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Golf great Palmer to get Lone Sailor award

Arnold Palmer may not have slipped into any green jackets during his years in the Coast Guard, but he still remembers his time in the service fondly.

“I have to say that my three years in the Coast Guard was three years that I value very highly,” Palmer told Navy Times. “I think that it — the experience of being in the Coast Guard had a lot to do with the success I’ve have had in golf.”

Although Palmer is known for his links battles with archrival Jack Nicklaus and not his years as a photo technician at the 9th District headquarters in Cleveland, he is to be recognized this September with a Lone Sailor Award from the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Palmer was a senior at Wake Forest University in 1950, playing on the college golf team, when his roommate was killed in a car accident.

“We were very close; I was very distraught about the fact that he had gotten killed,” Palmer remembered. “I finished the semester but I continued to be upset, so I decided to get away and do something else, so I went to Washington and I joined the Coast Guard.”

In January of 1951 he reported to Coast Guard Training Center Cape May, N.J. After he finished basic training, a base commander ordered him to stay on as a physical training instructor for new recruits.

Palmer said his job was to train recruits how to fall correctly, so they wouldn’t be hurt, but after a recruit was injured under Palmer’s watch, the Coast Guard sent him to work at the 9th District headquarters in Cleveland, where he served under the son of the former commandant, Adm. Russell Waesche — whose name will be given to the Coast Guard’s second national security cutter in a christening ceremony in July.

At first, there was still no golf for Palmer in Cleveland, where he took and processed photographs for security badges at the Coast Guard station. But as his service wore on, he had more chances to take leave to play, he remembered, and even gave lessons to some of his shipmates.

By 1954, when Palmer was discharged from the Coast Guard, he hadn’t had much time to work on his game, but the experience was still valuable, he said: “It taught maturity — it helped with growing up, with understanding the way the world works.”

Along with Palmer, the Navy Memorial will present Lone Sailor statuettes to two other sea service veterans: A.G. Lafley, a former Navy supply officer who became the CEO of the consumer products giant Proctor & Gamble; and John McConnell, who served aboard the carrier Saratoga in World War II before going on to found the steel concern Worthington Industries. McConnell, who died in April, is to be presented the award posthumously.

The Navy Memorial will also present U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, a Washington Democrat, with its “Naval Heritage” award, because Dicks didn’t serve in the Navy or Coast Guard.

Navy Times is the media sponsor of the Lone Sailor awards.