Hugh Baillie, Brora
Hugh Baillie was born in October 1928 and lived all his life in Brora.
Over that time he was both shaped by Brora and helped shape the Brora we know today.
Like virtually all children of that time and place, he grew up in modest circumstances, and with his father suffering shell-shock from World War I, Hootie, as he was by then known, left school at 13 to join his older brother Donnie in the Wilson’s of Brora bakery.
He spent his two years National Service in the catering corps, and reached his early 40s before taking over on the death of Jock Wilson as managing director of Wilson’s.
At that time, there was wasteland where the main village car park is now and a small shop at the side of it. Hootie felt that the village was ready for a supermarket. He was mostly alone in this belief but he ignored the doubters and built what was then the biggest supermarket in the county. It is still there now at the physical and beating heart of the village.
Like many in the village, Brora Rangers was a huge and constant part of his life. He was a player of some repute, although he always told me his elder brother Donnie was better. However, more importantly maybe, he broadcast Brora to the world by reporting on each home game for many years.
He started with the local paper, The Northern Times, and built a portfolio of 11 papers each Saturday evening by the time he had finished.
This work enabled him to indulge in his love of the English language. He was accepted by Aberdeen University to read English as a mature student at the age of 33. However, before he started the course, his wife, Cathy, became pregnant with what turned out to be their only child. He therefore rejected the place, believing he couldn’t afford to maintain a young family in Aberdeen. One sensed this was a lifetime regret.
Having retired from reporting on Brora Rangers, Hootie kept attending matches as a season ticket holder and took huge pleasure from their recent unprecedented success. Further, he was thrilled to recently find himself and Donnie named on the long list of candidates for their inaugural Hall of Fame.
Building and successfully running the county’s biggest shop and contributing enough to be considered for Brora Rangers’ Hall of Fame might have been enough for a lot of people, but Hugh wanted to do more than that.
It is commonly recognised that his biggest contribution to shaping the Brora we know today is his work at the golf club. As the Northern Times said when noting his passing, “he was the father of the modern golf club in Brora.”
A football injury at 32 meant he took up golf and made it to a four handicap and club champion. He was president, captain and secretary. But the titles didn’t matter to Hootie. It’s what remains today that gave him more pleasure.
He joined the golf club committee in 1957 and was a leading light in the transfer of the golf club from the corrugated iron hut it was, to the substantial building it is now. In his later years, he loved nothing more than sitting in the bar area looking out over the first tee to the Moray Firth. By then he was reflecting on his 50-plus years as part of the fabric of the club.
As with anywhere in the Highlands at his time of joining the club committee, the church shaped our culture and behaviour to a large extent. Whilst a man of faith, he was less respectful of the rituals that went with organised religion and so he believed that people should play golf on a Sunday. He galvanised the committee in Brora and then those of Golspie and Dornoch. All said “we’re behind you Hugh.” And so he led from the front and Sunday golf was born in East Sutherland.
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He also thought it was nonsense that there was no competitive golf in the winter and so was at the forefront when the North Golf Alliance was inaugurated in 1965 by himself, Eoin Mackintosh of Dornoch and Golspie’s Jim Fraser.
His great passion for history meant he was a very proud founding member of the James Braid Society. That is a legacy that will deliver significant renown and bring visitors to the golf club for years to come.
Remarkably, whilst running the shop and bakery business, and contributing so much to the golf club, he also found time to be a founder member of Brora Angling Club and, after that, the Clyne Heritage Society, where he served as vice chairman for its first three years and on the general committee after that.
So whilst he did a lot to help shape the Brora we know today, what of the man himself?
As many of us will have experienced in the political debate that he loved, or in the golf committee room, he was determined, relentless and to use that fine Highland word, he was “thrawn”. He did things his way.
He shared his mother’s remarkable work ethic. The punishing hours he put into the bake house in the early morning before transferring to his “day job” of running the supermarket, and then working on his various writing and sporting activities must have been draining, but you never sensed it. Perhaps the omnipresent whisky glass helped him through.
It was at this time of huge productivity that he penned his Over The Struie column for the Football Times. It was an eagerly awaited piece of writing each week and, initially, written with no name attached. He loved the fact that people still talked about it many years later.
Hootie also had an energy, fighting spirit and resilience that shone through in the way he dealt with medical emergencies. I recall receiving no fewer than four calls over a ten year period from Raigmore Hospital saying “come now or else.” Yet Hootie just kept fighting and kept beating them. He simply never knew when to give up.
Indeed he had a heart bypass at 78 that became challenging post-operation. Yet at 79 he wrote and published his first book, Golf At The Back Of Beyond, a well received story of the birth and growth of the Brora Golf Club intertwined with the social history of the village over the last century.
As the saying goes “behind every great man there’s a great woman.” That was his wife, Cathy. They were married for 49 years and there’s no doubt he missed her terribly for the last 13 years of his life.
Summing Hootie up as succinctly as he could is difficult, but it is fair to say that he had great dignity and integrity and that he was a man of great principle.
He had a wit and sense of humour that were instantly recognisable when you spent time with him.
He had the humility befitting a Highlander.
But above all, he had spirit. Boy did he have spirit. Maybe too much of it sometimes, but what’s clear is that this son of Brora was one of us, and for the vast majority of his life he demonstrated the best of us – Hugh Baillie (son).
• Hugh Baillie is survived by his son Hugh, his grandsons Angus and Euan, and his brothers Donnie, Kenneth and Alister.
