Each time Joe Lazaro readied a shot on a golf course, everyone nearby paused in curiosity and awe.
“Whenever I’m playing, other people may be at a parallel hole or the hole behind me, they’ll all stop to watch,” he told the Globe in 2008. “And my coach will say, ‘They’re all shaking their heads Joe; you hit a good shot.’ It just amazes people to know that a blind person could hit a ball so good.”
A mine blast in Italy during World War II took away the sight of Mr. Lazaro, who was 95 when he died of cancer Christmas Day in his Waltham home. While convalescing from his war injuries, a sports counselor suggested he play golf, a sport he had first tried while caddying as a boy.
During the next six decades, Mr. Lazaro became one of the world’s best blind golfers. He competed in more than 50 US Blind Golf Association championship tournaments, winning seven national championships and a pair of international championships. His celebrity tournaments helped raise hundreds of thousands for charity and in 2007 he was in the first class inducted into the association’s Hall of Fame.
He added that when he worked “with blind youngsters, I try to get across the idea that sight is a luxury that God gives us, but we have other faculties to be fully used when it is taken away.”
That was also true for him away from the golf course. For years Mr. Lazaro worked as a salvage technician at Raytheon, and “at home, he was like any other father,” said his daughter Joan Cavanaugh of Milton. “He would take care of the garden and cut the grass.”
Many who met Mr. Lazaro didn’t immediately realize he couldn’t see.
“I’d bring people home and introduce them, and he’d walk right up, look them in the eye, and stick out his hand,” his daughter said. “I used to bring dates home and they wouldn’t even know he was blind.”
Neighbors grew accustomed to the sight of Mr. Lazaro mowing his lawn after nightfall, and his children knew he wouldn’t shy from duties that seemed to require eyesight.
“He taught me how to drive,” his daughter said. “He was in the driver’s seat, showing me how to use the clutch, and I’d be in the passenger seat steering, and we’d go around the block.”
The second of six siblings, Joseph C. Lazaro Jr. was born in Waltham to Joseph Lazaro and the former Josephine Ferrara, Sicilian immigrants who started a trucking company in Waltham.
Caddying at the Weston Golf Club as a boy, Mr. Lazaro made 60 cents for each 18 holes. “Caddies could play on Mondays and I started when I was 13,” he told the Globe in 1979.
After graduating from Waltham High School, he was a driver for his family’s trucking business until joining the Army during World War II.
He served with the 109th Combat Engineers and was in England when he first encountered Edna Basnett, who was from the Whiston part of Lancashire.
“They met in a fish and chips shop and he just fell in love with her at first sight,” their daughter Joan said.
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| Globe photo/File 1951 |
When doctors said he would never regain his sight, “it hit me like a ton of bricks,” he told the Globe in 1979. “My mind went around in circles for two or three days.”
From the hospital, he sent word to Edna and offered to break off the engagement. “But you’re still the same person, you’ve just lost your sight,” she replied.
“I told her that love must be blind, too,” Mr. Lazaro told the Globe in 1962. “I’m glad it was.”
They married in Waltham on April 30, 1946. Early on, Mr. Lazaro told his wife that “we’re going to be traveling together, and I can’t navigate, so you be the skipper,” and Skip became her nickname.
Apprehensive at first about playing golf, he relented and went out on a course with a coach, who helped lead the way.
“I tell you it was wicked,” Mr. Lazaro said in 2008 as he recalled his first day back on a golf course. “You lose your equilibrium, and when you swing, you fall off your feet. You’ve got to develop equilibrium.”
He quickly became comfortable, even though a few things remained beyond reach. “One thing missing is the wiggle waggle, as I call it,” he told the Globe in 1946, because blind golfers hold their clubs stationary before taking a swing.
As for putting, “We have a special method,” he said. “On the long ones, the caddie rattles the pin loudly in the cup. It’s a little like radar. It’s amazing how your ear, bent low in crouch over the putter, picks up the noise to guide you in your stroke.”
He added that “it’s easy to gauge the roll. You walk along the line of putt and sense the roll with your feet, which get a sensitivity of their own. And then from three feet or so you feel the way with your hands.”
In 1954, Mr. Lazaro was the first North American blind golf champion, winning a tournament in Toronto. It was the first time he defeated Charles Boswell, a legendary blind golfer from Birmingham, Ala. In 1962, Mr. Lazaro won his first national championship, slipping past Boswell after seven consecutive years of finishing second.
Among his many honors, Mr. Lazaro was named the 1980 New England PGA Man of the Year, and his fame was such that when he met Tiger Woods in 2006, “He said, ‘Joe, I know all about you,’ ” Mr. Lazaro recalled afterward.
Services are private for Mr. Lazaro, who in addition to his wife and daughter leaves another daughter, Lynne of Weston; a son, Joseph III of Waltham; a brother, Bernard of Marlborough; and four grandchildren.
The first blind golfer to break 80, Mr. Lazaro’s best score was 77 at the Wayland Country Club.
At a 1987 fund-raising tournament, sponsors offered two free cars to anyone who hit a hole-in-one on the 163-yard sixth hole. Mr. Lazaro came close. His drive rolled over, around, and 31 inches past the cup.
“So instead of a car, I got a TV set,” Mr. Lazaro said at the time, adding: “Oh well, I told people that I didn’t like the color of the cars, anyway.”
Obituary written by Globe staff writer Bryan Marquard
Original found here
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