A Golfing Bond and Buddies For The Ages

A Golfing Bond and Buddies For The Ages

Chamberlain Hill and Ben Gale

By Leonard Shapiro

Chamberlain Hill was only 11 at the time but will forever remember the kneeknocking day he first played golf with his 65-year-old playing partner, Ben Gale. Or, as he still calls him 20 years later, “Mr. Gale.”

They first met after Chamberlain’s mother, Rhonda Hill, had a casual chat at Upperville’s Trinity Church with Ben’s wife, Debbie. Rhonda happened to mention that her son recently had taken up golf and seemed to enjoy it. Debbie insisted Chamberlain just had to meet her husband, an enthusiastic player.

Chamberlain and Ben played together for the first time at Ben’s home course, Loudoun Golf and Country Club in Purcellville. Chamberlain, a somewhat shy, reserved African-American sixth grader at Hill School, and Ben, a much older and louder retired white cattle farmer, were truly something of an odd couple.

“I wanted to play well so badly, and Mr. Gale could tell how nervous I was,” Chamberlain said. “The first two holes, I was terrible and getting visibly frustrated. He came over to me and started to calm me down. ‘Chill out,’ he said. ‘Try to enjoy yourself.’ On the fourth hole, I made a birdie. That definitely calmed me down.”

What soon would become a lasting friendship sadly ended last October when Ben Gale died at age 84, succumbing to the cancer he’d been battling for several years. Chamberlain, now 30, said he still has to fight the impulse to dial his friend’s number.

“We would talk about everything, and we disagreed about a lot of things,” Chamberlain said. “I was a young black kid and he was this old white guy; but because we both loved golf, we were able to hit it off…We were just friends We clicked right from the start. That’s all it was.”

Ben was properly proud of Chamberlain. He always spoke with great admiration of his accomplishments—in the classroom, on the golf course, his marriage to his college sweetheart, the young couple’s adorable little girls, now 5 and 3, about Chamberlain’s career as an accomplished marketing executive with Leerfield/IMG, a national company heavily involved in college sports.

Andrew Stifler, one of Chamberlain’s Hill teachers and a friend of Ben Gale, described Chamberlain as “just a great kid… Good student. Always prepared. Loved golf. And Ben wasn’t doing this just to be good to a young black kid. To him, Chamberlain was just a kid who loved the game and wanted to do something in golf. They were truly friends.”

Chamberlain’s parents divorced while he was at Hill and money was tight. But Gale arranged for a junior membership at Loudoun Golf, and frequently took him to play at Millwood Country Club. They lived near each other in the Middleburg area, and Chamberlain said he spent many hours “just hanging out” at Gale’s home.

Chamberlain attended Woodberry Forest, a prestigious all-boys prep school in Orange. Better yet, there was a challenging nine-hole course on campus. He was on the Woodberry golf team and at one point, had an impressive 1.8 handicap index.

Over the summers, he also played junior golf. Gale helped financially, taking care of instruction, entry fees and traveling expenses. He often took Chamberlain with him on his annual summer fishing trips in Maine, another mutual interest.

Chamberlain’s academic prowess at Woodberry led to being named an Oldham Scholar at the University of Richmond, a full academic scholarship awarded for outstanding achievement in the classroom and qualities of character and leadership.

He graduated from UR with a degree in international business, earned a Masters in sports management at Georgetown and is now living and working in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Over the years, Chamberlain remained in close touch with Ben right up until his death and said he misses his old friend every day.

Stifler organized a small memorial ceremony for Ben at Millwood. Chamberlain had a major business commitment and regrettably was unable to attend, but he composed a deeply moving eulogy read by Tom Northrup, Hill’s Head of School Emeritus. In the audience, tears flowed freely.

“After a while,” Chamberlain wrote, “I realized that good ol’ grumpy Mr. Gale and I were simply very close friends linked at the beginning by our love for the game of golf,,,As time went on (it developed) into an incredible mutual respect that was unbreakable.

“Did we always see eye to eye? Absolutely not and sometimes our differences in opinion made for very difficult and very honest conversations. But our respect for each other always remained constant…. One of the major reasons that I loved Mr. Gale so much is that as loud (mostly because he couldn’t hear) and opinionated as he was, there was never a time where I felt that my opinions, views, or thoughts weren’t respected or being heard.

“I cherished having someone in my life like him… He is the good Lord’s problem now, and I hope the man upstairs is prepared and has some spare time on his calendar for him. Mr. Gale is coming with a note pad full of questions and a whole bunch of jokes that tend to take some time to develop but usually end up being pretty damn funny.

“I love you Mr. Gale and you will be missed.

Your buddy, Chamberlain Hill.”

A version of this story appeared in Virginia Golfer Magazine.