In The Wood
City Golf Director Dave Mills, 63, is stepping down after 18 years on the job this month and immediately will go traveling with his wife, Peggy. Mills to retire as the
city’s golf directorDave has earned his retirement. He spent 25 years in the Marine Corps, seeing combat in Vietnam, land-mine laying duty at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and retiring as a lieutenant colonel before taking the city post.
His greatest accomplishment was making $36 million for the city over the past 12 years by taking over the golf cart operation from vendors.
The golf division had a $500,000 deficit when Dave took over and now has a $3 million surplus.
Dave also started the automated reservation system for the city courses listing 120,000 golfers, the highest in the nation on such systems. He supervised construction of the West Loch and Ewa Villages courses and the renovation of the Ala Wai course.
Dave's last day in his Ala Wai office will be Dec. 20.
"The first thing I'm going to do is go to San Francisco and see my Eagles beat the 49ers on December 22nd," said Dave, a former Holy Cross gridder who played both ways as a fullback and linebacker. He said trying to tackle the great Jim Brown when the NFL Hall of Famer was at Syracuse was something else.
After the 49ers (my team) defeat his Eagles, Dave and Peggy will head for San Diego to visit their son, David Jr.
In February they will go to Australia and New Zealand.
"I want to go to Ireland and Scotland and hope to golf at St. Andrews," Dave said.
Enjoy your retirement, Dave.
Kelly Slater fired a 4-over par 76 Tuesday to win the Van's Triple Crown of Surfing Hawaii Golf title on Turtle Bay's Arnold Palmer course.
Kelly, a six-time Association of Surfing Professionals World Champion, had a double bogey on the 18th hole but his score was good enough to best second-place finisher Ross Williams, who shot 81. John Shimooka placed third. Other top surfers in the tourney included Mark Occhilupo and Jake Patterson.
When sweet-swinging Evanita Midkiff, 79, pulled out her driver and hit the ball on Waialae's 126-yard eighth hole, no one in her group of husband Bob Midkiff and Doris and Bob Pulley saw the ball land.
They searched for the ball until someone said to look in the cup and there it was. It was the third hole-in-one for Evanita, a Punahou song leader in earlier years. Husband Bob, her Punahou schoolmate, hasn't scored an ace yet.
In last week's column, Sonny Beamer should have been listed as a scorekeeper for the Mini-Benny Birthday Tourney for Wobbly Golfers and Worthy Women. We don't want any sour notes from the Beamers.
Ben Wood, who played his first round of golf at Ala Wai
50 years ago, vows to learn how to play the game well even if
it takes another 50 years. E-mail him at bwood@starbulletin.com.