot more.

There was one problem. She was taller than I was. Added to my daily prayer was asking the Lord to help me grow tall. Over time my prayers were answered and I began dating Marge. Because of her many community extra-curricular activities plus good grades she was awarded a scholarship to Miami University in Ohio.

And like many other members of the January senior class of 1942 I joined the US Navy on my 17th birthday. Marge postponed her scholarship and got a job in the security office of the Wright Aeronautical plant that made engines for B-24s. In 1945, she went to Miami as a freshman in the school of education. She wanted to be a teacher.

Using the GI Bill, I joined her at Miami in 1946 and in 1948 we were married and lived in what was called Veteran’s Village, the first ever campus housing for married students. She graduated as a teacher and home economist in 1949 and was hired by the Chambers Range Company, who then made the Cadillac of all kitchen ranges.

She had the first company car in our family and on weekends we would drive around campus showing off her new Buick. But she wanted to be a teacher and finally was hired in a nearby rural school district teaching the seventh and eighth grades.

Before coming to the Sandhills in 1983 our family moved 12 times around the country, had four wonderful daughters, and Marge was a community volunteer in Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Stratford, Conn., and was elected to the local Board of Commissioners in North Barrington, Ill.

In Chicago she founded what I called “The Mother’s Bus Company” for local students attending Miami University. She leased buses that would stop at all Chicago highway rest centers to pick up Miami students and take them to and from the campus in Oxford, Ohio, a most difficult location to reach on public transportation.

Funds raised were subsequently used to send the Mini-Band to the Miami –Yale football game in the Yale Bowl. And her bus company still is in operation today.

Her first volunteer effort in Moore County was to hike from our house on Lake Pinehurst around the lake with a trash bag in hand picking up litter as she walked. She would hand trash bags to neighbors as they walked past our driveway on Diamondhead Drive urging them to help. Eventually she brought Adopt-A-Highway to the state and Moore County.

She co-founded Keep Moore County Beautiful, created the Great Gatsby Gala for the American Cancer Institute, served as Treasurer of the Moore County Chapter of the N.C. Symphony Society, co-chaired numerous Arts Council benefits such as Polo for the Arts and originated the name for Jazz in January.

She received the NC Governor’s Award for outstanding Volunteer Service and Miami University’s Bishop Medal; the highest alumni award for community and volunteer public service.

Planned were separate tournaments each day for the men’s, women’s and mixed divisions playing a captain’s choice format.

However, this year there was a shortage of women golfers and a lot of mothers and daughters missed a great golfing day. Lunch was served and a silent auction was conducted with the top offering from the Pinehurst Hotel & Resort being three days and two nights at the Homestead Resort in Virginia with free meals and golf offered each day.

But the crown jewel of the tournament from Mid Pines Inn management is each golfer receiving three additional greens fees at Mid Pines and one greens fee at Pine Needles, the course of the Women’s U.S. Open. Sign up for next Mother’s Day and, especially the lady golfers, don’t miss this Mother’s day dream.