You play the course. He lives the course.
He’s the major reason Weatherwax consistently is named one of the Top 10 public courses in Ohio.
But after today, Gerdeman is hanging up his rake for the last time. He has resigned and accepted a sales position for Rosen’s, a Missouri-based company that supplies farming equipment. He will work out of his home and cover the Ohio territory.
His boss, Dave Tieman, director of golf at Weatherwax, said Gerdeman leaving “hasn’t hit me yet because I don’t want to think about it.”
Tieman hired Gerdeman in 1997, right in the middle of the major renovations at Weatherwax when bunkers were reformed, fairways were changed to bent grass, and restrooms and cart paths were upgraded.
He was most impressed by Gerdeman’s drive, and it had nothing to do with distance or accuracy.
“He had a young guy’s eyes,” Tieman said of Gerdeman’s enthusiasm and outlook. “He looked around here and said, ‘We can do this, we can do that.’ He was right on.”
Ron Campbell, a maintenance employee who has worked for Gerdeman for 13 years, called him the “best boss” he has had.
“When you have someone, a boss, who works right beside you, you can’t complain,” said Campbell, 61, of Middletown.
When Gerdeman was a fifth-grader, construction began on the Country Acres Country Club in Kalida, Ohio, just down the street from his home. He quickly fell in love with the bulldozers and the piles of dirt. What boy wouldn’t? He spent all of his spare time there and eventually was offered a job.
That seed grew into a love affair. The 1985 Ottawa-Glandorf High School graduate earned his degree in agronomy from Clark State in Springfield, and began a career that has spanned four golf courses.
But now, with two young children, Kendall, 8, and Mitchell, 4, at home, Gerdeman wants to spend more time with them and his wife, Lisa. As he said, “They’re growing up right before my eyes.”
He called the decision between sod and sales about “quality of life.”
He turned in his chair and glanced out the window. He described the 36-hole Weatherwax as “a hidden gem.”
The golfers should call him the same.
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