Celebrity Golf #15

Weekend raises thousands for Warroad's hockey progam

In the summer of 1995, I worked a three month internship at The Warroad Pioneer, which I'm sorry to say has since ceased operation. This was the first professional newspaper that I worked for in my career, and it turned out to be a wonderful experience. I had only worked at Bemidji State University's newspaper for about a year and half before landing the internship. At The Pioneer I gained experience in sports, feature, beat and government reporting. I designed pages, took and developed photographs and was responsible for community relations. The best part is that I remain friends with the owners nearly 30 years later.

July 25, 1995

By Devlyn Brooks

Bill Christian may do the spearheading for Warroad's annual Celebrity Golf Tournament, but he contends that there is a network of people who give to make the event possible.

Christian said that preparing for the tournament is an ongoing process all year round.

One of the major responsibilities is the garnering of the celebrities who will play in each year's tournament. This duty is carried out by Christian himself, and he said that he is contacting celebrities constantly throughout the year about playing in the charity event.

This task is complicated by the fact that there are about 30 celebrities that appear at the tournament each year. This means that there is at least one celebrity for every to or three golfers.

"I go to a lot of celebrity tournaments, and a lot of them only have four or five celebrities," Christian said. "We have more celebrities per golfer than most other tournaments."

Christian said that they usually have to talk to 75 to 80 celebrities to find 30 who can play in the tournament.

"Most of these guys are very busy, and we don't pay any of them to play," Christian said. "They're taking their own time to help us out. This makes it difficult."

However, once they get the celebrities up here, they have a great time, said Christian. He said that that is why a lot of the guys return so often.

This year the tournament suffered a painful loss, however. Gordy Howe, who has participated in the event for the last couple of years, couldn't make it to the tournament this year. "We thought we would have Gordy. At the last minute he just couldn't arrange it," Christian said.

The invitations to the noncelebrity golfers go out in May. Christian is also in charge of finding 75 to 80 golfers for the tournament. He said that this is an easier task now than it was 15 years ago when the tournament started. "It's easier to sell the tickets now that people are aware of the tournament," he said.

And by the looks of the sign-up sheet the tournament could have a bright future ahead. There are already golfers that come from Bemidji, Thief River Falls, Winnipeg, Grand Forks and even southern Minnesota cities such as Hopkins.

Cal Marvin and Dale Telle are responsible for planning the fishing trip that is offered to the celebrities on the Sunday after each tournament.

Christian said he could not emphasize enough how important this part of the project is because the free fishing trip is the reason a lot of the celebrities appear for the tournament.

"We are in Warroad, which is a little out of the way for most of these guys," he said. "One reason we get the celebrities up here is the fishing trip."

The celebrities are also offered free airfare to Warroad. This is arranged through the use of the Marvin Windows and Doors plane and another plane which is provided free of charge by Hubbard Broadcasting out of the Twin Cities.

The volunteer efforts don't just end with the planning of the project either. Christian said that there are 20 to 25 people who donate their time to work at the tournament free.

Christian also mentioned that Janet Olson who works at Christian Bros. does "an awful lot of work" on the event.

And then there are free donations given by Pepsi-Cola of Warroad and Northwest Beverage out of Thief River Falls.

Is all the work worth it? Christian said that it definitely is when he thinks about the $10,000 to $15,000 that is raised every year by the tournament. All proceeds are raised so that the youth hockey programs in Warroad have free ice time.

"It's really a big effort by people to put this on," he said, "but it always just seems to fall into place."