Keegan: Reunion ‘family’ affair

By Tom Keegan     May 14, 2007

Remember the name Mark Barton? Heath Mayor, a former Kansas University golfer who was in town for a reunion weekend that turned into a tribute to Ross Randall, golf coach at KU for 28 years, never will forget it.

Barton was the day trader who in 1999 shot to death nine people in a pair of Atlanta offices across the street from each other. Earlier in the week, he had bludgeoned his second wife and his two children from a previous marriage.

A 1995 KU graduate, Mayor worked in the second building, which explains why his mother was glued to CNN’s live coverage of the tragedy’s aftermath.

Here’s what she saw on her television, according to Mayor: “There were cops with shields lining the streets. FBI agents popped my car doors open and pulled me out of the car. They all had automatic weapons pointed at me. They screamed at me, put me on the ground, put my hands behind my back, cuffed me. : The most dramatic thing was my girlfriend at the time, they showed her in the crowd crying as I was getting arrested. She was being restrained because she knew they had the wrong guy. She worked in a building right next to mine, so she saw the whole thing happen. She was crying on TV. My mom knew my girlfriend, she saw her and then saw me, so she called my dad and everyone else.”

Those weren’t her first calls.

“My cell phone was ringing, and it was my mom calling while I was being arrested, and they didn’t let me answer the phone, so she was pretty freaked out for a while,” Mayor said. “I got to call her about 30 minutes later and tell her everything was OK.”

The golf bug indirectly was responsible for the case of mistaken identity. The cops were looking for a gunman wearing a red golf shirt and brown shorts.

“I was in a suit, came back from lunch, changed into a red golf shirt and brown shorts,” Mayor said. “My bosses were out of town that day, so I was going to play golf with some friends of mine. As I was leaving, they picked me up thinking I was him because I had the exact same outfit on. The FBI arrested me and got me into custody down below and questioned me, then basically realized pretty quickly I wasn’t the right guy. They didn’t believe me at first. They did a background check of me and ran my name and realized I wasn’t working at the day trader company. … We were supposed to stay in our building, but I was pretty naive and I wanted to play golf.”

Given that harrowing experience, it’s not easy to shake up Mayor. Even so, learning that his friend and former golf coach was handing the head golf coach title to assistant Kit Grove and would be moving indefinitely to a newly created role as director of golf, seemed to get to Mayor and several other players.

The word “family” is tossed around frequently in regards to athletic teams. Seldom does it ring as true as it did over the Mother’s Day weekend organized by Randall’s wife, Linda, who seemed to so enjoy spending time with 32 of the Randalls’ sons.

Players enjoy Randall’s stories from his eight years (1969-76) on the PGA Tour. He never claimed to be the No. 1 player on the tour. That honor belonged to Jack Nicklaus. Randall’s lone boast was of a different sort.

“Prettiest wife on the tour,” he once told me. “No. 1.”

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