Barbara Nicklaus recognized as Honoree at the Memorial for lifetime of charitable work

DUBLIN, Ohio – Suffice it to say, it was an “aha” moment. All that was missing was the veritable lightbulb going off.

Gary Nicklaus was talking with his dad, Jack, shortly before last year’s Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. Had the elder Nicklaus ever thought about making his wife, Barbara, the event’s Honoree, Gary wondered?

“No, it really hadn't entered my mind, Gary,” Jack Nicklaus recalls telling his son. “… But you're absolutely right. She's been as much a part of this tournament as I have.

“From day one, she's been the guiding light for good common sense and good judgment, and the TOUR wives have all looked up to Barbara and where she's gone and what she's done. The people that have come into this tournament, many, many have come here because of Barbara.”

So, Jack put the wheels in motion. He called his long-time friend and advisor Charlie Mechem, the former LPGA commissioner, and asked his opinion. Mechem agreed that the idea was genius and proceeded to poll some of the members of the Captain’s Club, which selects the Honoree each year. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

Barbara is a member of the group, too, though, so when the time came the actual vote had to be taken quickly while she was otherwise occupied.

“I had gone out of the room to do something, and I was walking back and kind of picking up dishes and helping clear the tables, and all of a sudden Jack and Charlie said, ‘Waitjust a minute, please,’ and they just sort of spit it out,” Barbara recalls. “And I about fell over speechless because I don't like to be on this side of the fence. I like to be on the other side.

“I think I was in such a state of shock, almost like it went in one ear and out the other, and I thought, well, that's not for real. I was flabbergasted.”

The list of previous Honorees reads like a who’s who of the game. Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Gary Player, Julie Inkster, Nancy Lopez and Kathy Whitworth, to name a few. Oh, and Jack Nicklaus was honored in 2000. Adding Barbara to that list was something of a no-brainer – particularly with this week being the Memorial’s 50th playing.

All five of her children, 24 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren were there on Wednesday when Barbara Nicklaus was introduced as the Honoree. Spouses, as well, including two who are due to add two more great-grandchildren to the brood before the end of the year.

“I think that's what’s making me so nervous – they’re all coming,” Barbara had said in a phone interview last week.

Even so, she didn’t plan to have her husband read her speech in advance, and she said she wouldn’t be shocked to see her outwardly stoic husband shed a tear or two during the ceremony on the driving range.

“He cries a lot,” Barbara Nicklaus says. “Everyone thinks he's so tough and he's really an old softie.”

For the record, the old softie did cry on this damp, dreary Wednesday afternoon. Not only that – he sang. Honest. The song? It was “I Married an Angel,” from the Broadway musical of the same name and later popularized Johnny Mathis. Jack Nicklaus’ rendition was set to a montage of photos from their marriage that played on a giant video board by the stage. His voice wasn’t half-bad, either. Turns out, the man many feel is the greatest golfer of all time is full of surprises.

Mathis recorded the song in 1960, which was the year Barbara Bash became Mrs. Jack Nicklaus (they'll celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary this July). And since the Memorial Tournament began in 1976, she has worked in lockstep with her husband to grow the Signature Event into one of the premier stops on the PGA TOUR. To date, the tournament has raised more than $52 million for charities like the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in central Ohio and beyond.

Barbara’s charitable endeavors don’t end with the Memorial, however. She is a tireless supporter of organizations that improve the lives of children and their families, especially those with medical needs. She also was instrumental in starting the TOUR Wives Association, which has raised more than $6 million for charity.

The inaugural recipient of the PGA First Lady of Golf Award in 1998, Barbara also received the 1990 PGA TOUR Ambassador of Golf Award and the 2015 Bob Jones Award, which is the USGA’s highest honor. She counts the 2019 PGA of America Distinguished Service Award among her many other accolades, as well.

But Barbara says having such a philanthropic impact was far from their minds when she met Jack the first weekend of their freshman year in college and he walked her to the bacteriology building where she was working to pay her way through school. They both came from modest families. Her dad taught high school math and Jack’s was a pharmacist.

“And I mean, he really wasn't a golfer when I met him,” she says of her future husband. “I mean, he played golf, but … So, we kind of grew up together and kind of put it all together, together.”

The motivation for putting it together, as Barbara says, stemmed from a frightening situation with their daughter, Nan. When she was 11 months old, she began to have episodes of choking that caused her to struggle to breathe. Jack and Barbara eventually took their daughter to Columbus Children’s Hospital (now Nationwide Children’s Hospital), where doctors used a bronchoscope and discovered she had inhaled a blue crayon that had splintered into about nine pieces.

“So, when it moved, she was fine, and then when it locked up her windpipe, she couldn't breathe,” Barbara recalls. “But the process of doing the bronchoscopy, they dropped a couple pieces in her lung, which of course went right into pneumonia.

“So, Jack was sitting outside an oxygen channel looking at Nan and hoping she’s going to be okay, praying she's going to be okay. We looked at each other and we said if we're ever in a position to help someone, we wanted it to be children.

“So that's basically how our little foundation started.”

The Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation, which Barbara Nicklaus co-founded and chairs, launched in 2004. A relationship with the Miami Children’s Hospital soon followed and in 2015, hospital officials asked if the family would allow their name to be put on the facility. In addition to the Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, the health system, research institute and hospital foundation also now bear the Nicklaus name.

“We were flattered,” Barbara says. “We said, we think that this will make us more a global hospital. And it's been terrific as of now, we've seen patients in every state of the union and 130 countries, so we're very proud of that.”

To date, the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation has raised more than $200 million to provide world-class care to families in south Florida and nationwide. The foundation – along with Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation created by Stephen and Ayesha Curry – is a collaborating charity of the Memorial Tournament.

In 2019, Barbara and Jack, along with the PGA TOUR, launched Play Yellow to help support Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. In five years, the initiative, which is championed by TOUR pros, fans and organizations in the golf industry alike, already has raised more than $130 million.

The name was inspired by the yellow shirt Jack Nicklaus became known for wearing on Sundays. He did it in honor of the son of Barbara’s minister who battled Ewing sarcoma. The two developed a friendship, talking at least once a week.

“Jack called one Sunday, and Craig said, ‘Jack, do you know why you won today?’” Barbara recalls. “Jack said, ‘Well, no, why Craig?’ He said, ‘Because I had on my lucky yellow shirt.’ So, Jack at the time, he said, ‘Well, if he can wear a lucky yellow shirt for me, I can wear a lucky yellow shirt for him.’

“So, we really didn't talk about it, and it wasn't public, but Jack wore a yellow shirt almost every Sunday in the entire two years before Craig died.”

The story became public when Nicklaus won the 1986 Masters, though.

“I am still amazed at how a tiny little conversation between a fan and a man just turned into something fabulous,” Barbara says.

The impact that of tiny conversation – and so many others Barbara Nicklaus has had with like-minded philanthropists over the years – has been enormous. But she says that it’s simply a blessing for her and her family to be able to help.

She remembers a woman – in tears – who stopped her in the grocery store and told her that her son’s treatment at the Nicklaus Children’s Hospital had given them an extra three days at home a month as a family.

“It’ll stay with me forever,” Barbara says. “… I thought, isn't that wonderful that, I mean, you think it's a small thing, but it was really huge for that family and probably, hopefully, for other families.”

And it’s hard to forget those twins – one of whom was born with just one lung and half her heart in backwards.

“A hospital basically told the parents, ‘You take her home, she's not going to live very long. You love her. You take pictures and that'll be it,’” Barbara says. “Well, she was still alive 10 weeks later, and … the mother, said, ‘I'm going to see what we can do.’”

A pediatric cardiologist at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital took the mother’s call.

“He said, ‘Inoperable is not in my vocabulary,’” Barbara recalls. “You bring that little girl down. Well, six months and probably six or seven operations later, the doctor walked in the room and said, you take this little girl home to grow up with her sister. So, what a difference.”

Barbara keeps in contact with the family. Recently, she received a video if the little girl riding a bicycle.

“Mimi, I did it,” the little girl squealed excitedly, using the name Barbara Nicklaus’ grandchildren call her.

Mimi does “it” all the time, too. And the world is richer, as a result.