Archie Baird, front and center, as he appeared in 2018 while accepting a British Empire Medal Award. This photo is courtesy of the East Lothian Courier.
Dec. 19, 2019
As a follow-up to the notice of Mr. Archie Baird’s passing on Saturday, Dec. 7, we offer the following links to news articles that contained tributes to Mr. Baird. His funeral was scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 19. Many thanks to John Pearson for these news items.
The East Lothian Courier.
This tribute details the public man from a local viewpoint – he was widely known and loved for his generosity and exuberance.
The Scotsman.
This included tributes from Geoff Shackelford and Ben Crenshaw among others.
The Scotsman official death notice.
This official death notice also provides details of where to offer condolences.
As noted in the earlier story, Mr. Baird was a past Captain at Gullane GC, a member of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers (at Muirfield), a village member at Kilspindie, the local club for Aberlady, where he lived so long. He was a winner of the British Golf Collector Society Murdoch Medal during Pearson’s captaincy of the BGCS in 2000, and, was awarded the British Empire Medal for his services to Golf Heritage in 2018.
“I would guess that this (British Empire Medal) was largely through his creation of the Heritage of Golf Museum behind the first tee at Gullane in 1980,” Pearson said in his message. “I met him there for the first time around 1985, after deserting my kids at North Berwick and taking a couple of hours off to visit the Museum and see his collection of books and art back at his Greyfriars Cottage in Aberlady. Countless visitors were introduced to the heritage of golf in a similar way, including a lot of Americans, well-known and not so well-known, who have been quick to voice their appreciation of his contributions. A lot of them, including me, also had the great pleasure of a game either at Gullane 1, 2 or 3, or at Muirfield – the ultimate treat.”
Mr. Baird was on the Museum Committee of the USGA for a while and a member of GCS in its early days. He played in the early competitions for the Scottish Hickory Championship. Pearson noted that in the latest issue of Through The Green (December 2019) his signature appears on a 1980s dinner menu (pre-BGCS).