Robert Lee Sayre 2d, 47, a country club-manager who brought Hoosier charm and Southern style to the Main Line, died Sunday of heart failure at Chester County Hospital.
"He was a big man and he did everything in a profoundly big way," said Pam Oddo, a friend.
Mr. Sayre was the manager of the Whitford Country Club in Exton for the last four years. He was easy to spot at country-club barbecues: He was the guy in the white chef's hat who stood 6-foot-6 and weighed 250 pounds.
Mr. Sayre, a native of Evansville, Ind., learned how to Southern-style barbecue while working as an executive chef and a country-club manager in places like Augusta, Ga., Birmingham, Ala., and Atlanta.
Two years ago, Mr. Sayre threw a massive Fourth of July barbecue at the Exton country club. He rose at 4 a.m. to build a 40-foot barbecue pit, which he filled with hickory, apple and cherry wood. Then Mr. Sayre donned his chef's hat and an apron several sizes too small and prepared 300 pounds of meat.
For eight hours, over a low flame, he smoked whole pigs, baby-back spare ribs, whole chickens and 32-ounce T-bone steaks, all slathered in a secret sauce.
Mr. Sayre also had a vast repository of G-rated jokes and stories.
"He was a unique combination of Midwestern good sense and Southern-style euphemisms like 'doggone,' " Oddo said.
"He was a fun-loving kind of guy," said his sister, Holly Sayre Thomas. ''He was good at entertaining people; that was his career. And he could bring out the Southern accent when he wanted to."
Mr. Sayre was known for his generosity to employees. He would lend them money or his Plymouth.
"He really had a good way of making his employees like him," his sister said. "He charmed them into being good employees. He would always tease them, and pay attention to them."
"He was a great guy, always thinking about others," said Roger Guignard, the club's executive chef. "He was very personable, and he loved to tell stories. I think he could have been a pretty good stand-up comedian."
He loved animals, the outdoors, and trips to the Philadelphia Zoo. He adopted stray cats at the club. Every Monday, he clipped a copy of the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle and sent it to his father, a puzzle enthusiast.
Mr. Sayre was a weight-lifter who also rode his bicycle every day. On Saturday, he called the country club and said he had blacked out, and he didn't know for how long. He asked for an ambulance. When he got to the hospital, doctors found internal bleeding around his heart. He died on the operating table.
He was a member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Club Managers Association of America.
Besides his sister, he is survived by his father, Robert Lee Sayre.
A memorial Mass will be said at 10:30 a.m. Monday at the Chapel of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, next to the Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, 18th Street and the Parkway. Burial will be in Evansville.
Contributions in his memory can be made to Greenpeace USA, 1436 U St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20009.
