Here is the Lewiston Tribune headline from the Sept. 1 Labor Day weekend paper: “Clarkston’s Dahmen sponsors local golf event, returns to valley.” Joel’s Dahmen Family Foundation sponsored the 72nd annual Whing Ding Sole Survivor golf tournament held at the Lewiston Golf and Country Club. Joel is a 36-year-old PGA professional golfer, who was born in Lewiston and graduated from Clarkston High School where he won two Washington state championships. He’s also my grandson. This was the first time Joel has sponsored the tournament, where he has won the Sole Survivor twice in 2007 and 2009, at the ages of 19 and 21.
My beloved late wife, Barbara, and I have always been thankful, excited, and yes, proud of his success as a golfer, but his sponsoring his home area tournaments I feel is one of the most wonderful things he has ever done. Let’s look at Joel’s trip from Clarkston to being a top professional golfer.
Using some Tribune headlines, lets start with his first victory. The 2021 headline says, “Stunning yes, but unsurprising.” A photo shows him holding the award at the Punta Cana Resort Club Championship. Geno Bonnalie, of Lewiston, and then Joel got a huge hug from his wife Lona.
A 2019 Tribune headline says about Joel, “Long road to success” and that accurately describes Joel’s golf career. The article says Joel had just won $853,000 in the Wells Fargo Championship for finishing second. “It’s ridiculous,” says Joel, whose dad worked 40 years at the paper mill in Lewiston and his mother was a Lewiston teacher at Whitman Elementary School (his mother’s also my daughter). He says he has never bled from golf, but he has definitely had tears. After playing a year at the University of Washington, three years on the Canadian tour, one as Canadian Champion, a battle with cancer, and years on the minor league tour, he made the PGA tour at the age of 29 in 2017. He says that he will not suddenly become a Tiger Woods, but he appreciates the gift-of-golf-talent he has been blessed with.
Joel wrote a few pages he called, “I want to talk about my mom.” He talks about he and his brother Zach both beating testicular cancer. When he found out, he said he just wanted to talk to his mom. He has been thinking a lot about life and golf, and golf had a lot to do with her. She was and still is his super hero. She did everything for him and his brother. He says they were “mama’s boys.” Her name was Jolyn, always the life of the party, and a very true University of Idaho Vandal. She was one of Whitman Elementary’s favorite teachers. She did everything with love, including hosting family holiday dinners. In the summers, she drove Joel around to many junior tournaments. She never missed a hole and took notes about how many greens he hit and how many putts he made. She gave all of the information to his dad. After each tournament she would ask him if he did his best, and when he said yes, she would say “OK, let’s get a treat from Starbucks then.”
Joel wrote, “She was steady and kept me right where I needed to be. I owe a lot of my success as a junior golfer to her and my dad. Golf has a lot to do with my mom and still does.
“One Friday my parents sat me down and told me that my mom had cancer. I just started crying and hugged my mom for 10 minutes. I just wanted to be with her, to be comforted, her smell, by all the things that made her my mom.
“Six months later my mom died at age 46, I was never able to process any of it, her being sick, growing weak or her dying. I had lost my best friend, the rudder of my life. She and I would watch “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy.” That summer I drove to golf tournaments on my own. A year after I beat cancer, I met Lona who is now my wife and the mother of our one-and-a-half-year-old son Riggs. Lona is the best thing that ever happened to me. She did not care about golf, but just wanted me to be the best version of myself. She pushed me to get off my rear and get a lesson. I have been on the PGA tour since 2017, living a dream with the best team of Lona, Geno, and everyone else. I advise young people that success isn’t a straight line, and living it will make him a better human.”
Joel goes on to say he will never stop feeling his mother’s presence. He knows that she will always be watching him play golf, no matter where he goes, she will be watching him play, tracking his statistics, waiting with a Starbucks.
Riggs, 90, is a lifelong Lewistonian. He’s an avid Warriors fan, a retired educator, coach and school superintendent and volunteers his time at the Nez Perce County Historical Society. He can be reached at bdriggo@gmail.com.
