RIP: Elmer T. Lee

Very sad to have to pass this along from Mark Brown at Buffalo Trace/Sazerac.

July 16, 2013

Dear Friends,

It is with a very heavy heart that I share with you that our beloved Master Distiller Emeritus Elmer T. Lee, 93, passed away today, July 16, 2013 after a short illness.

In the world of making really fine whiskey the role of Master Distiller is pivotal, but Elmer's meaning to those he met, came to know, and worked with closely extended far beyond that of a Master Distiller. Elmer defined, in the simplest terms, what it means to be a great American - hard working, self-made, courageous, honest, kind, humble, and humorous.

Elmer was born in 1919 on a tobacco farm near Peaks Mill in Franklin County, Ky. He graduated from Frankfort County High School in 1936 and worked for Jarman Shoe Company until December 1941. He then served with the U.S. Army Air Force in World War II as a radar bombardier on a B-29. After flying missions against Japan through 1945, Elmer was honorably discharged in January 1946. He returned home and studied engineering at the University of Kentucky, where he graduated with honors in 1949.

In September 1949 Elmer began working in the engineering department of the George T. Stagg Distillery in Frankfort. In 1966, Elmer was promoted to plant superintendent, responsible for all plant operations and reporting to the plant manager. 1n 1969, he became plant manager.

But it was in 1984 that Elmer's contribution to the bourbon industry gained him the most notoriety, when he introduced Blanton's, the world's first Single Barrel Bourbon.  Elmer retired in 1985 but continued to serve as an ambassador for Buffalo Trace, and in 1986 he was honored with his very own single barrel bourbon, Elmer T. Lee. Of course, for those of us who knew Elmer, he never really retired. Every Tuesday we could see Elmer making his rounds at the Distillery in his trademark cap, signing bottles, posters, and other memorabilia at the Gift Shop, visiting his friends in Blanton's Bottling Hall, and tasting bourbons (for quality control purposes!) in the lab.

Elmer was always ready to offer advice, and was a wealth of information that many of us relied on, myself included. Harlen Wheatley would inquire with Elmer when stuck on a mechanical problem, and any historical questions about the Distillery always went to Elmer, who, with his razor sharp memory, could invariably answer.  To all of us, Elmer was a friend, a mentor, and a trusted advisor.

Elmer was known through the bourbon industry for his expertise and knowledge about bourbon whiskey and he received numerous awards and recognition, including induction into the Bourbon Hall of Fame in 2001, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Whisky Advocate in 2002, and the Lifetime Achievement Award and Hall of Fame induction from Whisky Magazine in 2012. 

We have lost a wonderful friend today, and he will be missed terribly. 

Services for Elmer T. Lee are pending and will be announced shortly.

Sincerely,

Mark Brown

Truman Cox: gone too soon

Truman (on right) and Valley Malt's Christian Stanley

I received tragic news today. My very good friend, Truman Cox, the young, gifted, and extremely personable master distiller at A. Smith Bowman in Fredericksburg, Va., died suddenly last night. I am devastated at this news, and my heart and prayers go out to his wife and daughter.
Truman had just reached his life goal; becoming a master distiller. He was enjoying his new job -- and bottling some excellent whiskey! -- having great fun as husband and father, and happy as a pig in shit. He was technically gifted, and had an absolutely honest pleasure in working, in explaining the distillery to visitors, and in spreading the good word about whiskey.

Truman Cox was one of my best friends, in or out of the industry, and I am missing him terribly already. Too young, too fast...oh, too bad, too bad!

Ronnie Eddins: see you later on, fella

I just learned the long-time Buffalo Trace warehouseman Ronnie Eddins died this afternoon after a fight with cancer. Ronnie was a great guy, quick with a big smile, and always patient. I only got to talk to him at length about bourbon whiskey one time, and I'm still learning from that interview; I'll be thinking about something, and I'll think of something Ronnie said, and things will suddenly fit into place and make sense.

Ronnie was behind a lot of Trace's current Experimental Collection. He'd been at the warehouse over 30 years, and he would follow barrels, and areas in the different warehouses (and Trace has a lot of different warehouse types), and keep track of what worked, what was interesting, and what didn't work. I still remember him telling me that he'd learned that the fog off the nearby Kentucky River had an effect on the barrels in open warehouses.

I remember something else Ronnie told me. "You know, in your life, you only get about two chances to learn from a 15 year old bourbon. There's your first one, and you learn from it all along the time, and you put all that into the second one. By the time the second one's done, you're usually about done too." It was a profound statement about whiskey making, and about a man's life. You don't get many chances to do things right, or to learn something worth passing on. You have to take them, and make the most of them.

Ronnie was inducted into the Bourbon Hall of Fame last month, a well-deserved honor, and the first warehouseman to be inducted; a long-overdue honor. We gave him a Malt Advocate Lifetime Achievement award in 2008, and I'm very glad we did. A mutual friend told me Ronnie was just amazed that people would honor him, or even know who he was. I'll honor him, and I'll never forget him. Go with God, Ronnie Eddins.

Lewis Bryson II

My father died last Thursday. He was 81, and one of the most decent men I have ever known. He had no vices -- other than record-keeping; he wrote down everything -- worked hard, was married to my mother for almost 58 years, and was honest to a fault.

He died from pancreatic cancer, a full 21 months post-diagnosis, without surgery. He fought hard, and was one of the lucky people who responds well to chemotherapy; pancreatic cancer kills over 75% in under a year. The end was swift; the picture of Thomas's graduation was only a month ago, and he was still in pretty good shape at the time. Staying alive to see Thomas graduate was a major accomplishment for him, and we were all proud of him.

But it wasn't his death that I'll remember, of course. It was his life, how he touched so many people. Sir (I called him that once to get his attention on a crowded field trip, and it stuck) was a school teacher at the Solanco school district in Lancaster County for almost 30 years, and drove bus for athletic events and special needs students from 1962 to 2008. He held the students to standards -- his buses were clean when he picked them up, and they were clean when he dropped them off -- and they responded well to it. Everywhere we went as I grew up, we ran into former students who would greet "Mister B" with a handshake or a hug. I do mean everywhere, too: in a campground in California in 1973, and a nurse in the ICU, less than an hour before he died.

My father didn't teach me to drink beer. I learned that on my own in college. But he did give me my first sips of beer -- Duquesne -- and straightened me out on the "sinfulness" of drinking. I was ten years old or so, and reading some older books with some quaint ideas, and when Sir asked me if, as usual, I'd like the last half-inch of his beer after Sunday dinner, I said, "No thanks, Father, I don't drink on Sundays." He let me know what he thought of that: "Don't talk nonsense. If it's good enough for other days, there's no difference on Sundays. Have the beer or don't!" I did, and I learned a lesson: drinking is not inherently sinful.

Sir went along on most of my research trips for the Breweries books. He almost never went in the places -- he wasn't much for bars -- but would stay in the car, reading his book. That got rough sometimes. There was Chief's, in Pittsburgh, a neighborhood so bad that Sir kept his .357 openly on the seat beside him. There was The Strip, where things were so busy, he had to park over a mile away and -- in pre-cell phone days -- would drive in to a pre-arranged intersection every 30 minutes to see if we were done yet.

Then there was a long bar-hop in Buffalo, when Flying Bison owner Tim Herzog took us around to...8 places one night. The mini-van had an electrical fault, and the interior lights would not turn off, and the door-open alarm kept dinging the whole time, and it was about 18 degrees. And the bars close at 4 in Buffalo. It was a long night, and Sir was a bit put out with Uncle Don and I when we kept going. When we finally did get to our motel, a $45 a night cheesebox in Tonowanda, well...there was an energetic young couple next door who weren't sleeping much. We pretended to ignore it for almost 45 minutes, when Sir tossed in, "He's my hero." Don and I laughed so hard... I almost fell out of bed.

I could go on forever; I've known the man all my life. How he insisted I set up an e-mail address for Penderyn ("I might have things to say to him I don't want you to read," he explained), the way he loved the simple things in life, the way he loved to tweak people's sensitivities ("Sure are a lot of pansies in this town," he remarked to me on a sidewalk in New Hope once. "Sir!" I hissed, "Stop that!" He took a practiced look of injured innocence, said "What?" and gestured at a barrel planter full of...multi-colored pansies.), or the elaborate lengths he would go to for a bet, or a joke, or to save a nickel.

But I won't. I can't, because I've got work to do, and he'd want me to do it. He was a good husband and father and grandfather, he loved Cathy as if she were his own, doted on the kids, and lavished way too much attention on my dogs. The worst part of this is knowing I can't just pick up the phone and ask him how he's doing, and hear him say one more time, "You know, thanks for that wheelbarrow you got me. It's really great."

Farewell, Sir. We'll see you later on, in the sweet bye and bye.

I expect to have particulars on the memorial service posted later this week. It's at the Leacock Presbyterian Church in Paradise, PA, probably Saturday morning, but we don't know for sure yet. Sir's obituary ran in the Lancaster New Era last Friday...and Saturday. In other tributes, David Byrne posted this note on his "Ringside Ramblings" Lancaster sports blog.

I've been remiss in mentioning someone else: my mother, Ruth, who has been Sir's rock all this time. She never wavered, never gave in until the very end. She was there with him every hour, talking, chiding, calming, caring. Thanks, Mum. I'm sorry I didn't help you more.

Honors to Greg Noonan

Commercial and homebrewing pioneer Greg Noonan died late Saturday. Noonan wrote the very influential homebrewing guide Brewing Lager Beer (1986, updated in 2003) and opened Vermont's first brewpub in 1988. More importantly, he guided and inspired many brewers.

I never met Greg Noonan, and I consider that my loss, my great loss. He was one of the first in the field in America. Stan Hieronymus has written a tribute here.

Gary Bredbenner memorial at the Grey Lodge Tuesday night

Tomorrow night, August 18, the Grey Lodge is hosting a memorial service for Gary Bredbenner, who died way too young last month. The memorial service is for those who could not get to the funeral up in Danville.

Everyone who knew Gary is welcome. The memories begin at 6:30 in the upstairs bar. Nothing official, but I'd say dress in Phillies or Eagles gear, or your favorite beer shirt, and come thirsty for the hoppy beers Gary loved. We'll send him off into the Great Brewpub of the Beyond in proper style.

(Anyone know where the Hammer of Glory is? Can we borrow it?)

Jimmy Bedford Dies at 69

I just saw on Chuck Cowdery's blog that Jimmy Bedford has died at the age of 69, of an apparent heart attack. Go read Chuck's obituary of Jimmy, and think about the man who was one of only seven master distillers in the history of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey.

Gary Bredbenner memorial 8/18

For those of you who could not make it up to Danville for Gary Bredbenner's funeral on Monday, Scoats has very graciously agreed to host a memorial evening at the Grey Lodge on August 18, beginning at 6:30 PM. There will be a buffet, plenty of beers, and lots of talk about our missing friend. Come on down; I'll see you there.

Farewell to Gary

Gary Bredbenner died last week. Uncle Jack did a very nice post on it here, and there was a wonderful obituary in the Daily News yesterday.

I don't know if you knew Gary, but if you've been in the Philly beer scene for any amount of time, I know you've seen him. Short, round, always smiling, Gary was hard to miss: he was the guy with a beer in his hand (at least one beer, sometimes two) and usually had the best food in the place in his other hand. He had a nose for it. He was a very generous guy with beer and food, too, a real embodiment of the best of the craft beer community. If he knew about a great place to get good beer, he let you know about it. A very friendly guy, even if he did describe himself as "An Evil Fat Man," grinning all the while, referring to his way of tempting people to indulge themselves.

But you can read about Gary in those places up top. I wanted to tell you about how we buried him yesterday, on a sunny green hill above his hometown, and about how we said good-bye to him in just the way I think he would have wanted.

The news came last week from mutual friend Dan Cosper, and shortly after Dan sent out information about the funeral plans for Monday in Danville, I got a call from Rich Pawlak. "Got the news on Gary. We goin'?" I had to stall him off, because I knew I had work, and would have to re-arrange my schedule, but I also knew that I was going to do it. Sunday afternoon I called to confirm, and we arranged to meet early Monday morning to drive up.

Rich came by a bit before 8 and we left. It's about 2.5 hours to Danville from my house, and we talked about Gary for most of it. We got to the funeral home about 10:30 and paid our respects to his dad, Gary's only surviving immediate family, a sad and tragic thing. Gary was laid out in jeans and a Phillies World Series champs t-shirt, with Eagles and Phillies clothes about him (and a Grey Lodge t-shirt; Gary was a regular), a homebrewed bottle of "Batch #1" from "Big G Brewing" tucked in at his feet. It was only the second time I've ever seen him that he wasn't smiling.

We sat down with some of Gary's friends, and talked. Some sad stories about his last day, and some happier stories about his life and our friendships with him; like any good funeral. Rich and I were glad to see a good turnout, including people from Gary's work, neighborhood, and family. The minister from St. Peter's United Methodist spoke, and talked about Gary's loves: beer, food, the Phillies and the Eagles, Metallica, science fiction films, Transformers. He talked about how he was well-regarded at work, traveling around the world to fix computer problems. He quoted John Lennon and Jim Morrison. (He looked like a tall Jerry Garcia, which provoked some stifled giggles in the back of the room.)

Then it was time to go. We said good-bye, one last time; I prayed that Gary could always be smiling. They closed the coffin. Rich and I volunteered to be pallbearers, and eight of us picked up the shiny gray casket and carried it carefully out into the bright sunshine and placed it into the hearse. We got in our cars, and drove about half a mile to the Odd Fellows Cemetery.

The cemetery occupies the side of a hill facing away from the East Branch of the Susquehanna River, looking north to tree-covered ridges. The sun was high enough that the grass around the graves gleamed green. White clouds slowly passed overhead, billows and wisps, streams and towers. Helicopters from nearby Geisinger hospital buzzed overhead, and we joked that the Philly news stations had sent them for coverage. I silently wished to myself that I would have as good a day when I go. There was a short service, a lot of hugs, and we left for the church.

The church ladies had a small luncheon prepared. Gary would have been disappointed in that there was no barbecue, but I know he would have been happy about the sides: two delicious salads (potato and macaroni, with big chunks of hard-boiled egg and olives) and calico beans. There was also chocolate cake with peanut butter icing that never came out of a box; moist, solid, not too sweet, just toothsome stuff. We talked a bit more, I thanked the church ladies for the macaroni salad, and we left, in the midst of a short, cool summer shower.

We had one more memorial to make. We drove over to One Guy Brewing; it was closed on Monday, but not for friends of Gary. Guy Hagner had been at the funeral, too: Gary loved his place. The picture below is Gary at the One Guy opening (note: two beers!). Guy left from the funeral home and went back to heat up his pizza oven. Eventually a dozen of us made it. Guy brought out some poignantly delicious pizzas -- thin-crust, but chewy, lightly-sauced, just-picked basil, thick-cut local pepperoni...my God, when will the PLCB relent and let this man serve his public?! -- made sure everyone had a beer (with help from his quite competent son, Matt), and we toasted Gary. Not with sips, either!

And we went home. My good friends: if you have the funeral Gary Bredbenner did, with the genuine love and emotion his friends had for him, you will be well-dispatched from this world. Gary leaves behind scarcely any family, no great achievements, no lasting monuments. But his smile made him known to everyone, his enjoyment of life's simpler pleasures was an inspiration, and his passing was a cause for a celebration of his life. I know he'd much rather have stayed around for another beer, and another rack of ribs. But if it was time to go, it must be nice to see how the wake went. Go with God, Gary.