By KEVIN CHIRI
Slidell news bureau
SLIDELL – Pinewood Country Club and golf course may be thriving today with a bright future thanks to a pair of businessmen willing to take a financial risk in 2017.
But the historic Slidell club and course would have likely never stayed afloat long enough to be saved had it not been for the determination of longtime club manager Terri Haithcock, who has worked there for 36 years and is easily the “face of Pinewood” for the thousands of people coming in the doors for decades.
Haithcock only tells a few of the stories from the past 20 years when Pinewood had gotten on such shaky financial ground that most board members began talking about selling to avoid the near-certain bankruptcy that was looming.
“I would do anything I could to get checks to cover expenses we had to pay,” she said. “As soon as the mail came in with any money, I jumped in my car and rushed down to the bank for a deposit.
“There were also times we had to ask the employees to hold their checks for a couple of days until we got the funds to cover them. And I was always pressing people who booked to ‘go ahead and give us a check’ to make sure their event was already paid for,” she added. “I did anything I could so Pinewood could pay the bills—there was too much wonderful history here to lose it.”
There are other stories of Haithcock leaving her own paycheck in the vault for days or weeks on end, knowing the money wasn’t there to cover it, but she declines to confirm that.
But hearing those stories from others is part of the reason Haithcock is appreciated so much by longtime board members, and especially by new owner Louis Ochoa.
“Terri is the reason this club was held together for all those years,” Ochoa said. “I don’t really know how she did it, but I’ve heard lots of stories about what she did to keep Pinewood afloat.”
Haithcock admits that from the time she was hired as a part-time server in the restaurant she developed a love for the club, all because of what she saw going on there.
“In the early days, Pinewood was such a family place. I loved seeing the way families knew other families and helped each other out,” she said. “When the financial troubles began to really hit in the late 1990s and early after 2000, all I could see was losing years of family history here. I couldn’t stand to think it was going to fade away.”
Haithcock said it especially bothered her after 2010 when the problems began to go public, and talk began of the club going bankrupt, possibly being sold to a real estate developer, or worse yet, “to the city for a retention pond.
“My biggest worry was that the wonderful Pinewood Country Club would be mowed down and turned into a retention pond,” she said. “That would have been terrible, and I didn’t want to see it. I guess it was personal to me since I had spent so much time here and been a part of so many family celebrations—weddings and birthdays. There was a lot of family joy created at Pinewood and I didn’t want to see it go away.”
Haithcock was hired as a food server in 1987 and didn’t take long to become full time, although she only took the job with the provision that she could leave during the afternoon to be with her children after school.
It also didn’t take long for the board to recognize skills much higher than serving tables, and she was offered the interim general manager title in 1995, quickly followed by becoming the general manager only a year later.
Haithcock believes the financial problems at Pinewood were related to the change in society.
“We used to have moms here all the time since they didn’t work like today,” she said. “Over the years I saw more women go to work, so that reduced our membership, or time they would be here with kids and have lunch in the restaurant. Overall, the membership began to drop over the years and even though we tried a lot of different things, we couldn’t get it to improve due to the way lifestyles were changing.”
Haithcock said the board approved so many different membership drives, always with special rates, that few people would ever sign up for the regular rate.
“It became known in town that you only had to wait a little while and Pinewood would offer another special membership deal,” she said with a laugh.
Not only was revenue declining, but the aging club needed constant maintenance, something that funding was never enough for.
“I was excited when I heard that Chris and Louis were buying Pinewood. Since then, the improvements have been incredible and people are seeing a great new look here, not to mention having the Sadie Jane.
“I love coming to work and knowing I don’t have to rush to the bank anymore,” she said. “But everything happens for a reason and maybe we had to go through all that to get to where we are today. I love Pinewood and don’t plan to quit anytime soon.”
Her new title with Ochoa is Director of Operations and her boss believes he has a gem in Haithcock.
“Terri is so great because she has such a commitment to the best standards, as well as attention to detail,” he noted. “Everything she does is first class, not to mention the fact she has not been afraid to change with the times to learn a lot of new Social Media skills and new programs that we are using. I don’t know how we could be this successful without her.”
And many others believe Pinewood might not even be around had it not been for the commitment of Haithcock, who is still seen as a quiet, behind-the-scenes person who played a key role in saving the Slidell piece of history.