How a grieving father honors son, helps military families through golf

— -- Seven years ago, Alex McIntosh made a phone call. He wasn't even sure who, or what, he was calling. He just knew he needed to do something.

His son, U.S. Army Cpl. Scott McIntosh, was killed in combat the previous year. Serving his second tour of duty in Iraq, Scott and four other soldiers were the victims of a suicide bomber. He was 26 years old.

"He was a good kid, had a great heart," his father remembers. "Everybody liked Scott. He was one of those people everyone gravitated toward. Nothing ever got him down."

When they received the news, Scott's family was understandably devastated. They grieved; they mourned. McIntosh says it took six months before he even felt like living again.

Then he decided to do something in Scott's memory.

So he made that phone call.

A golfing buddy had told McIntosh about an upstart charitable foundation called Folds of Honor. McIntosh didn't know anything about it. Didn't know it assisted wounded veterans and the families of those killed in duty. Didn't know there was an element connected to the game of golf.

On the other end of the line was Maj. Ed Pulido, a wounded veteran himself who helped run the foundation launched by Maj. Dan Rooney just two years earlier. McIntosh explained that he wanted to raise money in his son's honor, maybe $10,000 or so that could aid their cause.

Within a month, he hosted the first annual Scott A. McIntosh Memorial Tournament at Houston's famed Champions Golf Club, not far from the family's home. Donations nearly quadrupled McIntosh's initial idea.

Since then, the event has grown massively. There's a gala the night before the tournament with special guest speakers. A few hundred people attend, and it's always sold out.

The next morning, there's a ceremony on the driving range. American flags are placed in the ground to honor local soldiers killed in combat during the past year. There are shrines to each of them, lined with dog tags and combat boots. The ceremony concludes with a 21-shot salute to these fallen heroes -- 21 tee shots struck on the range to remember them, followed by the playing of "Taps."

"I don't want people to come to the tournament and just play golf and eat a meal and drink beer," McIntosh explains. "When they come to this event, from the moment they walk on property, they are bombarded with emotion and patriotism. I want them to have an emotional connection to the whole experience. The tears flow at our event. If they're not crying, then we're not making the connection that we want to."

This week, just days before Veterans Day, they held the eighth edition of the tournament.

It raised $460,000.

"That's just unprecedented for a grassroots event," Pulido says of what has become the country's largest fundraising golf tournament. "It's also one of our most moving events, because it puts the focus on the financial and emotional toll that a family embarks upon when a tragedy of this magnitude takes place."

To date, the Scott A. McIntosh Memorial Tournament has generated over $2.25 million in donations. It has helped support more than 4,000 scholarships offered to veterans and military families by Folds of Honor since its inception, covering all 50 states.

Just as importantly, the event has given the McIntosh family a way to honor Scott each year by maintaining the legacy of a soldier killed in combat.

"It's like ripping the Band-Aid off each year," his father says, "but it's also therapeutic."

It all started with that phone call. The one he made still not knowing what to do, but knowing he needed to do something.

"I had a sense of panic when my son was killed that nobody would remember him, nobody would care about Scott McIntosh in a few years," McIntosh remembers. "Well, I can tell you there are thousands of people who know who Scott McIntosh is. Everybody knows who he is, because he's still making a difference, still out there helping the cause. That's what makes this all worth it."