Before the first swings are taken and balls are flying in every direction at the annual Jammer Golf Tournament, custom calls for the dozens of participants to gather around Andy Mellow outside Carter Country Club in Lebanon.
“Andy starts off by thanking everyone for coming,” said Susan Mellow, his wife of 49 years. “Then he starts to cry.”
The event’s core group of about 50 players has heard Andy share his family’s story for going on 25 years, but chances are when the tournament starts Friday, Aug. 1, there still won’t be a dry eye within three fairways of the clubhouse.
“It’s a very moving experience,” said Deborah Cheever, a family friend who along with her husband, Kevin, is a tournament regular. “Every year, we’re all in tears.”
As you probably have already figured out, the “Jammer” isn’t really about chasing after a little white ball. For some golfers — and I use the term loosely — it’s the only time they pick up a club all year.
It’s about a boy, a family and, as Andy will remind people before they tee off, to “live every moment like it matters — because it does.”
James Andrew Mellow, the youngest of Andy and Susan’s three children, died Feb. 3, 2001. He was 10.
“After James passed, we needed something to hold on to — something to turn our grief into purpose. And this tournament became that. It became a way to honor his life, to carry his name forward, and to make a difference,” Andy wrote in the remarks that he’s planning to give at the event’s outset. (He shared a copy when we met a few days ago.)
At some point, Andy might take a moment to collect himself, but he’ll soldier on. “You’ve helped turn loss into light — not just for our family, but for so many others,” he’ll continue.
“And together, you’ve helped us do real good in the world.”
Over a 25-year period, the event has raised almost $300,000 for worthy causes large and small. And as hard of a decision that it was to make, the Mellow family has decided next week’s tournament will be their last.
“It’s time,” Andy told me.
‘Such a wonderful boy’
One morning in late summer of 1999, Andy heard his 8-year-old son struggling in the bathroom. James, only weeks away from entering third grade at Grantham Village School, had recently been experiencing bouts of nausea and dizziness.
Andy made an appointment that day with the family’s pediatrician. After examining James, the doctor ordered a brain scan.
On Aug. 11, 1999, James was diagnosed with a form of brain cancer that had no cure. The tumor was inoperable. “From that day on, our lives changed forever,” Susan said.
The best that doctors could offer was a series of radiation treatments — five days a week for six weeks — at a Boston hospital to prolong James’ life. A friend, the late John Lavigne, drove mother and son, the two hours each way, every day.
“Dinner would be here when we got home,” Susan said, referring to the meals dropped off by friends, neighbors and people the family knew only in passing.
“The community really embraced us at the worst time of our lives,” Andy said.
The Mellows, both career educators, moved from southern New Hampshire to Enfield in 1987 when Andy was hired for his first principal’s job at Indian River School in Canaan. Combined, the couple devoted nearly 80 years to public education in the state. After Indian River, Andy was a principal in Plainfield and Lebanon. Susan taught in Cornish, Enfield and at Indian River.
Through their school work, Andy and Susan are “very connected” to Upper Valley communities beyond Grantham, where they have lived since 1996, said Sylvia Dow, a family friend from Enfield.
When James got sick, “everyone wrapped their arms around the family,” Dow said. “James was such a wonderful boy. He was playful and adventurous.”
Creative, too. Playing off his initials, James came up with his own nickname for himself: Jammer.
“I knew James way before he got to my classroom,” said Denise Monica, his third-grade teacher. “He was a mischievous boy in a good way. There was a sparkle in his eyes.”
In first grade, he was the groom in a wedding that kids staged themselves on the playground. “He was smart, athletic and full of life,” Monica said. “His classmates loved him.”
So much so that 10 years later when Reed O’Brien was in college, he got a silhouetted tattoo on his calf of James swinging a golf club. O’Brien followed another friend, Andrew Salter, who already had the same tattoo. “It puts us with James forever,” O’Brien said.
‘He was tired a lot’
The cancer treatments that James underwent in third grade shrank the tumor, and his parents kept him in school as much as they could. “We tried to keep things as normal as possible,” Susan said.
Sometimes when James didn’t feel up to going to school, O’Brien stopped bb the Mellows’ house to check on his best friend. “He’d be laying on the couch,” O’Brien recalled. “At that age, I don’t think I even knew how sick he was. I just knew he was tired a lot.”
Erin, the couple’s middle child, was just starting high school. “She carried James on her back, literally,” said Andy, referring to how he made it up and down the stairs in their house.
In the wintertime, Erin bundled him up to go sledding near the house. “We were buddies,” she told me.
In his notes for Friday, Andy wrote that James enjoyed “video games, skateboarding, snowboarding, and skiing — and yes, he absolutely loved golf.”
Andy, an avid player, introduced James to the sport when he was about 7. James would stand on the highest point of the family’s lawn, hitting balls down the hill toward a gravel road.
Andy watched with a mixture of pride and panic on the day James drilled a line drive farther than he’d ever hit a ball, denting the distant road’s guardrail, the only obstacle standing in the way of a neighbor’s house.
The Mellows’ oldest daughter, Meagan, was in her first year at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York when it became apparent that James didn’t have much time left. She took the second semester off to be with her brother in his last couple of months.
There’s no telling how much James was aware that he wouldn’t get better, but “he knew he was very sick,” Andy told me, before his eyes welled up as we talked at the family’s dining room table this week.
On a wintry night 17 months after the terminal diagnosis, James died at home surrounded by family. “He fought a valiant fight,” said Monica, his third-grade teacher. “He was just an incredible little boy.”
Of all the condolence cards and notes the family received, there’s one that stands out the most with Susan. “Nobody should have to go through this alone,” a friend wrote.
“And we didn’t,” Susan said “Everyone in Grantham rallied around us. That’s what stuck with us.”
Wishes granted
For several years before James got sick, Andy had organized the “Mellow Open” and invited friends to play. “It was an excuse to get together with my buddies and their wives for golf and a big picnic,” he said.
After losing James, the family looked for a way to repay Make-A-Wish New Hampshire, which has granted more than 2,100 “wishes” since it was founded in 1986. Make-A-Wish had sent the Mellows on a weeklong Disney sea and land vacation after James completed radiation treatments.
Over the years, the “Jammer” has contributed more than $175,000 to the New Hampshire chapter of the national nonprofit. “When something this terrible happens, you have to make something good out of it,” Susan said.
Julie Baron, president of the Manchester-based nonprofit, told me that “many of our families want to give back, but nobody lasts for 25 years. Kids from all across New Hampshire have had their wishes granted because of the amazing Mellow family. We owe them a great deal.”
An Enfield nonprofit, Visions for Creative Housing Solutions, also has received $30,000 from the Jammer in the last decade. The organization provides housing and support services for adults with developmental disabilities.
Visions was started by Sylvia and David Dow in 2014. The couple’s two daughters are longtime friends of Erin and Meagan Mellow.
The Jammer also supports the Grantham Community Crisis Fund, contributing $27,500 since 2001. The fund helps Grantham residents who have fallen on hard times.
Every spring, the Mellows donate money from the Jammer tournament to scholarship funds at Lebanon High School and Mascoma Valley Regional High School, totaling $43,000 over the years.
Each student can spend their $1,000 award as they see fit. (Grantham Village School teachers also contribute to the Lebanon High scholarship.) The recipients are students who are “most like James,” Andy said. “They have a love for life, curiosity for learning and a sense of fair play.”
‘The end of an era’
Planning for the Jammer begins in January. The Mellows solicit items from businesses and individuals to auction off. They line up a caterer and band for the after-golf portion of the event.
Meagan, who works in athletic attire sales, helps her parents with the online store that offers “Jammer” hats, T-shirts and other merchandise. This year, the store raised $2,600.
Andy puts together the nine-hole tournament’s guest list. With 90 golfers signed up, this year’s tournament is now spread over two days for the first time. Some will play on Friday and the others on Saturday.
The format is geared more toward fun than birdies. Each golfer is limited to three clubs, which can mean putting with a fairway wood.
The day doesn’t end with golf. Erin and her husband, Robin Liston, host the catered dinner and live music at their property in Plainfield. Some of the 175 dinner guests will be camping out in the couple’s field.
After hearing what it takes to pull off the annual event, I had a better grasp of why the Mellows reached the decision that they did.
Andy and Susan are both 72. Meagan lives in northern California with her husband and their three children. Erin and her husband have two girls.
At some point, it becomes too much.
“They’ve done a fabulous job and it’s sad to see the end of an era, but everyone understands,” said Cheever, one of the family’s closest friends. “We know the amount of work that is involved.”
“Even without the Jammer, no one will forget James,” she added. “He’ll be in our hearts forever.”
