Friends give each other nicknames. Sometimes those monikers stick.
Rich Parker has a couple of years on Jim Moore. The two grew up a few Lebanon streets apart. Even though they didn’t play on the same teams, they bonded through sports and have remained close enough that Moore responds as much to the nickname Parker once gave him — Natch — as his given name.
“I don’t know where it comes from,” Moore admitted on Friday.
Friends give other things, too, such as aid when needed. Parker did that eight years ago, dedicating a portion of the proceeds from his annual Greenie golf tournament to Moore, who was undergoing treatment for a brain tumor at the time. Parker’s friend is in need again, and Parker is reviving the Greenie to provide it again.
He hadn’t planned on it. Who ever does?
“For the last six years, this was going to be the last year, but you know how that works,” Parker said in a phone interview. “Every speech, I said this was the final one. … I hadn’t said anything yet when Natch called a month ago and told the story. People heard it, and everybody started calling me.”
Parker has hosted the Greenie for 20 years. The latest comes today at Lebanon’s Carter Golf Club. Jim “Natch” Moore, 55, is a prime beneficiary for a second time.
In 2008, Parker reached out when he learned of Moore’s illness. The tumor made itself known when Moore, who moved from Lebanon to Martha’s Vineyard in 1993, had set out to deliver his then-8-year-old son, Michael, to a Little League baseball game only to wander the island instead, remembering little other than his son’s screams hours later.
Insurance helped cover Moore’s chemotherapy treatments, as it would a couple of years later when another tumor developed on the opposite side of his brain. But it didn’t cover the thousands of dollars Moore and his wife, Shannon, had to spend ferrying from the Vineyard, driving to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and staying for extended periods of time for those treatments.
The 2008 Greenie became a donation of “$15,000 or $20,000,” Moore estimated, that helped defray the travel costs.
“(Parker) came to me and basically said, ‘We know that you and your family is in need, and we’re here to help you,’ ” Moore recalled.
Last month’s connection included similar words and an identical meaning.
The Moore family lost their West Tisbury, Mass., home to a fire last Oct. 1.
“There was an electrical fire in the car,” said Moore, a 1979 Lebanon High School graduate. “It was parked about 10 feet from the house in the middle of a Nor’easter, and the wind flew the fire straight to the house.”
In December, in the midst of rebuilding, a pipe burst in the house and “did amazing damage,” Moore added. “Everything that wasn’t destroyed in the fire was destroyed in the flood.”
On top of that, Moore slipped on a deck while in the middle of one of the three moves his family has made between various rental homes since then. Moore sustained compression fractures in his neck and two broken ribs.
“Oh my God,” Parker said. “I called Shannon up … and she just started crying. (She said), ‘You always call when we need you the most.’
“What are you going to do? If you can help people, you do.”
Parker owns a large network of friends from a lifetime in Lebanon, a career in golf and two decades of the Greenie, which is named after Steven Greenberg, a mutual friend of Parker’s and Moore’s from many years back. Golf tournaments usually take many months to organize; this Greenie came together in one. Parker’s friends always turn out, they do so selflessly and they’ll do it again today.
Parker has never wanted the Greenie to be about him; it’s a natural thing to give him credit. But aside from the financial help it provides someone in a dire situation, it also brings the best of the Upper Valley to light.
A week doesn’t seemingly go by, particularly in these warm months, when there isn’t something going on somewhere to assist somebody else. Walks. Road races. Bicycle rides. Motorcycle caravans. Charity sporting events. Sunday marks the fifth anniversary of Tropical Storm Irene; I can’t drive through West Hartford without thinking of the many stories of stranger helping stranger in a time of tragedy and need.
It makes this place special. It makes you never want to leave. If you do, it makes you want to come back. It makes you want to help.
The Greenie playing field is full, Parker said, with 14 groups of five teeing off at Carter starting at 1 p.m. There will be no lack of opportunity for others — you included, dear reader — to assist: Parker is hosting an all-day silent auction at the Lebanon course, with items donated by pro golfers John Daly and Rickie Fowler as well as Dartmouth’s Stanley Cup-winning alumnus, Ben Lovejoy. Awards, music and dancing follow.
Beyond that, Parker plans to raise additional money for a fuel assistance fund administered by Lebanon’s American Legion post to help veterans in need. A Byrne Foundation gift is paying Carter’s costs to host the Greenie; all money raised today goes toward Moore and the fuel fund.
In the face of a difficult time, Moore has had one bit of good news: His tumors remain in remission after two years. He’s taking a trial medication that he hopes will alleviate joint pain that’s resulted from his past chemo regimens.
Parker’s nicknames have a way of sticking: Greenie, Natch. Parker’s tournament has a way of sticking, too, shedding light on better natures in an otherwise dark circumstance.
“What are you supposed to do? Ignore it?” Parker said of his friend’s plight. “You can’t.”
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.