Inside Clear Creek Golf Course’s newest structure, a modest rain shelter alongside the 16th fairway, Rodney McHann and Jerry Harmon drilled in one last screw Wednesday to hold up a plaque honoring the late Vi Krisker.

Outside, her friends gathered for pictures. The shelter was built in Krisker’s memory but was not, they all insisted, a memorial.

“It’s the Vi Krisker Rain Shelter,” Carol Roberson said, adding with a laugh and a friendly warning, “Not ‘Memorial.’ She’d be spinning in her grave if she heard that.”

Krisker, no doubt, was instead smiling from above at the efforts of her friends.

Krisker died in December 2014 at the age of 99, and had talked for years about getting the shelter built. It became a reality over the past year through the efforts of the Clear Creek Ladies and Men’s Golf Associations, who raised the money for materials and then built the shelter with volunteer labor.

The structure was dedicated following a Wednesday morning luncheon that was part ceremony and part birthday party for a woman who left a lasting impression on Vicksburg’s golf scene.

“We wanted to do something before Miss Vi even got sick, and she wouldn’t have it,” Roberson said. “We talked about a scholarship and she said no. Those girls would take it and go off to school and no one would ever hear about it again. She wanted that shelter, because she wanted something everybody could use.”

Krisker’s friends remembered her on Wednesday as a woman who was a stickler for the rules of golf and etiquette, but also loved to have fun. She was an active golfer until breaking her hip in May 2013 at the age of 98 — the same day she played her final tournament — insisted on driving her own cart on the course, and was as skilled as she was lively.

Krisker had a short, accurate drive and shot in the 90s well into her 90s. She was also a stickler for detail who famously called playing partners hours after a round had finished to point out a rules violation or question a stroke.

“She was still doing her own driving when she was 98,” Roberson said. “She came to one of our gatherings with a cooler or sandwiches, and it had to be packed just so. Some of the men packed it up and just threw things in there, and she repacked the whole thing. She just had her ways at 98 or 100 years old, and that’s the way it was. She was a special lady.”

As Krisker got older, some of the members of the Clear Creek Ladies Golf Association — a group of senior members at the course who meet weekly for a round — asked her about her legacy. Krisker’s wishes were clear.

Over the years, Krisker had been caught in a number of rainstorms on the 16th hole. It’s the point on the course farthest from the clubhouse, and there are no shelters nearby.

“That’s why she wanted it there, because it’s down the hill and there’s no place to go if you get caught in a storm,” Ladies Golf Association member Connie Kegerreis said.

After Krisker’s death, the Ladies Golf Association started raising money to honor her wishes and her memory. The $1,000 needed for materials to build the shelter was raised through donations and from part of the proceeds from the group’s annual Laverne Russell Memorial Tournament.

The labor was provided by Clear Creek Men’s Golf Association members Rodney McHann, Bob Walters, Jerry Harmon, John Nelson, Brad Heisler, Frank McGowan, Rich Cooper, Larry Cook and Dan Hall. McHann said it took them about 84 man-hours to finish the project, scattered across several weekends in November and December.

“Those were old man hours,” McHann joked. “We worked on it every other weekend, when the weather was good. It’s a rain shelter, but we couldn’t work in the rain.”

The shelter is 140 square feet, which is big enough to comfortably park two golf carts side-by-side or seat about a dozen people on a bench located along the back wall. It has a crushed stone floor — the material for it was donated by Lewis Miller of Riverside Construction Co. — and a good view of the 16th fairway and green.

“If you had to contract it out, it probably would have cost about $6,000,” McHann said.

The shelter was completed in mid-December and the dedication ceremony was Wednesday, which would have been Krisker’s 101st birthday. McHann said the project was a labor of love, and a fitting tribute to a woman no one who knew her will forget.

“Everybody loved Miss Vi,” McHann said. “She was a unique woman. A very unique woman.”