Golf course superintendents are helping provide meals for staff working COVID-19 testing stations in North Carolina’s Forsyth County. Superintendents this week gave $3,300 to Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center Foundation. The gift will provide a month’s supply of lunches from local restaurants to workers at one of two testing stations in the county.
“The community is good to golf and we want to show how much we appreciate that support by giving back at this time,” said Blue Ridge Golf Course Superintendents Association President Nathan Biggs, the superintendent at High Meadows Golf and Country Club in Roaring Gap, North Carolina. “We know there are a lot of people doing critical work, putting themselves in the firing line, and they deserve our support.”
Members of the Blue Ridge GCSA provided the bulk of the donation with help from the Piedmont GCSA and other golf industry donors. Biggs says the associations are using funds that would otherwise be used for meetings and seminars that are now on hold because of the pandemic.
“It’s not just golf course superintendents generating this money. It also comes from the manufacturers and suppliers we work so closely with,” he said. “So, it’s from our sponsors as much as it is from us. Let’s face it, we’re very fortunate to be playing golf in the Carolinas. We want to take care of the people taking care of us.”
Piedmont GCSA president Jeff VanPelt, from Alamance Country Club in Burlington, North Carolina, echoed Biggs’ sentiment. “As soon as we heard what the guys from the Blue Ridge were doing, we wanted to get right on board,” he said. “The folks doing this front line work deserve any help we can give.”
Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center Foundation chief development officer Heather Egan said it takes 35 medical workers to handle each of the two COVID-19 testing stations in Winston-Salem and Kernersville.
“We are overwhelmed by the generosity of the community. Support like this from the golf course superintendents is so important,” Egan said. “We are so grateful.”
In addition to meals, the foundation works to provide childcare for health workers, accommodations for volunteer doctors and nurses from other areas and isolation accommodation for health workers who test positive for the virus. “Those are just some examples,” Egan said. “Honestly, I don’t think we yet fully understand all the needs our health workers are going to have in the weeks ahead.”