2008 · Community & course · Article 12 of 20
Remembering Dr. Ben Ward
The physician who founded Brierwood died in 2008 at the age of 80, after more than fifty years of caring for the Shallotte area.
Bennie Brooks Ward, the physician who bought the land in 1967 and built the course, died in 2008 at the age of 80. His obituary in the Wilmington Star-News, published under the name Benjamin B. Ward, described a career of more than fifty years practicing general medicine for the citizens of Shallotte and the surrounding area.
Few people have shaped a community in two separate ways. As a doctor, Dr. Ward treated generations of Shallotte families. As a developer, he bought the land, drew the course with his friend Dr. John Madison, formed the corporation, filed the covenants, and after buying out his partners owned Brierwood Golf Club, Inc. outright.
The community's records credit him with a vision that the Town and prospective investors did not share at the time. He built the course anyway, funding the first nine holes with lot sales on Queen's Grant Circle and finishing the second nine in the mid-1970s.
After his death the course stayed in his family. The Ward family continued to own Brierwood Golf Club until July 2014, when the course, the clubhouse and a number of residential lots were sold to Blum Investment Group Golf LLC.
Brierwood's street names, its covenants and its wooded layout are all his legacy. So is the Town of Shallotte's 2017 proclamation marking fifty years since the beginnings of Brierwood, an anniversary that would not exist without him.