It is with profound sadness that I write that my friend, homebrewer Ant Hayes of Tonbridge, Kent, died Monday. I am simply stunned, and cannot imagine that he is gone.
Evidently, he was suffering from deep depression, and he took his own life. Our mutual friend in Johannesburg, Llewellyn van Rensburg, phoned me on Monday. I can't imagine what kind of torment he was enduring and finally felt he had to end. I should have suspected something was amiss, I suppose, since he hadn't emailed me since late December, despite a handful of emails from me. That was unlike him, but I got busy with my own life.
I posted a more detailed note on the
AHA forum. It includes a several notes from S.A. and a beautiful eulogy from Llewellyn.
Ant and Llewellyn organized the first BJCP exam outside of North American in 2004 and they and the Wort Hog brewers flew me down to Johannesburg to administer the exam. We quickly became great friends.
A year later or so he relocated to the UK, where he again organized a BJCP program, as well as starting the London Amateur Brewers. He also judged at the GBBF.
He visited the US twice when he spoke at the AHA conferences in Cincinnati and Minneapolis. He and Llewellyn stayed with us before a few days before the Cincinnati conference, and he and I roomed together at both. My wife and I visited him and his family a few years back in the UK.
While my loss is nothing compared to that of those who knew him better and his family, I feel it deeply.
---
Jeff Renner in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA
RIP.
