Jason Overmyer, left, and his wife, Vittoria Jimerson, co-founded the Welcome Home Organization (WHO) in part to introduce youths to golf. Photo by Tyler Stover
As far as Jason Overmyer is concerned, golf saved his life.
The least he could do, he figured, is try to pay it back.
So Overmyer, a six-year GCSAA member, co-founded the Welcome Home Organization, a wide-reaching Michigan nonprofit, with his wife, Vittoria Jimerson. A key component of WHO is to introduce youth to golf, the way Overmyer — who recently left his job as grounds/trainer for Cascades Golf Course in Jackson, Mich., to focus on WHO — was much later in his hard-knock life.
“It’s just been a blessing,” Overmyer, 48, says. “I just can’t explain what it means to still be here, alive, and able to give back. I was given an opportunity, and I plan to make the most of it.”
A native of Jackson, Mich., Overmyer was a promising young bowler who quit high school at 17. The son of two parents in the Jackson Bowling Hall of Fame, Overmyer, who also had worked on a golf course since he was 15, thought he’d make his living in bowling.
But after punching a wall in a fit of anger and breaking his hand, that plan was derailed. Worse, he says, it led to “20 years of extreme depression and substance abuse.”
“I was in and out of jail, made bad decisions,” Overmyer recalls. “Then on July 13, 2015, God saw fit to save my life.”
After waking up in the Oakland (Mich.) County Jail and being transferred to sober-living housing, Overmyer enrolled in a local community college to study to become a substance-abuse counselor. When a housemate landed a job via Craigslist ad at College Fields Golf Club in Oekmos, Overmyer — carless and without a driver’s license — tagged along. He caught on there, too, rekindling his love of golf course work. He applied for the Michigan State turfgrass program in 2016, “but I was denied because of my criminal background,” Overmyer says.
Still aggravated by that snub a couple of weeks later, Overmyer was called to the College Fields GC clubhouse by Carey Mitchelson, who now is a 37-year member of GCSAA, a Class A superintendent and the club’s director of operations.
“The man sits down and says, ‘Do you know who I am?’ Of course I know who he was. He said, ‘I’m the general manager of College Fields, but I’m also the president of the Michigan Turfgrass Foundation, and I wrote you a letter of recommendation to get into the Michigan State program,’” Overmyer says.
What followed was a two-hour interview with John “Trey” Rogers III, Ph.D., a 32-year GCSAA Educator member, which resulted in a spot at MSU. Four days later, Overmyer found himself, at 37, sitting in a classroom of teens and twentysomethings in his first soils class.
“I was way out of my comfort zone,” he says. “I ended up getting a 1.5 (grade point average) that semester.”
WHO holds clinics, academies and leagues for youngsters interested in bowling and golf. Photo courtesy of Vittoria Jimerson
The resilient Overmyer bounced back yet again. He landed an internship at the Country Club of Detroit, where he lived on the grounds at the intern house, and returned to school determined to succeed. He’d hitch a ride with a friend to College Fields, mow nine greens in the morning, then ride his mountain bike to class at MSU. He earned Michigan State’s Vogler Family Award scholarship in 2018, made the Michigan State bowling team, won a bowling all-tournament award and eventually graduated with a GPA of 3.0.
“I worked really hard with the opportunity I was given,” Overmyer says.
Still without a driver’s license or car, still attending meetings for Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous, he worked as assistant-in-training at the CC of Detroit when he met Jimerson through the online dating app Bumble.
“I just can’t explain the magic,” says Overmyer, who was part of the 2025 Melrose Leadership Academy.
He left for a job as irrigation mechanic at Brightview, then COVID hit, and Overmyer and Jimerson, who had since married and had five daughters between them from previous marriages, found themselves “sitting in our house” in Southfield, Mich., riding out the pandemic lockdowns. “She plays golf, too,” Overmyer says. “We said, ‘Why don’t we go back to Jackson and start this program, with bowling and golf and maybe a garden?’ So we moved to Albion and started WHO.”
Now headquartered in Jackson, WHO’s mission is: “Advancing youth development through hands-on initiatives like camps, mentorship and education; promoting community access to essential resources such as childcare, housing support and wellness programs; and expanding urban agriculture … to foster food security and green job training.”
The program includes a childcare and early education center and the Roots Up! program, which partners with the city of Jackson, local farmers and businesses to “improve access to local healthy foods in areas where access to fresh, healthy food is limited or unavailable.”
And then there are the sports initiatives — clinics, academies and leagues that get youth involved in bowling and golf.
“We’re both from sketchy backgrounds,” says Jimerson, WHO’s executive director and a two-year GCSAA Affiliate member. “I was born in the projects in Columbus, Ohio. He’s from the projects in Jackson, Mich. We’re just trying to show kids you don’t have to finish where you started. We try to motivate them to do better.”
Jimerson, who spent 21 years with the U.S. Department of Defense, has one doctorate and is working toward her second. She proudly shares that WHO has impacted more than 6,000 families over the past seven years, including over 1,200 youngsters in the golf programs.
WHO has developed a workforce-development program for golf course jobs, is expanding to nearby communities and has explored purchasing a golf course to serve as a learning lab for the organization.
“If you look at our Facebook page, we’re still a small nonprofit,” Jimerson says. “But we’ve got big dreams, and we’re pursuing those dreams.”
“We just want to prove,” Overmyer adds, “that our mistakes don’t define who you are or who you can become.”
For more info on WHO, visit whovision.org.
Andrew Hartsock is GCM's editor-in-chief