To them, Brendan was more than the Director of Building and Grounds. “The members treated Brendan with great respect. “There is a vibe here and members have a tremendous pride in the staff,” said Winslow. “He loved his Eastward Ho! family and friends.”ĭifficult as it is to explain to those who have their preconceived notion about what golf clubs are all about, there is a camaraderie and a familial atmosphere at the very best ones – and Eastward Ho! is surely one to be admired. “He loved his family and friends,” said Hancock. He leaves his partner, Kelly, and one-month-old son, Lucas, as well as a loving family that is well known in the Cape area. “He always cared for others before himself.”īrendan had also become a first-time father a few weeks before his death. He had the tarp, the shingles, the nails all in – and pretty quickly, too. Those tornadoes that impacted Harwich three summers ago? “A bunch of shingles blew off my house,” said Hancock, “and the first one to help out was Brendan Pickett. But it would be incorrect to say he never had another job, Hancock noted, “because when you needed someone to help you (off the course), he was the first one to show up.” Enamored with all things Eastward Ho!, Brendan Pickett had worked there for 24 years, or since the summer he turned 14. His stunning death May 29 at the age of 38 shocked the Eastward Ho! family and Winslow conceded that “it’s still kind of raw, like you still expect to see his car in the parking lot when you come to work.”įor a variety of reasons, the death of this fun-loving kid who loved snowboarding, fishing, practical jokes, and most of all, Eastward Ho! hits hard.Ī Pickett – be it Brendan, his father, Dave, or uncle, Dick – had worked at Eastward Ho! for 75 or the club’s 100 years. Until, that is, Brendan Pickett was unable to keep it running. “He was the heartbeat of this club,” said Jason Winslow, Eastward Ho! head golf professional. You know what’s not crazy? That the smile never left Pickett’s face, not for the next 23 years as he went from being just a young teen doing odd jobs for his uncle to an indispensable commodity beloved by both club officials and members. “Crazy, but he was one of the first people I met after joining,” laughed Skillman. The young man’s smile was wider than Pleasant Bay, which surrounds the course in Chatham, Mass., and warmer than the summer sun that danced off its water. Then about 15 years old, Brendan Pickett came down from the pole, explained that he worked maintenance for his uncle, Dick Pickett, and introduced himself to Skillman. “He moved from the awning onto the pole and climbed like he was a monkey.” “I had just joined as a junior member and I watched this kid start scaling the awning that was up for summer occasions,” said Skillman. In 1999, he was honored as Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America at their annual Nebula Awards Banquet.You might think that the heart of a golf club is found out on the course, perhaps at the signature hole, or in a feature such as fast greens or brilliant vistas.īut Steve Skillman back in 1999 discovered the pulse of Eastward Ho! perhaps 30 feet up a pole at the rear of the clubhouse. From 1966, he was a Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at The Pennsylvania State University, where he taught, among other things, a popular course on science fiction. His stories and articles were widely anthologized, a number of them in best-of-the-year collections. Tenn is best-known as a satirist, and by works such as "On Venus Have We Got a Rabbi" and "Of Men and Monsters." Stories like 'Down Among the Dead Men', 'The Liberation of Earth', and 'The Custodian' quickly established him as a fine, funny, and thoughtful satirist. His first story, 'Alexander the Bait' was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946. He began writing in 1945 and wrote academic articles, essays, two novels, and more than 60 short stories. After serving in the United States Army as a combat engineer in Europe, he held a job as a technical editor with an Air Force radar and radio laboratory and was employed by Bell Labs. He was born in London on May 9, 1920, and emigrated to the United States with his parents before his second birthday. William Tenn is the pseudonym of Philip Klass.
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