From a hilarious send-off serenade by co-worker Ryan Smith — a parody sung to the tune of Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” — to a part tribute/part roast by other fellow CGA staffers, to a heartfelt toast from boss Ed Mate, to a tremendous turnout for the festivities, Gerry Brown, Laura Robinson and Ann Bley were sent into retirement in high style Wednesday night at Pinehurst Country Club.
A broad cross-section of the Colorado golf community turned out to bid adieu to the three key retiring CGA staff members, recognizing jobs well done.
Seldom do three top staffers in one Colorado golf organization retire within months of one another. But not only is that the case late this year for the CGA, but the three have been employed by the CGA/CWGA for a combined total of 46 years.
About 175 people showed up for Wednesday’s festivities, in honor of Brown, the CGA’s director of course rating and handicapping; Robinson, the CGA’s managing director of membership and integration — and former CWGA executive director; and Bley, the association’s director of finance. Bley retired at the end of August after 17 years on the job, while Brown (26 years at the CGA) and Robinson (three years combined at the CWGA and the CGA) are following suit at the end of the year.
In addition to fellow staffers saluting the three in videos — and taking good-natured digs — even former CGA employees joined in on the fun. That included former CGA executive director Warren Simmons, who hired Brown back in 1992.
In turn, each of the retirees took a few minutes to fondly recall their days at the CGA/CWGA, share a laugh or two, and vow to spend their fair share of time on golf courses in retirement. That will include tee times and stays at The Broadmoor Resort — going-away gifts from the CGA.
To read more about the golf administration careers of the three, click on the following:
— Ann Bley
Several photos from Wednesday’s festivities accompany this story.
CGA executive director Ed Mate had to chuckle at the fitting symmetry of it all.
When Gerry Brown was hired at the CGA in 1992, he was asked to do the wiring for the first computer network at the association offices, though he was brought on board mainly to help run tournaments.
Twenty-six years later, as Brown’s career at the CGA was winding down leading up to his impending retirement, he found himself in much the same situation.
“Just to show how as a lot of things change, they also stay the same, there’s a phone in our huddle room (in the CGA offices) that wasn’t wired properly,” Mate recalled recently. “I said, ‘Gerry, do you want to do one more wiring job for us?’ Sure enough, he got the ladder and pulled the cable and got it done. So he started out pulling cable and he ended up pulling cable for us. But that’s Gerry.
“If you’re on a survival quest, you want people on your team that are resourceful, and that’s Gerry. No matter what it was, if you had a problem in the office — the copier won’t work, my computer is acting weird, my phone is not doing what it’s supposed to — call Gerry. He’d be there in two seconds. And not only was he willing to do it, he wanted to do it. It was almost like he would thank you for the opportunity to help you. He’s just an amazing human being.”
Indeed, as the year comes to a close, it’s the end of an era for the CGA staff. Over the last quarter-century, no one besides Brown has been continuously employed by the CGA. That even includes Mate, the CGA’s executive director since 2000 who also worked with Brown in an earlier stint with the association, but spent four years on the Colorado PGA staff in the late 1990s and early in 2000.
Brown is one of three key CGA staffers who have or will retire in the final four months or so of this year. Ann Bley, longtime director of finance for the CGA, departed at the end of August (READ MORE). And former CWGA executive director and current CGA managing director of membership and integration Laura Robinson (READ MORE) will join Brown in retiring at year’s end. A retirement party honoring the three will be held Wednesday at Pinehurst Country Club.
Brown was initially hired by the CGA to help Jim Topliff, who had had a quadruple heart bypass, with tournaments and to work with the Golf Handicap and Information Network tournament pairing program (TPP) that was just being released. As Brown noted with a laugh in 2012, “Jim was strictly — as he liked to call himself — ‘the out-house guy’ and I was the ‘in-house guy.'” Brown also served as the de facto information technology manager. But he’ll retire after being director of course rating and handicapping — or some variation of that title — since 2001. He’s also the managing director of club and facility services. As Mate said, he’s been a very valuable “utility infielder” for the organization.
(Brown, second from right, is pictured above recently at TPC Colorado with CGA course raters Laurie Steenrod and Dick Simpson, and CGA staffer Aaron Guereca.)
So how does it feel leaving a place where he’s worked since 1992?
“It’s extremely difficult,” Brown said in a phone interview last month. “I feel like I’m leaving so much of my hide — all the blood, sweat and tears we’ve put in over the years. To see how smoothly this office has been operating — I can’t attribute it all to me — but there’s been a lot of consistency with having one person, with that longevity, in there. Comparing to other golf associations, you just don’t see that.
“To me, each day was a new day. I never got bored with coming to work. It was always so much fun to come in and see what was happening with courses and with GHIN. GHIN always had their problems with their software; I always chuckled, thinking that’s job security (for me). I enjoyed waking up each day and coming to work. Each day had its pluses and minuses — and there were a lot more pluses. There was instant gratification when you could do something for a golf professional. The golf professionals here in Colorado treated me very well — as an equal and an authority for handicapping, tournament formats, software support, course rating. Whatever question they asked, if I didn’t have the right answer, I certainly got it for them. I think there was a large amount of respect.”
Indeed, to demonstrate as much, on Oct. 15, exactly 26 years after he started at the CGA, the Colorado PGA presented Brown with a Distinguished Service Award at its fall meeting.
“That was a very nice gesture on their part,” Brown said. “I’ve had a number of them call and say farewell; that’s been heartwarming and gratifying. I’m going to miss that.”
Paul Lobato, PGA head professional at Meridian Golf Club, was among those who sang Brown’s praises.
“Gerry is a golf pro’s best friend,” he said.
“Words can’t describe” what Gerry meant to the CGA, added Mate, who worked alongside Brown for more than 20 years. “He’d become the face of the organization in so many ways. I saw (Cherry Hills Country Club head professional) John Ogden recently and he can’t say enough positive things about Gerry Brown. Whenever a club needed something relative to handicapping or course rating, they would call Gerry. When those calls come up, they tend to be urgent — ‘We have a situation where our computer won’t work or we’re trying to set up a tournament for this weekend.’ Gerry would basically be on call 24/7 and had such an incredible way about him and willingness to help.”
Brown, who will turn 68 next month, has long been highly regarded in his work, to the point that he served on the USGA Course Rating Committee from 2011-18, which he calls “the high-water mark in my career.” In that capacity, he’s assisted the USGA staff with calibration seminars around the U.S. and overseas. At calibration seminars, USGA representatives make sure course raters do their work to consistent standards. Raters evaluate the playing difficulty of a course for scratch golfers and bogey golfers from the various tee boxes, based on yardage, effective playing length and obstacles. The idea behind both course rating and handicapping is to make the game equitable for golfers of all ability levels.
In his course rating capacity, Brown has been sent to Scotland (to help instruct the Europe golf associations), the Dominican Republic and Japan.
In fact, Brown has made enough of an impression that he’ll likely continue to help the USGA on the course rating front — but on a volunteer basis, with some expenses paid.
“I think (the USGA) is going to want to keep me as someone to assist with training — and somebody who can travel,” he said. “There’s a lot of small countries and areas with only one or two golf courses so to have a formal course rating group in these areas does not always make sense. The USGA feels comfortable sending me to teach in areas like the Dominican Republican or the islands of the Caribbean. They don’t have any one group that will rate all of these courses. They’re talking about sending me and a team from Colorado to rate the courses as needed. Typically, they only do it every 10 years. … For a larger group like the Japan Golf Association, I’ll continue to do training (through) calibration seminars.”
Brown said he’ll also volunteer to rate courses in Colorado, though now Aaron Guereca, who’s become the CGA’s manager of club and facility services, will do the coordination and the setups. Brown has had Guereca, a former CWGA staffer, “on his shoulder” for 2 1/2 months in the late summer and fall to learn the ropes of the job.
Still, demonstrating his devotion to the CGA and the game, Brown said, “I’ve told Aaron I’m always just a phone call away. If I’m not doing anything, I don’t mind coming in and volunteering an hour or two of time to help him or show him how to do things.”
For a guy who was hired without any background in golf administration — he and his wife Cathey were in the publishing business with their offices located directly above those of the CGA and the CWGA in the early 1990s — Brown has certainly made a name for himself in the business.
“Just the fact that I got this job, given the way golf associations hire staff …,” said Brown, who considered himself a “self-taught computer geek.” “I was in my (early 40s) when I came here and had very little or any golf experience. I was just an avid golfer. But I brought a need to them. I helped them network the office for the very first time and got them onto a singular piece of software. I’ve still kind of hung on to my IT roots and assist with equipment and bits and pieces with the network here in the office.”
But it was in his primary job the last 17 years that Brown especially has made an impression.
“Course rating and handicapping is a very small niche in the golf industry,” he said. “There’s probably not more than five people in the entire United States that did course rating AND handicapping the way that I did. They go hand in hand in my opinion. One feeds the other. It’s been a natural and easy process for me.”
Combine that with Brown’s general helpfulness, and you have one valuable staffer.
“I’ve never met anybody that is as willing to help as Gerry Brown. That’s just his DNA,” Mate said. “I’m not kidding, if I called him and said I have a personal issue, he would drop everything he’s doing. You’d barely get the question out and he’d be there.
“One of my favorite stories about Gerry Brown: Early in my tenure as executive director, I had a tree in my back yard that I wanted to cut down. I had a little get-together at my house for the CGA staff — this was in wintertime around George Washington’s birthday, and I said, ‘We’re going to have a George Washington birthday party.’ People didn’t know why and I said we’re going to cut down a tree. Gerry, who just had shoulder surgery or was just about to, jumped in with both feet, was climbing the tree and doing all the work. I have video of the tree coming down and Gerry being halfway up it. That’s Gerry; he just wants to help people. I’ve never met somebody so willing. He and Dustin (Jensen, the former CGA managing director of operations) have that same quality. That showed every day. When people called, he was like, ‘What can I do to help?’
“On the other hand, he wasn’t a pushover. If a club called and said we don’t like our course rating, can you change it?, he’d say no, absolutely not, that’s not the way that works.”
Coincidentally, Brown’s first course rating came on Sept. 11, 2001 — at Spring Valley Golf Club in Elizabeth.
“I was standing there watching the television with the head professional, and we’re just jaws down to the floor” in seeing what had happened with the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pa. “The (rating) team drove up from Colorado Springs and had left before the disaster and had no idea what was going on.”
Seventeen years after that first course rating, Brown is considered a national expert in the field. Which means it certainly won’t be easy to replace him. But you can’t accuse Brown of not giving Mate fair warning about his retirement. Indeed, he first told Mate of his plans early in 2016. And early the next year he reminded Mate by saying, “two years”.
While the powers that be kicked around the idea that Brown’s duties might be better distributed among two people, the CGA’s unification with the CWGA at the beginning of 2018 helped partly solve the matter. That’s when Guereca was tagged to start working with Brown, learning tournament software, handicap issues, course rating, software support, etc.
As for Brown moving forward, the fourth-generation Colorado native and wife Cathey plan to do some traveling. Among the destinations on their bucket list is South America — Machu Picchu, the Galapagos Islands and perhaps a trip to the Amazon River Basin.
But barring the unforeseen, the Parker resident will continue to call Colorado home for the foreseeable future.
“I have no desire to leave these Rocky Mountains,” he said. “My heart is in Colorado.”
In fact, one way Bley remembers when they first started working alongside one another was that she met Mate’s daughter, Anna, “on the way home from the hospital when she was born” in 1997.
Given how much they’re been through as staffers at the CGA — and the Colorado PGA before that — it’s not surprising that Mate notes, “I used to joke with Ann, saying ‘When you leave, I’m leaving’ just because I have that much confidence in her.”
Well, Bley is indeed leaving the CGA this week — Thursday is her final day — though Mate will be sticking around as executive director. Bley, the longtime director of finance for the CGA, will be retiring, following suit of her husband, Greg, who did likewise earlier this month.
“My husband just turned 65, so he decided to retire. I kind of thought that was a good time for me to retire too,” Bley said recently.
Bley (pictured) has been a fixture at the CGA offices since 2001, making her one of the longest-tenured current staffers. Only director of handicapping and course rating Gerry Brown (since 1992), director of communications Aaron Kellough (since 1998) and Mate (since 2000, in addition to an earlier stint on staff) have worked for the association longer.
And her career in golf administration goes back even further, as she worked at the Colorado PGA — with Mate, who was then the assistant executive director at the Section — starting in 1997.
Bley’s retirement “is very personal for me,” Mate said earlier this month. “I started working with Ann when we were both at the Colorado Section of the PGA. And when I was hired as executive director (of the CGA in 2000), the first time I had the opportunity to hire somebody who does accounting — the stuff Ann does — (I hired her). We actually hired her to do tournament stuff as a way to get her in the door, then it was just a matter of getting her in the right seat.
“She’s worked her way up to director of finance. And she’s really been a stalwart, reliable presence for all these years.
“It’ll be hard because she’s much more than (what her job entails). She’s a friend and somebody I trust. She’s also been such a great sounding board for me because she’s got such good instincts and good people skills and world experience. Again, she’s so much more than just somebody who pays the bills.”
At the CGA, Bley handles anything to do with money, whether it’s revenue for donations or grants or member dues or club dues. She pays all the bills for the CGA and its related entities, handles human resources duties, the association’s government reporting as a non-profit and works with the auditors as needed.
While Bley, 63, is looking forward to traveling more, spending additional time with her granddaughter and doing volunteer work, she knows that exiting the CGA after 17 years will take some getting used to.
“It’ll be strange not having work to go into and emails to check,” she said with a chuckle.
But most importantly, she knows she’ll miss the personal and professional interaction with the people she’s come to know so well.
“The people here are like my family,” she said. “I’ve watched a lot of them grow up from when they were interns and now they’re full-time staff and we’ve known each other for 17 years in some cases. Ed and I worked together at the PGA Section office before I came here, so I’ve known him for 21 years. When you’re used to seeing somebody every day for that many years, you’re very invested in their lives.”
Asked what her favorite memories have been over her time with the CGA, Bley gravitates toward activities that lend a golf-related helping hand to youngsters.
“Anything to do with the Evans Scholarship (for caddies), the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy and the junior golf programs are all things that I could emotionally get behind and feel like we were making a difference,” she said.
Bley is one of that relatively rare breed that was born and raised in Colorado and has spent her entire adult life in the Centennial State. She graduated from Colorado State University and has also worked as an adminstrator at a medical research firm, at a hotel management company and in the oil and gas industry briefly.
But the CGA has “definitely” been the longest-standing job of her career.
Bley said she and her husband will continue to live in northern Douglas County in retirement.
As for who will take over Bley’s duties once she’s gone, much of that will fall to Debbie Kolb, currently the CGA’s manager of administrative services, who served in a related role with the CWGA before the integration of the two associations at the beginning of 2018.
“This is a great example of how the integration has worked out so well because Debbie Kolb was in a similar role with the CWGA,” Mate said. “It’s actually worked out really well because she and Ann are really working closely now. Debbie jokes all the time, ‘Ann, don’t leave yet,’ but it’s going to be pretty smooth in terms of the blocking and tackling of bill paying and invoicing and the stuff if you don’t stay on top of you get so far behind. So we haven’t missed a beat in that way.
“But Ann is so much more than that — really understanding the CGA’s finances and really being the lead in building the budget every year. I don’t expect Debbie to be doing that. But in terms of the bookkeeping piece, we’re in good shape.”
As for Bley’s presence at CGA offices, that may be irreplaceable.