‘Grateful to be alive’: Brunswick County twins to play Pebble Beach after horrific crash

Two years ago, twins Luke and Jack Boldt could have been overwhelmed with grief and despair.

At 15, they were in a car crash that killed their paternal grandparents and left them at first clinging to life with broken backs and numerous other injuries, then facing several surgeries and lengthy rehabilitation in the hopes of reestablishing their teenage lives.

Yet somehow, despite their own circumstances, they thought of others as they were recovering in the hospital and brainstormed ways to assist the Brunswick County community through organizations they had long been involved in – the Boy Scouts and The First Tee of Coastal Carolinas.

The altruistic projects they created had to share focus with a mutual selfish ambition, however: golf.

Their ability to improve at the game in spite of their injuries and their selflessness in the wake of their family tragedy are the reasons the twins will be playing Pebble Beach Golf Links in California this weekend in an event televised to an international audience on Golf Channel.

The Boldt twins, who live on a horse and cattle farm in Bolivia, N.C., and are seniors at South Brunswick High, are playing in the Champions Tour’s $2.1 million Pure Insurance Championship Impacting The First Tee. Jack is playing two or three rounds with Scott McCarron and two adult amateurs and Luke is playing with Jeff Maggert and two amateurs.

They are two of 78 First Tee teenagers throughout the country who were selected based on playing ability, as they now carry impressive handicap indexes of 4.0 and 4.6, and comprehension of the youth golf organization’s life skills and core values.

“After the accident it kind of felt like a duty to give back because so many people gave to me,” Luke said. “We had so much encouragement at the hospital. I felt like I needed to do it, I needed to give back.

“Our parents really helped us also. They’ve always encouraged us to give back to the community and always offer something, whatever it was you could give. They were really the basis of it, then add in First Tee and Boy Scouts. I feel nobody really does enough of it, especially our age.”

Their hospital rooms were decorated in golf themes, providing motivation to recover.

“It definitely looked really dim that we would be at this point a year and a half ago when we started physical therapy,” Luke said. “We were always reminded of golf and going back to it. For me it was just a matter of getting my back repaired and making sure all my stuff was sound internally, and getting my strength back up because I lost all my muscle power. You’re body’s just fighting for everything it’s got.”

Horrifying crash

On the afternoon of July 19, 2017, the twins were napping in the back seat of their grandparents’ car on their way from Nebraska to Kansas City for a family reunion scheduled for a family member with cancer.

An oncoming car swerved into their lane and hit them head on. Their grandmother, in the front passenger seat, was killed instantly. Their grandfather, who was driving, died a few days later at the hospital, and both twins were seriously injured.

Luke, who said he was wearing a waste strap seat belt but not a chest strap, was found in the windshield on top of the engine and Jack remained in the area of his seat. They were airlifted to Children’s Mercy hospital in Kansas City.

Luke was in a coma for eight days and in intensive care for one of the two months he was hospitalized. He has had 26 surgeries thus far, with at least a few more to come. “I think I’m going for a record here,” Luke joked.

He had a broken back at the L4 vertebra and numerous internal injuries including a ruptured colon and several feet of perforated intestines that were removed, resulting in an ileostomy for six months. His hip area was attacked by the painful flesh-eating bacteria necrotizing fasciitis, requiring skin grafts using much of the skin from his right leg.

Jack was hospitalized for a month, including a week in ICU. He had a broken back at his L1/L2 vertebrae, broken ankle, punctured lung, and ripped abdominal muscles along his right side. He has had four surgeries, and will live with two plates held in place by screws in his back, and four screws in his ankle.

Luke is still undergoing reconstructive surgeries. He has another skin expansion surgery on Oct. 8, during which a saline bubble will be placed under an area of skin that was used for grafts to stretch it so healthy skin can be connected over the area.

They have both had extensive physical therapy, and Luke also had speech and occupational therapy because of a head injury. In part because his only nutrition for a month was IV fluids, Luke dropped from 165 pounds to 120.

They have managed a positive attitude despite their ordeal. “You just have to keep the end in sight and always know there’s an end coming. Always know you’re grateful to be alive,” Luke said. “You can’t go, ‘Why me, Why me all day.’ That’s just going to break you apart. You realize this has happened to you and you have to work through it.”

Their mother, Lori, said her sons have received tremendous support from family – including sister Liz, 16, and brother Patrick, 14 – The First Tee organizers and volunteers, South Brunswick High, Cougars golf coach Jeff Register and the community as a whole. “I can’t speak enough about the community that we live in and all their friends and our family unit that has been there for them,” Lori said.

Helping others

That support has been reciprocated. The twins earned Eagle Scout rank in February with community service projects – Luke built an outdoor classroom for South Brunswick High and Jack built a handicap beach access ramp on Holden Beach and replaced vegetation at a kayak launch area that had been eroded.

They also founded Buddy Tee, which teaches children with special needs golf and leadership skills, in spring 2018 and initially had seven participants, which increased to 10 last fall. It will live on through The First Tee of Coastal Carolinas. “I think it’s definitely going to be a good part of our chapter,” Luke said. “We thought increasing diversity would be a great thing to do here, so that’s why we did the special needs.”

They got the idea from their previous experiences volunteering for a program called Buddy Ball, which features special needs individuals playing baseball, and led the golf instruction and life skills curriculum themselves, with some assistance from First Tee coaches. The program currently runs for one hour on Saturdays over six weeks. One Buddy Tee student did well enough to transition into the First Tee’s primary program.

“I am immensely proud of them,” said Lori, who like her husband, Terry, works in the oncology division of a pharmaceutical company. “I think they have pulled together everything we’ve taught as a family, which includes our faith, and they’ve taken from The First Tee in terms of the core values. I think it really speaks volumes about how prepared they are for future challenges. I think this is a huge test of their abilities and of their positive outlook and of their faith that they’ve been able to come through this in this way.”

Jack plans to pursue pre-veterinary studies at N.C. State in the hopes of opening a horse boarding and equine medicine facility, and Luke wants to attend pre-med at North Carolina with the goal of becoming a reconstructive plastic surgeon, which will allow him to help people in his situation.

Back to golf

The 5-foot-11 brothers are rare identical mirror-image twins, so Luke plays golf left-handed and Jack plays right-handed. Their opposites even extend to their eyesight, as they have the same contacts prescription in opposite eyes – Luke’s left eye and Jack’s right. “It’s weird,” Luke said.

Jack joined the South Brunswick High golf team in 2018 and helped the Cougars finish eighth in the state Class 3A tournament. Luke couldn’t hit balls until March 2018, then stopped from September to January for additional surgeries and joined the team this past spring, helping the Cougars improve to fifth in the state.

Some of Luke’s stomach muscles atrophied and were removed, so he can’t do a sit-up and has had to alter his swing to find power without a strong core. He has lost some length, now driving the ball about 230 yards. “You just find different ways to get power,” he said. “It gets the job done. You learn how to hit longer clubs into holes.”

Jack couldn’t put weight on his fractured ankle for more than two months and had to recover from back surgery before hitting a golf ball. At first, he’d go to the putting green with crutches or his scooter, then played with ankle pain that persisted into this year. “Golf was a good activity for me to do that would not put a lot of pressure on me,” Jack said, “and while I was doing that I could see myself getting better and better, which helped me.”

At the time of the accident both players were about 10 handicaps. They push each other to improve. and have been able to do so at home. Their parents built a 275-yard-long driving range for them three years ago, and the brothers created a ball-retriever front extension for their four-wheelers, which seems like a luxury, if you don’t consider golf balls are about the same size as dried horse dung. “You have to separate them out, which is always fun,” Luke said.

The pictures of former Coastal Carolinas chapter members who have previously played in the Champions Tour event at Pebble Beach are displayed at the learning center at the Cinghiale Creek home facility in Shallotte, along with the caddie bibs of their professional playing partners. Luke and Jack have always wanted to join that list. They learned they were selected in early July while on a trip to Italy, and are the first twins ever selected.

“Just being surrounded by all these really cool people who got to go and were role models for us when we were real young really inspired us to want to get there,” said Jack, who added they were thankful they were selected together. “We kind of wrote our applications to be like a package deal. We expected it was either both of us or none of us.”

This story was originally published September 24, 2019 at 10:33 PM.