Summer job as golf caddy could pave way to university

CRANFIELD.

GRAVENHURST - Young people in Gravenhurst need work. Golfers need caddies. But it took a trip to San Jose for Alan Cranfield to figure out how to fill both those needs and send kids to school as well.
Cranfield has always loved Muskoka. Among his earliest memories is the trip to a rental cottage on Skeleton Lake when he was three – bumping for miles along a corduroy road in his father’s 1946 Hudson, and having to back up when they came face to face with a logging truck. Cranfield now spends several months a year living at his cottage on Lake Muskoka and commuting to Toronto to meet with his clients. Like many self-made businessmen, he fully understands what it means to struggle.
“When I was 10 years old, my father said, ‘I can only afford to send one of my three boys to university, and it’ll be your brother,’” he explained. So young Alan got his first job and started saving.
Before he was finished high school, Cranfield was the retail manager at the local hardware store and had earned enough to pay his own way through McMaster University, where he earned a degree in business.
That led to a dozen years at IBM, after which he struck out on his own in the financial services business.
He is now a principal with Stonegate Private Counsel, a boutique wealth management company. He helps an exclusive handful of clients grow and maintain their wealth.
Stereotypically, the golf course is a place where business deals are made. Cranfield has only recently taken up the game, but he’s become an enthusiast, logging well over 100 rounds a season at the Muskoka Bay Club in Gravenhurst, walking almost all of them.
Cranfield and some of the other walkers in the club asked golf director Greg Downer if he’d ever considered hiring caddies. Downer – who used to run a highly successful caddie program in the GTA – said he’d tried, but was having no luck. Unemployment is high in Gravenhurst, even by Muskoka standards, but the teenagers he’d interviewed just didn’t have the social or personal skills needed to caddie at a high-end golf club.
Cranfield might have thought nothing more of it, had it not been for another conversation on a golf course, this time in San Jose, New Mexico.
The caddie program at the club there is affiliated with the Evans Scholars program. And that’s when the light went on.
The Evans Scholars program was founded in the 1920s by golfer Chick Evans. In 1916, Evans won the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Open titles in the same year, a feat that has only once been repeated.
Rather than accept prize money and endorsement deals, which would have ended his amateur status, Evans set up a charitable foundation. He decided the foundation should be used to help others – specifically caddies – go on to university.
Since then, the Evans Scholars program has sent more than 9,000 caddies to university in the U.S., paying scholarships and even providing a place to live in Evans Scholarship Houses at 14 different universities.
Cranfield soon saw how something similar could benefit Muskoka.
“I called Greg and said, ‘I think I’ve got the missing link for your caddie program,’” Cranfield said.
Muskoka Bay Club agreed to become the first site for the Muskoka Caddie Scholarship Fund. Cranfield would like to see it expand to other courses in Muskoka as well.
Cranfield and Downer hope to go into Gravenhurst schools this spring and invite young people to apply to work as a caddie. They’ll explain that it isn’t just a chance to earn some money: it could also set the stage for a career and possibly even a scholarship.
Downer will look after the hiring and training, including teaching students how to apply and show up for an interview. Once the caddies are hired, Cranfield and other supporters of the program will offer broader lessons, like setting and achieving personal goals — training that will help them advance in whatever career they choose. Cranfield has had a personal life coach for 25 years, and believes in the power of vision setting.
“Having a vision of what you want your life to be like lets you get away from working for money and start working toward that vision,” he said.
Equipped with a personal vision, he said, the young caddies would be able to take advantage of the informal opportunities that arise on the golf course.
“They don’t have to be golfers, but there are so many things they can learn from spending time with successful people,” Cranfield said.
After two summers of working, caddies will be able to apply for a scholarship to attend school – up to $5,000, renewable for four years. Besides the work experience, applicants will also need to maintain a B average in school, perform some community service, and show financial need.
Cranfield is putting up some of the seed money for the program, and is looking for other donors. He would like the fund to be self-supporting, making enough from its investments to be able to provide scholarships every year. But even if it takes time to reach that stage, he’s committed to moving forward.
“In 2014 we’re going to have at least one scholarship, if I have to write the cheque myself,” he said.
To learn more about the Muskoka Caddie Scholarship Fund, contact Alan Cranfield at 416-464-2856 or acranfield@sympatico.ca.
This story originally appeared in the February-March 2013 edition of Muskoka Life magazine, available on newsstands now.

Small - Large
|
Print
|
Email
|
|