Golf tourney to be in memory of police chief

Southborough - Billy Webber will be recalled later this month in exactly the place he would want to be remembered - on the golf course - as family and friends of the former Southborough police chief will host the inaugural Billy Webber Memorial Golf Tournament Monday June 22 at Juniper Hill Golf Course in Northborough.

    “Billy loved to golf,” said Kathy Webber, Billy’s wife. “The golf course was a place he could really relax and enjoy himself. We thought it would be a nice way to honor a great guy.”

    After Billy Webber passed away in November 2008 following a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer, Kathy, family friends Mary and Dan O’Brien, and cousin Michael Cullen came up with the idea of not only holding a golf tournament in his honor, but having the proceeds of the golf tournament benefit the Pan Mass Challenge and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

    “We have actually put a team together - Webber’s Wheelers - that will ride in the Pan Mass Challenge,” Mary O’Brien said. “My husband and I are going to ride in Billy’s memory, as are our two boys, Dan and Sean O’Brien, Kathy and their son, Kevin, and family friend Mark O’Rourke.”

    The Pan Mass Challenge will be run Aug. 1 and 2. Last year despite being sick, Billy Webber visited the O’Briens at Mass Maritime Academy in Buzzard’s Bay, site of the stopover after the first leg of the two-day trip to the furthest tip of Cape Cod.

    “It was great,” Mary O’Brien said. “His coming to visit us really gave us a lift. It made it easy to keep pushing, just knowing he had made the effort to come see us and encourage us.”

    Kathy Webber said some of her most treasured memories of her late husband are from times they spent together on golf courses all over the state, but especially at the quaint little nine-hole tract at St. Mark’s School.

    “I played in a weekly league there and Billy would often come out and join me on the course and play nine,” Kathy Webber said. “It was quality time together. We both loved that.”

    Kathy Webber said it was that family togetherness that prompted the startup of the tournament.

    “Michael Cullen and Billy were best friends along with being cousins, inseparable, really,” Kathy Webber said. “And Michael suggested the tournament. He has run a few and has some experience with that, but he just thought it would be a great was to get family and friends together and honor a really great guy.”