HUNTSVILLE (AP) — Even in a nursing home, 700-odd miles from the place she called home for 50-plus years, Becky Peirce had golf foremost in her mind.

“All the way up to the end, she was trying to give people in the nursing home putting tips,” her son Don said Monday afternoon.

Peirce, for whom Huntsville’s municipal course is named and for decades the standard bearer for the local golf scene, died Sunday in Houston a couple of weeks shy of her 94th birthday.

“I think golf was her No. 1 passion in life,” said daughter-in-law Anne Peirce, who is married to her older son Jack. “The city of Huntsville was a close second.”

She and her late husband, Dick, arrived here during the city’s engineer/NASA boom and put down strong roots. That included, of course, playing plenty of golf.

Peirce won the city women’s championship a dozen times during the 1960s and ’70s. She also helped organize and promote a highly successful youth golf program.

“When she moved to Huntsville, she was one of the first women golfers,” Don Peirce recalled. “She was a real competitor, but she just loved being out there. Sometimes she didn’t even play — she just hung out on the course.

“I was part of that youth program she helped start. It was $5 to play all you wanted until noon. I don’t know how they could afford to do that, but a lot of my friends would play from 6 a.m. to noon. It was a fun time.”

Peirce didn’t just play the game, she helped preserve and grow it, serving for 38 years under five different mayors as a persistent and outspoken member of Huntsville’s golf advisory committee. She was one of the few people who advocated the expansion of the municipal course from nine to 18 holes and the construction of another public course at the Huntsville jetport.

Peirce also provided a strong voice when revenues weren’t exactly flowing.

“If it weren’t for Becky Peirce, I’m convinced Municipal would be a parking lot — or a strip mall,” longtime Times golf writer Al Burleson said.

She played the sport well into her 80s, even buying a Big Bertha driver she quickly dubbed a “Big Becky.” All the while, she continued to keep her eye on the big picture regarding Muni’s maintenance and stake in the community.

As such, she was a regular attendee at City Council meetings.

“She was thought of as our sixth city council member,” longtime councilman Bill Kling said. “She was a wonderful lady and she loved playing golf. She was very highly thought of.”

So much so that Kling sponsored the resolution to name the city course after her in 2001. The vote to do so was unanimous.

“I’m proud I was a sponsor, and I’m proud to have my name associated with her,” Kling said. “It just seemed like a natural move.”

Don Pierce said his mother never forgot the gesture.

“She was proud of it. I don’t think she felt deserving of it,” he said. “She just felt like she was an ordinary golfer who loved the golf course.

“Someone told her it’s the only golf course (in the country) named after a woman. I don’t know if that’s the case or not, but she liked it.”

She loved her adopted hometown, too, but too many falls precipitated a move to Houston — where her two sons live — a year-and-a-half ago.

There are no public funeral services planned in either Houston or Huntsville for Peirce, who will be cremated.