By Michael A. Boslet EUREKA, MONTANA

In the middle of nowhere, on the edge of a town a long way from anywhere, is a monument to the kindness of strangers. It's called John's Golf Course for the Disabled and Handicapped, but it's a place where everyone is welcome, whether visibly flawed or perceived as flawless. John's Golf Course isn't so much about golf as it is the human spirit of giving. Every blade of grass, flagstick, cup, tee marker, and every bag of fertilizer, piece of greenkeeping and irrigation equipment was donated to help a father realize his dream of building a course for his mentally and physically disabled son and anyone who wanted to play with him. Not taxdeductible altruism, mind you, but straight-from-the-heart-and-receipts-be-damnedgenerosity.

It is said that charity begins at home, but in the case of John's, it began in the hearts of golf course maintenance professionals on each coast and points in between. Almost everything connected to this course bears a tale of a superintendent or golf industry professional who has become part of the larger story of the Espinoza family of Steve, Juana and their 26-year-old son, John, the course's namesake. And John's was built with the labor and brotherly love of the townspeople of tiny, remote Eureka, a community that takes care of its own. It's a place where people have little and don't want much, and where a dream is a powerful unifier.

Steve, 52, is the creator and curator of John's Golf Course, a wildly entertaining, criss-cross sing target golf layout of nine greens and 10 holes on 10 acres of land with towering pine trees surrounding the family's log frame house. There is no charge to play John's GC, except at an annual tournament.

Steve is equal parts Energizer Bunny and carnival-act pitchman, who keeps going and going, and talking and talking about the course and all who have had a hand in it. He remembers everyone who helped and everything they gave or did to make the dream come true. Once he gets on a roll, he doesn't come up for air. But it is you who will be left breathless by the evidence of Steve's reach and the support John's Golf Course has received. "We only exist because of the generosity of the golf course superintendents of America," says Steve, who has spread the story about John's in speeches before the Peaks & Prairies GCSA and the Idaho GCSA. He will speak at the Carolinas GCSA annual conference and show Nov. 19 in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Dream takes root

Bob LeBlanc, superintendent of ultraprivate Crystal Lakes Resort south of town, was the first greenkeeper to help Steve and John. Together, they built a green, using Putter creeping bentgrass seed donated by Gayle Jacklin , accounts manager for Jacklin Seed/Simplot in Post Falls, Idaho.

John's friends, a group of teen-agers with chain saws, strong backs and no malls at which to spend their time, became course builders in 1994. In one day, 22 trees were felled so John could have an opening to the inaugural green from 150 yards out. A lot more t rees would come down as other greens were built, with holes ranging from 102 yards to 253 yards.

How Steve gets people to help is simple: He asks. He picks up the phone and cold calls, or just drops in unannounced. He knows people who know people and so on, parlaying the six degrees of separation theory to his advantage. Sooner or later, he may call on you.

"The worst thing they can do is tell me no," he says.

Felipe "Phil" Villalobos remembers receiving a call from Steve. The superintendent of Desert Falls Country Club in Palm Desert, Calif., Villalobos in 1996 was the first to give used equipment to Steve and John, but only after he met them and looked into their eyes. Villalobos says he could see they were good, honest people, so he gave father and son a Toro triplex unit with two sets of reels and a utility cart. The trip established the 1,500-mile Eureka - to - Southern California drive, with stops in Idaho and Nevada, as the life line for John's Golf Course.

"If we turn our backs on every stranger, we'd never have any friends," the now-retired Villalobos, 68, says of helping the Espinozas, who always travel together, though taciturn Juana, 55, prefers to wait in the Suburban while Steve and John meet with people.

Jim Peacock, superintendent of Meadow Lake Golf Resort in Columbia Falls, Mont., was asked to help in 1999. Despite his misgivings about a backyard course, Peacock was reeled in by Steve's enthusiasm and John's accomplishments in state Special Olympics golf tournaments (he has won eight gold medals). Peacock was moved by the father's genuine desire to give his son a place to play, especially considering there wasn't a public course near Eureka, and the experience John had on one left an unfavorable impression of golfers.

It was Peacock who saw a story that needed to be told, and his May 2001 article in Golf Course Management recounted the building of John's Golf Course and the philanthropy behind it. The story had an immediate impact.

Steve points to the John Deere 3365 fairway unit donated by Randy Allen, CGCS, director of golf course operations for Burroughs and Chapin, a development company in Myrtle Beach, S.C., as proof of the industry's kindness. Allen read Peacock's story, picked up the phone and invited Steve, Juana and John to Myrtle Beach - on his nickel.

The family went home in a U-Haul truck towing a 16-foot-long trailer loaded with second-hand equipment. That Deere is John's favorite mower, Steve says. Yes, John, who was born with Corneliade Lang Syndrome, an affliction of mental retardation and limited motor skills, is an able-bodied working member of the John's Golf Course staff. Despite his disabilities, which include blindness in his right eye and nearly inflexible wrists, John is a capable and independent grounds crew worker. To hear John tell it, he does all the work while his dad does all the talking.

"He does 50 percent of the work," John says, pointing to this dad. "I do 100 percent."

"We're a staff of two," Steve roars back. "And I'm lying. We're a staff of a thousand across the country."

An exaggeration, of course, but that is to be expected from Steve, whose indomitable optimism masks the chronic pain he endures from Vietnam War injuries that left him disabled. Peacock as so impressed with Steve's drive that he nominated him for this publication's 2002 Superintendent of the Year award. Steve was one of the nine finalists.

There are so many more who have helped. Former GCSAA president Bruce Williams, CGCS0 at The Los Angeles Country Club, has given walk mowers and an assortment of odds and ends, including a setting for 48 of Royal Doulton ceramic tableware. The Espinozas have made 15 trips to see Williams, whose clout has opened doors to other maintenance shops and courses that invite John to play.

In June, members of the Southern Nevada Golf Course Superintendents Association loaded a 45- foot-long tractor-trailer with a Jacobsen LF100 fairway mower and tons of fertilizer and grass seed, as well as ball washers, swimming pool lights, napkin dispensers and a carpet shampooer.

What Steve can't use, he trades or sells to get what the course needs and to raise money so the three some can afford another scavenging trip. On one trip to Southern California, the Suburban broke down in Indio, rolling to a stop next to a Club Car facility with a lot full of golf cars. Fate had steered Steve again.

Scott Stevens, Club Car's used car territory manager, probably didn't know what hit him, but it was the contagious zeal of Steve and his dream. Stevens wrote Club Car president and CEO Phil Tralies , who approved a request to donate to John's GC five used golf cars and a 1 - PASS single-passenger car for players with disabilities.

"John's Course is a great example of golf in its purest form," says Tralies, who serves on the executive committee of Golf 20/20, a grow-the-game initiative. "It's all about a love for the game."

'Course like none other'

The game is the key that opened doors for the Espinozas and raised the self-esteem of a young man with a flawed mind and body but a pure heart. John needed a purpose, and golf - as a game as well as a job - has brought meaning to his life.

"He sees himself as a superstar now,"says Juana.

John's star appears to be rising, too, as a record 82 people played in the sixth annual tournament to benefit John's GC in late September. For $25, players were treated to nine holes each at John's GC and Buckwood Country Club, a new short course in town, plus a spread of Mexican food prepared by Steve and Juana and extended family members. The Espinozas used to run a restaurant in Eureka until Steve's health problems worsened.

Groups were rotated from one course to the other to avoid congestion, but at John's, with its design resembling a Rorschach inkblot, traffic jams and near- misses were unavoidable. A tree was a player's best friend.

As golf balls rained down near Donna Chapmon, and others rolled by her feet, the 70-year-old seemed blissfully ignorant of the peril she had placed herself in.

"It's either golf, bowling or a combination there of," she chuckles as hoots of "Fore!" and laughter could be heard from all directions.

Chapmon drove 80 miles to be here on this crisp Saturday morning. Supported by a knee brace and an artificial hip, she was ready to put her 50-year-old Patty Berg clubs to use for the first time in 40 years.

Dave Morgan and his teen-age son Brian came up the day before, driving four hours from their home in Stevensville, Mont. For them, like so many others who were playing in the tournament, this was the first time they had seen John's GC and the reason for its being.

"It's a course like none other, that's for sure," proclaims Morgan, as he surveys the human traffic heading helter-skelter over the terrain before him.

Morgan had heard about the course and John through state media coverage of the Special Olympian's play, and he wanted to show his support for the Espinozas' cause. John played in the Special Olympics World Games in Dublin, Ireland, in June, bringing home a bronze medal.

"There are some things that school can't teach," says Morgan in justifying his decision to keep Brian out of class so father and son could drive up the day before. "This is better than school."

The lessons learned at John's GC will not be found in textbooks. The course is a testament to the goodwill of others, but it also is a byproduct of emotional pain. Building John's Golf Course as therapy for Steve, who was left emotionally adrift after his elder son, Michael, died in a 1993 car accident at age 20 .

Unintended consequences

Michael was the light of his father's megawatt life. He was the high school football team's most valuable player in 1991, when the team played for the state championship, and a champion heavyweight division wrestler. Michael also had his father's gregarious personality, which is as expansive and unrestrained as Montana.

"Michael was my hero," Steve says softly, a tone decibels lower than his normal volume.

The tragedy was hard on John, maybe even more so because he lived vicariously through his big brother, who looked after him. The brothers often referred to each as "Maverick" and "Goose,"characters who portrayed best buddies in the jet fighter action movie "Top Gun."

"Dad," Steve remembers John saying as he sat crying in his room across the hall from Michael's, "I lost my wing man".

But it was Steve who crashed and burned.

One night in December 1993, while Juana and John slept, Steve, pistol in hand, stared into the darkness and asked Michael what to do. Steve swears he saw an apparition of Michael before him. "Don't do it, Dad," came a voice out of the stillness. "John needs you."

Steve now can look back on that night with clarity. "It wasn't about death and dying," he says of contemplating suicide. "I was afraid to go on living."

That following spring, Steve had the first hint of why he was needed. John, then 17, emerged from his brother's room with a golf club and asked his dad to teach him to play golf. A sour experience at a public course in Kalispell, about 65 miles south of town, unnerved John and led Steve to think about building a green for his son to play pitch-and-putt golf.

"I had no intention of building a golf course," Steve says, still in disbelief how the course - and support for it - have grown. "But John wants to hit balls and John's friends wanted to build a hole. They kept cutting down trees till John could hit it "straight" to the hole.

The course, completed in 2002, has gone about as far as it can go, Steve says. Expansion isn't likely, nor is it necessary, considering only 200 rounds are played on John's during Montana's short golf season.

As the day was winding down at Buckwood CC, where the post-tournament party was held, Lori Russell, executive director of the Peaks & Prairies GCSA , was overwhelmed by the turnout and how John's Golf Course has inspired such an outpouring of goodwill from across the country.

"I can't see the story ever being forgotten now," Russell says. From a father's dream for his son, hope springs eternal.

Executive editor of GolfWeek's SuperNEWS Michael A. Boslet can be reached at mboslet@golfweek.com.