53 happen seamlessly. She studied landscape architecture at West Virginia University. “It wasn’t where I intended to go, but my dad moved the family to West Virginia for a job, so I was an in-state student,” she says. “I had wanted to go to Penn State, but as an out-of-state student it was too costly for the family budget.” On graduation, she took a job a long way from where she would finally end up. “I went to work with the Davey Tree Expert company in their lawn care division,” she explains. “I was the second woman in that division, and my job was to sell and then maintain the clients I acquired – to look at peoples’ lawns and tell them what sort of grasses, weeds and insects were in them and give them programmes to enhance their lawns. I was driving a split shift 1,500-gallon tanker truck around the streets of Pittsburgh. Other truck drivers would shout at me, ‘What are you doing with that big truck, little girl?’” And it was through that job that Bel Jan found her way back into golf. “Because of my background in golf, I was delegated to the more high-profile areas of Pittsburgh – Fox Chapel, Oakmont and the like. At one of my clients in Fox Chapel, I left my business card with his assistant, she gave it to her boss, and he asked me to come in. He was expecting to see one of Willie Bel Jan’s nephews, and this girl turns up. He was Jack Mahaffey, a member at Oakmont, and also at Jupiter Hills in Florida. He was a very prominent amateur golfer, and was on the executive committee of the USGA. He recognised the Bel Jan name because he had played numerous rounds with my uncles. Mr Mahaffey asked me, ‘What are you going to do with the rest of your life’, and that there was someone he’d like me to meet. He introduced me to Tom Fazio, and my first interview with Tom was on the veranda of Oakmont in 1978. He asked for a second interview and then asked when I could start work. I said I had to give two weeks’ notice, so I did, and I started with Tom. I owe everything to him.” In 1978, Fazio was only in the very early days of his great career. “When I first started, the firm was based in Jupiter and was still George Fazio and Tom Fazio Golf Course Design. Andy Banfield had been there for a year or two when I joined. I moved to Florida, and I’ve been there ever since, except for a couple of extended stints on project sites, and a couple of years establishing the Fazio office in North Carolina,” says Bel Jan. “Everything was different, slower in those days – no faxes, no emails, air travel was different. They were still serving full meals on planes, with real flatware. Tom had a strict policy while his kids were young that he wasn’t going to take any jobs that were too far from home. Among the first courses I worked on was Mahogany Run in the Virgin Islands, though I didn’t do any site visits. I was doing production – drawings, construction specifications, bid lists. I was the only person in the Fazio organisation doing production. At Mahogany Run, Hurricane David hit just after sprigging, and two weeks later Hurricane Frederick took the remaining topsoil and sprigs, so the course never became what it could have been.” JAN BEL JAN “ By fourteen, I was mowing greens, digging ditches and felling trees” Photo: Larry Lambrecht
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