dark time

DAVID THOMAS
dthomas@star-telegram.com
Find Rocco Mediate on the course today and not far away, somewhere near the ropes, a man probably wearing a Callaway Golf cap will be watching.
Politely applauding. Picking up tips for his golf game that he says needs lessons. And, inside, expressing gratitude for a lesson learned from watching Mediate at last year’s U.S. Open.

"He lost," John Ray said, "but he wasn’t beaten."

Like so many others, Ray, an assistant police chief in Longview, watched on television last June as the 45-year-old Mediate went toe-to-toe with Tiger Woods before losing on the 19th playoff hole.

Ray had suffered his own loss a couple of weeks earlier, and he felt beaten.

One year ago today, Ray lost his youngest child.

Eighteen-year-old Allison was on her way home from high school graduation practice. Family was arriving at the Ray’s home to attend the ceremony. But Allison’s car left the road and struck a tree.

Seven hours before the Gladewater High Class of 2008 was to graduate, Ray lost his girl.

"My hell," he calls it.

Fast-forward to early January. Ray was watching the Golf Channel’s PGA season in review. When Mediate came onto the screen, it struck Ray just how much watching Mediate handle his U.S. Open loss had motivated him.

"He was the one in the early stages," Ray said, "who inspired me to get back on my feet. To take care of my family. To get back to work."

Ray realized that he had thanked everyone who had helped him except for Mediate. So Ray typed out a three-paragraph letter — "I’m not a letter-writer," he says — saying thanks.

Ray, 45, admits he wrote more for himself than for Mediate. He even opened the letter by saying he didn’t know if Mediate would ever see it.

He had unsuccessfully searched three weeks for a way to contact Mediate. Finally, because Mediate wears a Callaway Golf cap when he plays, Ray mailed the letter to Mediate in care of the company.

"I had no hope of it getting to him," Ray said.

The letter, however, was forwarded to Cindi Hilfman, Mediate’s physical therapist, best friend and business partner.

Hilfman received the text of Ray’s letter on her cell phone while Mediate was undergoing knee surgery. Hilfman read the letter and cried. She read the letter to a nurse, and the nurse cried.

After Mediate’s surgery, Hilfman read the letter to him. Still groggy, Mediate responded with his trademark expression: "Are you kidding me?"

Of the thousands of letters and notes and e-mails Mediate had received after the U.S. Open, this was one to which he absolutely had to respond.

The two made contact, and that led to Mediate and Hilfman inviting Ray and wife Julie, Allison’s stepmother, to Colonial this week.

They met for the first time Monday night.

"He’s real," Ray said as he nodded toward Mediate on the 12th green. "The guy on that green is the same as the guy around the dinner table.

"He’s as real as they come in a world where people build this persona around them and assume this image."

What, Mediate was asked, did he say to the Rays when he finally met the couple with which he has been exchanging e-mails and phone calls?

"Just gave them a big hug," he answered. "Nothing to really say but 'glad you could come.’ "

To Ray’s surprise, Mediate and Hilfman pulled out his letter during dinner.

"It looked like it had been opened a thousand times," Ray recalled. "When I sent it, it was all crisp. Now it’s all crumpled. It looks like the Declaration of Independence."

And from when Mediate and Hilfman first answered Ray’s letter, they have called Allison by her name.

As Ray and Hilfman talked Friday, Hilfman made reference to "Allison." Goose bumps appeared on her arms. "It still happens every time I say her name," Hilfman said.

"When you lose a daughter," Ray said, "you can’t imagine what it does for you when you hear someone say her name."

In the year since Allison’s death, there have been what Ray called "very, very dark times."

But things are better now.

Ray accepted a new job while in Fort Worth this week. He’ll head home from Colonial to start packing. Beginning in July, he will be executive chief deputy over operations for the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office.

He has taken up golf. He played his first round Dec. 26. In an average week, he hits about 800 golf balls. He has hit as many as 1,700 in a week. Golf is part of Ray’s therapy.

He hopes that he can pass along to others suffering through their own dark times the lesson of the golfer on TV who lost, but wasn’t beaten.

"You never come all the way back after you lose a child," he said. "But I’m at peace now."

Some stories need to be retold; that's why I included this one on my site.