BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — Jim Lemon lived by a simple code that was as admirable as it was subtle, one that sustained him in a life well lived and a death that came too soon.
Find your gift and give it away.
Lemon had a knack for golf, a head for numbers, a gift for conversation, a passion for making things with his hands and a desire for perfection in all that he did.
But his greatest strength — his gift — was his quiet, insistent desire to make each moment about others.
When Lemon served as captain for the University of Wisconsin men’s golf team during a career that spanned 1998 to 2001, his meetings with coach Dennis Tiziani always focused on the needs and circumstances of his teammates.
When Lemon would take friends and family members pheasant hunting on the family’s farm in rural Monticello, Wis., he was notorious for stepping back and watching with satisfaction as others bagged their game.
When Lemon was lured into a conversation about his award-winning golf career — from prep championships with Madison West High School, state titles as an amateur, tournaments with UW to a slot on the PGA Tour — he invariably made a point of redirecting the conversation to learn more about the inquisitor.
“He had high respect for other people’s feelings,” Tiziani said. “In his case, his sensitivity to other people was a very big gift of his and he gave it away.”
When Lemon was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2019, he made sure that optimism and hope were layered into every conversation and that he focused on all the good things in his life. He had a loving wife in Kate, a young son in Maxwell, a close-knit family and a squadron of friends who shared the difficult journey with him. They were his everyday focus until he died in 2021 at the age of 43.
“The amazing part was the concentration was not on him, it was on people around him, especially his wife and son,” said Tiziani, a close family friend who received daily texts from Lemon throughout his ordeal and was among those with him in his final…
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