Tough guy George Yost says goodbye to Tucson with the round of his life

GOD: “Did you live a good life?”

GEORGE: “Damn right.”

GOD: Would you do anything differently?

GEORGE: “Don’t give me any trouble.”

Sometime this week, George Yost, my golf partner for 15 years and one of the most unforgettable characters I’ve ever met, will get in his car and drive to Grand Junction, Colorado, to live near his daughters and extended family.

He says his new neighbor in a 55-over community in the Grand Junction suburb of Fruita has promised to bake him some cookies.

It will be the sweetest thing to happen to him in 84 years because there is no sugarcoating the story of George Yost.

I was randomly paired with George in my first week as a member of the Sunrise Golf Club and, typical of strangers playing golf, the early conversation was strained. He didn’t make a peep.

At mid-round, I asked another golfer what George did for a living.

“He’s a minister,” I was told.

And then the dam burst. SOB this. SOB that. After a missed putt, George’s putter went helicoptering off the green, end over end, into a sand trap.

I looked at the other golfers. “A minister?”

You could hear laughter all the way to the 19th hole.

I’ve spent my adult life writing about so-called tough guys: linebackers, old-school coaches and third basemen playing in on the grass. But I don’t think I’ve ever come across a tougher sucker than George Yost, a former quartermaster for the USS Firecrest, a minesweeper that was almost always in harm’s way during the Korean War.

Once, before the Firecrest left Japan for a 90-days-at-sea mission, George told the company doctor that he had a killer pain in his side.

“It’s just a bellyache, dammit,” the doctor said. “Get out of here.”

The next day George’s appendix burst. He was back on the ship a week later.

George played golf like his appendix was about to burst, but you’ll never find anyone more determined to get the damn golf ball into the cup, if you’ll pardon the French.

Ten days ago at the Dell Urich Golf Course, after a life in which he has survived three heart surgeries, the death of two wives, and the news that his son fractured his spine and would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, George had the round of his life.

He shot 41 on the front nine and as he neared the 18th green all he needed was a bogey to shoot 84. It would be the lowest score of his life. He would also shoot his age, an 84 at 84. Hallelujah.

When George drained the 5-footer for an 84, he didn’t tell a soul what it meant or what he had done.

Finally, two days later, after some digging, he let it out.

“Best round of my life,” he said.

“Were you nervous?”

“Yep.”

End of story.

George Yost was born and grew up on the bad side of the street in Salt Lake City, a just-barely-made-it member of the West High School Class of 1951.

His father, Newton, a product of the Great Depression, moved from Illinois to Utah to find work. While cutting timber in the Wasatch Mountains, Newton Yost met the company cook, Selma, a young Mormon girl from nearby Brigham City.

They would get married, have four kids and raise a family as Newton worked for an oil company and a concrete outfit. Middle America, 1940s.

George was a talented basketball player, but making the powerful West High Panthers basketball team, one of the few Utah schools with minority students, required more than just basketball skills.

“Sometimes it depended on who you could whip,” says George.

Did you whip anybody?

“Let’s just say I got whipped a few times myself,” he says.

Don’t let this out, but the man known more for his bark than his bite is a softie inside. He wouldn’t want anyone to know.

George joined the Navy after high school, spent five years overseas, and returned to Utah where he found work with Chevron.

It was the job of a lifetime. He started at the bottom, manning the gas pumps and fixing flat tires for 60 cents an hour. Pretty soon he was the manager of a Chevron station.

What was it Billy Joel sang about drinking a lot of his take-home pay? Until his heart almost conked out, George did a lot of that, too.

In 1982, Chevron transferred him to Tucson so he could be the lubricant representative for Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas. That’s when George started to golf, becoming one of the earliest members of the Sunrise Club.

As he would say, it took him 35 damn years to have the round of his life.

Between all the work and all the golf, he met his wife, Jean Champion, during a business meeting at the old Tri-Arc Hotel in Salt Lake City. They built a house near Silverbell Road and got on with life.

She worked for the Yellow Pages. He wore a Chevron shirt to work. Life was good.

Tragically, Jean died of pancreatic cancer in 2007. After that, George lived alone, playing golf three or four days a week, overcoming three heart surgeries, toughing it out. Finally, he gave in and agreed to move closer to his daughters in Colorado.

When George walked into the pro shop Sunday morning at the Randolph Golf Complex, everyone knew it would be his last day of golf in Tucson.

In 30 years, he probably played more than 3,000 rounds at El Rio, Dell Urich, Randolph, Fred Enke and Silverbell.

When George reached for his wallet, a man behind the counter waved it off.

“No charge for you today,” the man said. “We’re going to miss you.”