One cool yet sunny, late August Sunday, my family watched a very tall young man win his first important golf tournament at The CAL Club in San Francisco. The very next weekend, we drove to Haggin Oaks Golf Club in Sacramento where my father competed in the California State Fair tournament. By the end of that Labor Day Weekend, the winner of the tournament the week before in San Francisco, George William Archer and I, Donna, had accomplished our first, second, and third dates. I was seventeen years old when I found the boy/man of my dreams.

At the end of October, on yet another of our many dates, George told me he had something he needed to confess, something he had never told anyone outside his immediate family. Because I was George’s first girlfriend, I was not nervous or apprehensive about what he might tell me, merely curious. George’s voice trembled slightly, and he averted his eyes. His demeanor presented embarrassment, concern, and hesitancy. He uttered the words, “I can’t read. I can only read about third-grade books”.  He told me that although he drove, he did not have a drivers’ license because he was unable to take a written test. And then he raised his head and looked at me directly, breath held.

I touched his shoulder lightly as I told him I was so sorry, but he need not worry, for I would teach him how to read and write. He answered that I couldn’t because he had a “mental block”, that teachers and his Mother had tried to teach him, but he was not capable of learning. I felt hurt in my heart-anguish. If he, himself, felt that he was incapable of learning to read and write, how in the world would I help him?

After early courtship and marriage. attempts to help him learn, we came to the realization that someone inexperienced and unqualified, would not be able to move George along the road toward reading success. Sessions of trying to read were extremely frustrating for George, as it became obvious that he also had trouble actually distinguishing between certain sounds, which contributed to the difficulty of the intensely uphill climb that we were both attempting. Sometime during these years, San Francisco, where we lived, initiated an oral driver’s test, and George achieved his first license.

Thinking that someone else might have more success helping him with reading and writing, George began to be mentored by a much older and experienced friend of ours. These sessions went on for some time until George reached his private brick wall, and once again, crashed into his belief that he could not learn. “I have a mental block,” he told his friend. And so ended that effort.

Because George had much success as an amateur golfer, winning several important tournaments, and because we had a brilliant and generous sponsor, who did not know about George’s “Problem”, by the time we started on the Professional Golfers of America Tour, George’s inability to read began to drift away from our major focus. After all, he was a golfer, and while performing his profession and utilizing his athletic skills, he really didn’t need to read, right?

The first years on Tour, we drove around the country, our babies in the back seat, as I read the maps, and we tried to figure out if there was a motel/hotel near the tournament golf course. As an experienced golfer, George knew how to keep his scorecards, make picture notes and more, and read the names on the tournament scoreboard. He learned quickly that the name Archer was on the left side of the scoreboard, and the name Ziegler was on the far right. Many names in between became familiar after forty years on Tour.

At night on Tour, we worked on teaching George how to write the names of our children, our addresses, and other information he might need if he traveled without us and needed to fill out data on an airplane or elsewhere. We also practiced writing “I Love You” so he could write it to our two daughters, and me, of course. From the time of our dating days, we read the rules of golf over and over until George had memorized most, and we continued to do so over the years as the rules changed.

Eventually, we did have to tell our sponsor and the PGA Tour about “The Secret”; both were exemplary in their responses, and the PGA Tour went the extra mile for George and administered an oral test, which George, not unexpectedly, passed with flying colors, proudly earning a Class A card. This card was and is required for a Professional Golfer to compete in the semi-annual Ryder Cup Matches. Sadly for George, the card came too late for his most successful years so he never played on the Ryder Cup Team. 

The “secret” was pretty much ignored by our sponsor who recognized that George’s gifts and talents belonged on the golf course. Our sponsor never brought the subject up again.

As the Tour years flew by, generating continued success with victories for George, the family was not able to travel as much as high school loomed in front of daughters, Elizabeth and Marilyn, so George’s navigation through situations that required reading and writing, became more challenging. He had practiced filling out tournament registration forms, but if there was an unexpected question on the form that he had not seen before, he just ignored it; no one questioned him about it. 

When it was time to write a check while on tour, George carried a prototype unsigned check with a specific amount of the check spelled out on it. He used that check to fill out his own, copying the words describing the amount. All he had to do then was fill in the date and sign. If there was a need for a check written for a different amount, he would call me, and I would walk him through it. These discussions were torturous for both of us as he could not always correctly hear the letters I would speak, did not know where to put the spaces, and got periods and commas mixed up. We were both exhausted when it was over.

George became practiced in avoiding confrontation when someone handed him something to read, or if he was asked to read something to him or her. George would divert and state often that no, he couldn’t, as he didn’t have his glasses.

Many well-known athletes face a time when he/she wants to give back in some form or another. George did that well when he was asked to gather Professional Golfers to play in a charity event or to speak to the press about philanthropy, about which he was passionate. Knowing well the struggles he had faced as a child, and that he still faced, he had exceptional compassion and empathy for at-risk youth, mostly boys who had been neglected or underserved by their communities. He often played in Pro Am events to raise money for them, but the giveback that often stumped him was…autographs.

In our teaching moments, George had learned to write “Best Wishes” and “Good Luck” and a few other short greetings, and he could write simple names like Tom and Jim. But if a fan asked him to write to Anthony or Priscilla, he would not have a clue how to spell those names, or even sound them out. In these cases, he would say to the fan, “Please give me your card with the name on it, and I will send you an autographed picture when I get home.” When he came home, he would hand me the cards, and we would go through them and fill them out and send them back.

If George had to do a commercial and was given a script, he would ask to bring it home, then try, mostly unsuccessfully, to memorize it. These attempts to do commercials were disastrous unless the producers would let George speak extemporaneously. By the tenth or eleventh take of trying to follow a script, they exasperatedly would agree.

Throughout our lives together, we continually tried to improve George’s reading and writing. Our daughter Lynne became a teacher of Special Education. She worked with children who have all kinds of differences, and she studied new ways of teaching literacy to those who struggle. She tried to work with her Father, and like all the attempts to help him, George again slammed into the concrete of his “Mental Block”. Tragically, he was never able to read beyond the 3rd or 4th grade.

At the end of his life, George declared that I should not feel sad for him, as he had the best life he could have had. For him, I believe that is true. George ran happily and energetically through his all too short life, and he was the professional that he wanted to be, and he played the game he loved so well, and he played it courageously, always. He could not reflect with any regret. I am honored that he wished to share this life with me. It is perfectly the life we both wanted.

During a conversation that we had during his last days, George gave permission to reveal his struggles with literacy after he passed away. We are hopeful that the George Archer Memorial Foundation for Literacy will generate funds that enable us to provide help in the form of expert tutoring and teacher training to struggling children who need financial help, to those with fewer opportunities, for the underserved, for the children whom George held in his heart. The Foundation is also very excited that the University of California, San Francisco, is doing extensive brain research regarding literacy. It is well worth a look as to what this research has discovered as well as what a brain scan shows about literacy. 

Thank you for reading, for helping, for action as we all work together to help children learn to read and write. We are helping to expose them to a world of magic.

Donna Archer