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Cover Story
by ALAN ROSS
Photos by Gary Bogdon
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It’s been 40 years since Arnold
Palmer was awarded the green blazer traditionally given
to the winner of professional golfs most prestigious event.
And though he won’t take part in this year’s Masters
Tournament April 6-9 at the Augusta (Ga.) National
Golf Club, the man who set golf on fire in the 1960 s
remains plenty busy today as a business executive, aviator,
advertising spokesman, golf course designer/consultant,
philanthropist and humanitarian.
And he still manages to play a little golf, too.
“Golf is still his life," says Doc Giffin, Palmers agent.
“He practices or plays a round almost every afternoon."
But over the past two decades, Palmers famous
swing has taken a backseat—at least publicly—to his
other roles, including sharing his famously big heart with
people in need.
His own father was bom with polio, a fact that
Palmer, now 76, admits steeled him with resolve to help
others. “I am extremely pleased if I can help anyone do
something that will help them in their lives,” lie says.
“It’s an ongoing situation for me to try and be somewhat
of a philanthropist. But I also feel like people who are not
extremely wealthy, but who make contributions to char
ity, show something even more giving and helpful."
For 20 years, throughout the 1970 s and ’Bos, he
served as honorary national chairman of the March of
Dimes, which works to prevent infant mortality, birth
defects and premature births. And his passionate concern
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for children opened the door two decades ago to help
young people even more directly—as founder of the
Arnold Palmer Medical Center in Orlando, Fla.
“When Mr. Palmer toured our pediatric intensive
care unit at what was then the Orlando Regional Medical
Center, he was finishing up and casually said to some of
the folks in the group that ‘lt just seems like we could do
better than that for our kids,”’ recalls John Bozard, 56,
head of the Arnold Palmer Medical Center Foundation.
The foundation embraces both the Winnie Palmer Hos
pital for Women and Babies (named after Arnold’s late
wife, Winnifted, to whom he was married for 45 years
before her death of cancer in 1999) and the Arnold Palmer
Hospital for Children.
Palmer visits the Florida hospital that bears his name.
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At 76, legendary golfer Arnold
Palmer finds new rewards
Palmer smiles in recollecting the moment. “The next
thing that happened, the city fathers came back to me and
said, ’You object to some of the things the hospital has
done in pediatrics—why don’t you help us and lend your
name to doing a children and women's hospital?’”
His word is gold
Through a simple handshake, Palmer agreed to help.
The center’s immediate need, not surprisingly, was for an
infusion of philanthropic dollars. Palmer dug deep, as he
has done numerous times over the years. While the foun
dation does not reveal specific amounts of money contrib
uted by donors, Bozard calls Palmer’s sum “substantial."
And he has continued to support the facility over the
years. “I don’t know of a time when he’s told me he’d
do something that he didn't do it," Bozard says. “When
Arnold tells you something, you can take his word to the
bank. He is as solid as gold.”
A gilded standard is exactly what Palmer set in 1960,
when he first began to entrench himself in sports lore
with his stalking, warrior-like charges that took golf and
the country by storm. His legendary saga started at only
4 years old when his father, a course superintendent at
Latrobe (Pa.) Country Club—a course that Palmer now
(Continued on page 8)
Photo courtesy of Arnold Palmer Hospital .
Page 6
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