Dimple distraction: Retired doctor collects golf balls with sports logos

Ninety-three golf balls with Eagles logos, 69 with Tigers, 68 featuring a Cougar and singles representing the Anteaters, Ichabods and Camels.

Four pages of golf balls representing Catholic colleges.

And that’s just the start.

John Rempel, 77, houses more than 1,000 college logo golf balls on wooden racks mounted in his basement in his east Wichita home. He catalogs each ball by category and keeps the lists in manila folders.

“I became sort of a fanatic,” he said. “I guess I came upon a number of balls, so I started collecting and putting them in groups.”

And that’s just a slice of his original collection — a now-dispersed group of 10,000 or more golf balls of all varieties. Beers. Trucks. Cartoon characters. And, of course, logos from college athletic departments.

He started his collection around 35 years ago, for no particular reason, and it grew to be, he believes, the third-largest collection in the nation. The Golf Collectors Society doesn’t track collections that specific, according to executive director Karen Bednarski. Much larger collections exist, she said, consisting of all types of logos.

Rempel, a retired plastic surgeon, displayed the original collection in his office near Via Christi Hospital St. Joseph. Patients enjoyed the distraction and he found a stream of children who counted the golf balls and reported to him.

“It gave them something to do,” he said. “They would come back and say, ‘Do you know you have 3,584 balls on the wall out there?’”

He did. It was an obsession, his wife admits, and a perfect way for a 21-handicap golfer and habitual organizer to check all the boxes for a hobby.

“I didn’t know it would grow into such as large hobby,” said Ann Rempel. “He was determined to collect a lot of golf balls in his younger days. We made a lot of stops to look for logo golf balls. And his five children were good about sending him balls that they found.”

When he retired, he gave away most of his collection, saving the sports-themed balls from colleges. Ann Rempel allowed those balls to reside in the basement; everything else had to go.

“It was either divorce or get rid of the balls,” he said.

Many of the balls are organized by conference — Big 12, SEC, Missouri Valley and others. When a school changed or added logos, he updated. He owns at least six versions for Kansas and Oklahoma, dating back to an angrier version of the Jayhawk and the Sooner Schooner. The cases are also home to more obscure logos, schools such as Iona, Belmont, Clarke,William and Mary and Carson-Newman.

Rempel stopped adding to his collection around eight years ago.

“I’d be willing to up and sell the whole thing, because I’m getting old.” he said.

This story was originally published August 28, 2015 at 10:24 AM with the headline "Dimple distraction: Retired doctor collects golf balls with sports logos."