I met Dean Barnett for the first time this June, at a Ballyneal member function. Dean and I gravitated to one another immediately; over the next few days my wife and I spent many hours with Dean and his wife Kirstan, plus a day with Dean's father and brother thrown in for good measure. It was a glorious time, the highlight of the golfing year. Kirstan Barnett and Cheryl Kirk finished third in the best ball tournament. Dean's beloved Boston Celtics were busy overwhelming the undermanned Lakers in the NBA finals. There was a big party with rock and roll music and dancing. Friendships were forged among our new, passionate membership.
I knew Dean was sick, or sickly. Rupert O'Neal told me the story about the Weekly Standard writer who came to do a story on sand hills golf and fell in love with Ballyneal. I was looking forward to meeting Dean and Kirstan for weeks, and was not disappointed. Dean was witty, sharp, irreverent and opinionated. In a word, brilliant. As Forrest Gump would say, he and I got along like peas and carrots. Dean began his writing career by starting his own blog, SoxBlog, then moving to Hugh Hewitt's TownHall.com, in addition to serving as staff writer for William Kristol's Weekly Standard magazine. Dean became the permanent guest host for Hugh Hewitt's nationally syndicated radio talk show.
Over the weekend together at Ballyneal, Kirstan mentioned to Cheryl that Dean had become so sick last year that she didn't know if he would make it. I felt a sense of urgency to see Dean again, and so I added a few days in early October to my fall golf trip along the east coast. We corresponded semi-regularly throughout the summer. Dean was very busy covering the presidential campaign, while also working on a book about the golf business. As far as I can tell, Dean was spending 12-14 hours a day working at his computer.
Dean is responsible for what I consider the best of all the sand hills golf articles written after Ballyneal opened. It can be found here:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/196yvuhj.asp?pg=1On October 2nd, I traveled from the New York area towards Boston, staying in Mystic, Connecticut. Dean called me that evening and said, "Ahh, I've got problems. I had a 102 temperature today. I may not be able to get together." The next morning he called again, and we exchanged a few more words: "Well, I spent at the night in the hospital, but I'm feeling a little better. I'll call you tonight." I drove into Boston that evening, but he didn't call. The next morning Kirstan called to say Dean was back in the hospital.
Dean is perhaps most famous for his pamphlet on life as the sickly child with cystic fibrosis:
"As I grew sicker, I had what for me was an extremely comforting insight. I came to view serious and progressive illness as an ever constricting circle with oneself at the center. The interior of the circle represents the contents of one’s life. As the circle gets smaller, things that were inside get forced out. Some of these things are dearly missed; others that were once thought precious get forced to the exterior and turn out to go surprisingly unlamented.
"At the innermost point of the circle are the things that really matter: family, faith, love. These things stay with you until the day you die. At the very end, because the circle has shrunk down to its center, they’re all you have left. But as we approach that end, we finally realize that all along, they were what mattered most. As a consequence, life often remains beautiful and worthwhile right up until the end."
Dean was that inspiring person you meet in life that overcomes odds and excels, lives life to the fullest without regret, and makes you appreciate what you have. He disregarded pity and sympathy, as he was too busy working and enjoying life to bother. Meeting Dean makes me want to accomplish more with my life. In this regard Dean was extraordinary. Here is an email he sent me this summer after I wrote "The Architecture Should Accommodate That Shot":
Read your post/thread starter on the architecture should allow that – great stuff. Another truly skillfully executed essay.
I think you should start a blog where you force yourself to write at least 3-4 such pieces a week. Think how today’s piece would have turned out. You’d have the idea, do a little reporting by talking to Doak seeing what he does intentionally allow, and then do a little more reporting finding out how players with different abilities than your own think. It would have been a tidy little essay, and would have said more about stellar golf course architecture than the typical book does on the subject.
And the array of topics would be endless. You could do an article on why 7 Ballyneal is such a magnificent hole. Or you could tackle my favorite part of the course – the showmanship on the walk between 3 & 4.
The key thing is this - to be a writer, you gotta write. You write, you become a writer and your skills improve rapidly. You’ve already got chops, but the things that you say give you problems like speed improve rapidly the more you write. I bet you could develop a widely read golf architecture blog. Do it really right, and you could join Klein and Whitten as the world’s most respected voices on the subject in literally months.
You need help starting a blog, let me know. Gotta warn you – it will take all of ten minutes. Please think about it.
DB
I don't want to develop a golf architecture blog; my novel ideas on the subject are far and few between. But I have a couple big ideas for writing projects, and you can't buy this kind of encouragement. Sometimes your friends help you decide what to do.
On Monday, Dean Barnett, neo-conservative writer, talk show host, Ballyneal member, and GolfClubAtlas lurker, passed away from complications due to cystic fibrosis. He was 41. Tributes to the great man are all over the Internet. A good place to start are at William Kristol's weeklystandard.com and Hugh Hewitt's townhall.com. To close, here is Mitt Romney's tribute, which can be found at:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/10/mitt_romney_on_dean_barnett.aspMitt Romney writes:
I remember meeting the Barnett twins. It was 1994 and I was running against Ted Kennedy. Keith, now a lawyer in Boston, was jovial and enthusiastic. Dean was more laid-back. He had a knowing smile--like he hadn’t caught the canary yet, but he had it locked in a room. Over that campaign and over the years that followed, I got to know Dean very well. And I learned why he was smiling--Dean was “wicked smart,” as they say around here. He had extraordinary perspective and insight. He brought a lot more to our friendship than I ever could have imagined.
Dean didn’t tell me that he had Cystic Fibrosis--I heard it from an acquaintance. Dean was too intent on giving to our friendship to expect me to give something back to him. Over the years, I knew of his visits to the hospital and bouts with complications, but Dean’s smile and generosity of spirit never faltered.
Perhaps his unusual appreciation for the precious value of life enabled Dean to see what others missed, to cut to the nub, and to dispense with excuse and correctness. What it meant to me was advice and counsel that came clean and sharp. What it meant to his readers and listeners was unadorned truth and honest expression. We will miss Dean for what he saw and said. I will miss him for that and for much more. He was the real deal.