Every story has a backdrop. Rarely, however, does the backdrop to a story match what is at the heart of this tale about Ryan Kalista and his younger brother, Dr. Tom Kalista.

Taught the game by their father, William, back in Moodus, Conn., Ryan and Dr. Tom were at different levels of golf passion. Ryan, a PGA of America professional with more than 20 years at the club level, embraces the game; Tom, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Pharmacy at the University of Rhode Island, enjoyed it, but played sparingly. Things were starting to trend in a positive way, however.

“Tom was starting to get into it,” said Ryan. “I gave him a lot of clubs and we were talking more about the game. This summer, we were going to play a lot.

“Now, that’s not going to happen.”

On May 7, Dr. Kalista left his home in East Greenwich, R.I., for a run. “He never made it back,” said Ryan. “Someone found him lying on the side of the road, very close to his own driveway and he wasn’t breathing.”

Dr. Kalista was 35 and the URI community was devastated. “Tom was more than just a faculty member,” URI pharmacy Dean Kerry LaPlante said on the university website. “He brought energy, passion, and a sense of joy and lightheartedness to the college hallways.”

To the Kalista family – William and his wife, Kathy; Ryan and his other brother Nathan and sister Hailey; Tom's wife, Hannah – it was surreal. With both parents having their own medical issues, “Tom was the doctor in the family, the one we knew would be checking in on them,” said Ryan.

“Then it all changed.”

Actually, there was one intriguing facet of the story that really didn’t change; it merely transferred from Dr. Tom to his older brother Ryan, 42. It involved a marathon of 100 golf holes to raise money for a brilliant charity called Golf Fights Cancer. The brainchild of great friends Jay Monahan and Brian Oates, GFC since 2004 has granted $12m in funding to more than 80 different cancer-related charities. (For more on GFC, refer to the golffightscancer.org website.)

The date Dr. Tom circled for his 100 holes was June 7 and on May 3 he sent an email to a circle of friends and families explaining why he was undertaking this golf marathon.

“This is a wonderfully unique fundraising opportunity that combines a love for golf with a desire to give back and/or KICK CANCER’s ASS,” he wrote. Then he explained the personal connection – how his older brother Ryan had battled metastatic melanoma and how Kathy, his mother, in 2022 underwent eight months of chemotherapy to fight an advanced stage of appendiceal cancer.

“After signing up to do this marathon,” Dr. Tom explained, “we learned that evidence of her cancer returned and she has resumed treatment . . . It is the two of them (his brother and mother) for whom I will be playing June.”

In short time, Dr. Tom’s fund-raising commitment raised thousands of dollars. “Tom saw that golf connected people, that it’s a game that brings people together,” said Ryan. “I found out around Easter that he was doing it with his friend Pat (Donnelly) and thought it was so cool.”

Again, Dr. Tom sent this email out on Friday, May 3. Four days later he went for that run and never made it home. Chilling, no? Ryan Kalista thought it was very much so, especially when re-read words his brother had included in that email of May 3.

Explaining how his brother Ryan had lost more than a year of his golf career with the melanoma, Dr. Tom praised him because “his journey has imparted an entirely new perspective on the privilege of being outside in the sun playing the game we love.”

In the days following the services and a May 16 celebration of life for Dr. Tom, Ryan demonstrated the “perspective” his brother had talked about. He sent out his own email to many of those same family and friends.

“As we all know,” he wrote, “life can take some crazy turns and the last couple of years for our family has been wild to say the least.”

With Tom firmly in his thoughts, Ryan Kalista wrote, “I can’t think of any other way to pay tribute to my brother than to play in his place.”

A member of the Class of ’04 from Methodist University in Fayetteville, N.C., Ryan Kalista recently left Tamarack CC in Greenwich, Conn., where he had worked for 10 years, the last three as head professional.

Now re-located to Stuart, Fla., Ryan said he’ll spend the next four or five months playing a steady diet of tournament golf in Florida and elsewhere (the Connecticut Open, July 29-31, is circled). A run at the Korn Ferry Tour Q School in the fall, something he’s never done, is on the radar.

Yes, the shocking death of his brother has given Ryan plenty of pause to consider his own history. “I remember the day I was giving a lesson to one of our members. He was from Australia and was pointing to something on my ear,” said Ryan.

Thanks to that member’s advice to have it checked, Ryan Kalista got a jump on his cancer treatments and he counts himself blessed. Still feeling the impact of his brother’s death, Ryan knows there are “tragic stories out there, my goodness, so many of them.”

When he plays his marathon of 100 holes June 7 at Juniper Hills in Northborough, Mass., “I’ll have Tom’s name on my golf ball,” but the reasons for his undertaking this endeavor go deeper than it being something his brother started.

“Golf is and has been my life for the better part of 30 years,” Ryan explains on the charity page. “Now I’ve signed up to play in a golf marathon so that we can raise as much money as possible to fight cancer.”

During the long day of golf June 7, Ryan Kalista will have plenty of time to reflect on how great this game is. Likely he’ll smile when he thinks of the new-found passion Tom had found for golf, and perhaps there’ll be a touch of melancholy knowing he and Tom had planned to play together a little more this summer. Or that Tom had started to teach his wife, Hannah, how to play.

So many thoughts, for sure. So it’s great that so much time is available when 100 holes of golf are involved.

But the most beautiful thought and most consoling aspect of the day will be this: Tom started something wonderful and Ryan will be there to keep it going.

To view Dr. Tom Kalista’s Golf Fights Cancer page, click on this link – www.classy.org/fundraiser/5258234. You will be able to view his page and also navigate to The Sweet Cheese Good-Time Boys information in the top left to get Ryan’s note that includes the heartfelt email sent by Tom May 3, right before his death.