Mom smiling down on Maine South grad, Evans Scholar Dunleavy

All six kids in the Dunleavy family from Park Ridge have grown up on a golf course.

And yet, none of them are serious golfers.

Caddying has been the family tradition.

Oldest sibling Stephen, now 30, got the ball rolling when he got a job at Park Ridge Country Club as a teenager. He was followed by Danny, now 29, Jaclynn, 26, Erin, 25, and Mairead, 18. Youngest Kate, 14, is just getting started.

"My mom (Patty) had helped Stephen get a job caddying as a way to get him working and keep him out of trouble," said fifth-oldest Mairead Dunleavy, a 2020 graduate of Maine South High School whose first name is Irish and pronounced Mar-raid. "Then we all got into it. It got us up early, and by the time we got home, we'd be too tired to cause any trouble.

"My mom would always say that getting us kids into caddying was the best decision she ever made."

Mom's legacy

Turns out, it was also one of Patty Dunleavy's greatest legacies.

She had encouraged her children to apply for the annual Chick Evans Scholarship, a scholarship for caddies and the nation's largest privately funded college scholarship program.

And, last spring, Mairead Dunleavy was the third of the siblings to apply for it, and the first to earn it.

"I wouldn't have been able to go away to college had I not gotten the scholarship," said Dunleavy, who started caddying when she was 13 and is still a caddie. "And certainly not to a college like Marquette."

The full tuition and housing Evans scholarship is valued at an estimated $120,000 per scholarship over four years and more than 11,320 caddies have graduated as Evans Scholars since the program was founded by famed Chicago amateur golfer Charles "Chick" Evans, Jr. in 1930.

Earlier this month, the Evans Scholarship Foundation announced that 77 Chicago area high school seniors have been awarded the scholarship for 2021.

Currently, a record 1,045 caddies are enrolled in 19 universities across the nation as Evans scholars, including Dunleavy, who is a freshman studying social justice and welfare at Marquette.

She says just like her older siblings who had applied for the scholarship but didn't get it, she had excellent grades in high school and a stellar caddying record, with multiple recommendations from golfers, both requirements to be considered for the scholarship.

But unlike her older siblings, Mairead faced a situation that made her application for the scholarship stand out even more.

"To get the scholarship, your family also has to be in need," Mairead Dunleavy said. "And from when my older siblings applied to me, our family financial situation had changed a lot."

After older sister Erin applied about six years ago, Patty Dunleavy got very sick. Eventually, the mother of six learned she had colon cancer.

Mairead was just a freshman in high school.

At the time, Patty Dunleavy was helping her husband James run his small business. When she could no longer work and the medical bills started piling up, James had to look for new work.

Bittersweet moment

Mairead Dunleavy found out in March 2020, the spring of her senior year at Maine South and just before COVID-19 hit, that she had earned the Chick Evans Scholarship.

"It was absolutely a weight lifted off everyone's shoulders in our family," Mairead Dunleavy said. "It was definitely such a blessing."

Little did Mairead Dunleavy know that the timing of her scholarship news was also going to be a blessing.

Two months after Mairead Dunleavy learned that she had become a Chick Evans Scholar, in May of 2020, Patty Dunleavy passed away.

"Losing a mom is so tough," Mairead Dunleavy said, her voice shaking slightly. "It can be hard to know what to do because your mom is such a huge part of your life and I had this really great thing happen, but I lost my mom right after. It was so bittersweet.

"But I also think about how special it was for me to share (news of the scholarship) with her. I know she was really proud and would be really proud of me now."

Mairead Dunleavy says that she is off to a great start at Marquette, making As and Bs. She's also planning on caddying when she gets home in the summer. Caddying took her to college, but it's not going to take her away from the golf course just yet.

"Eventually, you get too old for (caddying), but not yet," said Dunleavy, who typically caddies five to six days a week during the height of golf season. "I'm a good caddie but the funny thing is, when I first started when I was 13, I didn't know the difference between a driver and a putter. But you pick it up as you go and when you are doing something every day, you have no choice but to learn it.

"I got to learn our course, and I moved from a B caddie (lowest) to an honor caddie (highest). I would get my golfer's bag ready and clean his clubs, and I could also tell my golfer where to hit and what to do on certain holes."

Dunleavy also got good at building relationships with her golfers, some of whom got to know her so well they wrote glowing recommendations for her Evans Scholarship application.

"The most important thing is your personality," Dunleavy said. "You have to connect with your golfers and allow your golfers to trust you. You have to know what to say to them, you have to be their biggest cheerleader, you have to bring knowledge. You have to be able to support your golfers in every way."

Dunleavy did so well that now golf is supporting her.

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