Bill Hayes takes Chi Chi's Youth Foundation International
Florida's SunCoast Golfer
October 1995
On this day, Bill Hayes is hustling off to Indianapolis for an audience with former vice president Dan Quayle. After that, the man who found a link between golf and underprivileged children is headed to Costa Rica.
There are scheduled meetings with the governments of Taiwan and Thailand. He's already spoken to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. All in the name of the Chi Chi Rodriguez Youth Foundation.
From humble beginnings in 1979, this Pinellas county treasure has caught the attention of people seeking to help children worldwide. "We started with two kids in a car," said Hayes, the president and co-founder of the foundation. "We never intended and never dreamed it would become what it has become. The amazement of it all is now we have a golf course and some 500 children and interest from around the world."
With Rodriguez' name and help, Hayes set out to help disadvantaged children at a unique after-school program. Not only would they receive lessons in academics, but they would learn to play golf and put their learning to practical use.
Children ages 5 to 15 spend time each week working in special programs, including math, reading and other subjects. They also learn skills that will help them get jobs when they are older.
The foundation's mission was to help children from poor or troubled families in the Tampa Bay area. Typically, children referred to the program meet two of the following criteria: they are abused, single-parented, receive some kind of government assistance, have poor grades, are withdrawn or aggressive, or have been involved with the law.
"The beauty of it is that not only is it a concept that's really helping kids adjust academically, but also morally," Hayes said. "If you're around a golf course, you're around people who, let's face it, play an elitist sport. But by being around that, it cultivates a moral value. And, you really see a change in their attitude as far as self-esteem."
The program began slowly, but by 1984, Hayes and Rodriguez had approached the city of Clearwater and offered to lease the Glen Oaks Municipal Golf Course on Gulf to Bay Blvd. The plan was to allow students after school to learn basic maintenance skills and customer service.
A few year later, Rodriguez enlisted the help of golf great Jack Nicklaus. They hosted the first Chi Chi and the Bear Kids Classic in 1987, and raised a whopping $800,000 from the pro-am event. Money raised has helped build the Chi Chi Rodriguez Golf Club, the Wadsworth Vocation Building, the Dr. Calvin English Building and has established a fund for the additional school buildings that are needed. Subsequent fund-raisers have involved Nicklaus and PGA Tour star Paul Azinger.
By 1989, the Chi Chi Rodriguez Golf Club opened on McMullen Booth Road, an 18-hole, par 69 golf course that would serve as the foundation's home. The course is part of a 220-acre complex that is the nation's first public school on a golf course built and supported by private funds.
It is where the Modesta-Robbins Partnership School sits. With a class of local fifth-graders who are taught by Pinellas County certified teachers, the hope is to expand the school and include sixth and seventh grade students.
And the good word is spreading. "I get bombarded," Hayes said. "People call from all over the United States. They want to figure out how to do this. It's a real gem of a program. And a lot of this is by accident. I guess Chi Chi saw things in me that I didn't see in myself. People think you're a nut. Then you do something good, they think you're a visionary. "Who would have ever though I'd be meeting with the former Vice President of the United States for a national endowment campaign?" Hayes himself was an abused child who at one time had aspirations of playing golf.
Rodriguez, who in 1986 received the Horatio Alger award for Humanitarianism, was one of six children from a poor family in Puerto Rico. When he was 4, he nearly died from rickets, & disease caused by lack of vitamins. When he was 8, Chi Chi began caddying and he learned to play golf by watching. Since he had no clubs or balls of his own, he would practice by hitting tin cans with a tree branch. "These kids and I have a lot in common," Rodriguez once said. "We've all spent a lot of time in the rough."
His professional career began in 1960, and Rodriguez won eight times on the PGA Tour. He joined the senior circuit in 1985 and has become one of the tour's biggest stars.
The program began when Hayes took a couple of underprivileged youngsters to watch Rodriguez play. Chi Chi let them walk with him for a few holes, and then went with them to the detention center for dinner. "Seeing those kids trapped like animals inside cells broke my heart," Rodriguez said. "I wasn't that different once, except I never got caught."
That's when Rodriguez, with Hayes' help, decided to do something. He makes several visits a year to the foundation. Rodriguez, who lives in Naples, typically stops by when he is in the area for the GTE Suncoast Classic in Tampa or the JC Penney Classic in Palm Harbor. Many of the children come to the tournament to watch him play, and it isn't unusual to see Rodriguez and dozens of the kids, joined hand-in-hand, walking towards the 18th green together.
And now his foundation is a model for others throughout the world.
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