PGA
Danbury's Ken Green, trying to make a comeback despite losing his right leg, got more bad news last week when he learned his youngest son had died.
According to publish reports in the Dallas Morning News, SMU campus police released a recording of a 911 call in which a male caller told the dispatcher he suspected that the 21-year-old took his own life. “We got [an e-mail] this morning that sounded a little suspicious, and we came over to his room and found him laying [sic] on the floor,” the caller said.
The family has declined comment on the matter and requested privacy. However, Green did address the tragedy on his website, KenGreensComeback.com where he wrote, “Well, today is another sad day," he wrote. “I’m sorry to say that my youngest son Hunter has passed. His journey in life has ended, and I can’t tell you how difficult understanding this is.”
The death of Green’s son was another in a litany of tragedies the 50-year-old has undergone over the past year. In June, while driving through Mississippi in between events on the Champions Tour (i.e., the PGA’s “senior” tour), Green’s RV blew a tire and went down an embankment. The accident killed his brother, Bill, and his girlfriend, Jeannie Hodgin. Green survived the horrific event, but after a weeklong battle, surgeons were forced to amputate his right leg.
“It’s a horrible thing to add onto the year that he's had,” Dan Baker, a longtime friend of Green, told the Danbury News-Times upon hearing the news. For a parent to lose a child is the worst. I can't even imagine what he's going through.”
According to the paper, Baker last spoke to Green about a week before the tragedy.
Since losing his leg, Green, a Danbury High grad who finished No. 4 on the PGA’s money list in 1988 and earned a spot on the USA Ryder Cup team in 1989, has devoted his life to becoming the first player in history to compete on the PGA Champions Tour with a prosthetic limb.
“He has always been a very determined person,” Baker said. “He's a fighter. That determination will carry him through no matter what. He's one of the strongest, bravest guys I know.”
