January 12, 2017 – Leonard “Red” Swickard might have died in 1999, but his presence is still felt at the Excelsior Springs Golf Course.
Swickard lived a modest life in Excelsior Springs until his death just before the new millennium. He was born in 1913 in Lawson before moving to Excelsior Springs as a boy. He then began hanging out at the Excelsior Springs Golf Course. He was around in the course’s heyday. He caddied at the course from age 14 and was around when the course featured 36 holes. The second 18 eventually closed in the 1930s as the Great Depression hit the area hard. After the depression, Red served in the US Army where he was stationed in the Philippines during World War II. After the war, he returned where he worked as a pipefitter but you could still find him making his rounds at the golf course picking up lost or forgotten balls.
There is no telling how many miles he walked in his lifetime. He never owned a car and walked daily from his home near Roosevelt Field to the golf course.
“He loved to walk,” Executor of Red’s Estate, Marcia Searcy, said. “When he was younger he would walk everyday up to the golf course, back and forth. That’s all he did all day.”
In Swickard’s passing, Searcy became executor of his will. Just this past week the Excelsior Springs Educational Foundation received a giant surprise when Searcy contacted ESEF Executive Director Courtney Cole to let her know that they would be the recipient of Swickard’s kindness and generosity in the form of $100,000.
Read the rest of this story in the Friday, January 13 issue of the Standard
-Jae Juarez & Bryce Mereness