FARGO — It was appropriate that the North Dakota State Team Makers booster club this week put out its list of golf tournaments for the upcoming summer, since those were two of John Mark’s life passions. Golf and Bison.
His enduring impact on both were also accomplished without headlines, which is probably the way he wanted it. Mark, 83, died on Sunday after a battle with cancer, a behind-the-scenes legend who was a national figure with the United States Golf Association.
He was instrumental in bringing the 1995 USGA Junior Amateur to the Fargo Country Club, to this day the only major USGA event to be played in the state of North Dakota. The planning was so intensive that Mark put hours and days into constructing a scoreboard that was so good the USGA took it down and the FCC shipped it to the next site in Pennsylvania. It was used in subsequent tournaments as well.
“He was singularly responsible for us getting the amateur here,” said friend Dick Anderson. “It was his relationship with the USGA people that caused them to come to Fargo. I chaired it, I got the recognition, but John did the work. He was absolutely selfless.”
Longtime USGA official and Fargo golf supporter John Mark with his niece, Gabrielle Krebs, who played for Lake Forest College (Ill.)
Submitted photo
Mark was on the USGA Junior Committee for 30 years. He was involved with every Bobcat North Dakota Open since its inception in 1964, first as a player and then as a starter and rules official. He was the official starter on the first tee for the tournament for three decades, at least, including the last couple of years when cancer was taking a toll, doing it for over 20 years when Mark Johnson was the tournament director.
Mark was a highly trained USGA rules official, with those days of rulings bringing a smile to Johnson, who is also an expert having passed all the PGA Professional tests. They made quite the pair when it came to rulings with players.
“He was always asking me, ‘What do you think?’” Johnson said. “He wasn’t asking me because he didn’t know. It was a great way for me to learn. Just the way he calmly went about determining the ruling. It’s the rules and like a true USGA guy, there is no gray area.”
And if a player got a little lippy?
“He’d say it’s an outdoor sport,” Johnson said. “They ended up on a piece of turf where they weren’t going to get relief.”
One of the state’s greatest amateur players, Mike Podolak of Oxbow, could relate. Mark was the official for Podolak in his North Dakota match play championships. There was the time when Podolak won the Bobcat professional event in 2003, the only amateur in the history of the tourney to do so.
“He was on the first tee, he put his arm around me and said, ‘You can do this,’” Podolak said. “That’s when John Dahl was caddying for me and it was just a great moment. As much as he loved to play, he had a bigger passion for just giving back to the game. John Mark was so good for golf.”
And it just wasn’t about his beloved Bison, either. The University of North Dakota dropped men’s golf in 2016, which put the program down, but not out. Golf boosters approached UND interim president Ed Shafer asking if the necessary operational funds could be privately raised if he would consider reinstating it.
The answer was yes.
“I was telling John that story over coffee that we had to raise all this money,” Anderson said. “And I thought that was the end of the conversation.”
It wasn’t. A week later Anderson got a call from one of Mark’s friends on the East Coast willing to give a six-figure gift. The same type of call came a week later from a friend of Mark’s in Texas about another six-figure donation.
“We got two gifts that almost reached the seven-figure mark and John was responsible for that,” Anderson said. “He launched the campaign. He didn’t write the check but the people he knew trusted him. He may bleed Bison green but he has some UND blood, too. Whatever was good for golf and good for North Dakota John was on board. He and I were friends for 364 days.”
The other day was devoted to NDSU vs. UND football, where their allegiance differed.
Two weeks ago, at Bethany Retirement Living in Fargo, the Fargo Country Club presented Mark a resolution of appreciation for all he did for golf. It made him smile.
Services for Mark will be held Friday, April 17 at 11 a.m. at Hanson-Runsvold Funeral Home in Fargo.
Jeff Kolpack, the son of a reporter and an English teacher, and the brother of a reporter, worked at the Jamestown Sun, Bismarck Tribune and since 1990 The Forum, where he’s covered North Dakota State athletics since 1995. He has covered all 10 of NDSU’s Division I FCS national football titles and has written four books: “Horns Up,” “North Dakota Tough,” “Covid Kids” and “They Caught Them Sleeping: How Dot Reinvented the Pretzel.” He is also the radio host of “The Golf Show with Jeff Kolpack” April through August.