Brandt Riedy McDonough

Brandt was born May 24, 1989, in Evanston, IL, to Diane B. Eisele and John McDonough, raised in Wilmette and Kenilworth, and attended Joseph Sears School (1995-2003) and New Trier, where he played bass violin in the New Trier Orchestra, earned honors in the English department, and enjoyed playing hockey and la crosse.

After graduation in 2007, he went on to Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, OH, where he majored in environmental sciences and psychology and made honor roll. Influenced in his childhood by several vacation train trips to the American national parks, as well as summers and winters in the rural areas of Green Lake and Door County WI, he felt the first stirrings of a life in the outdoors. He also became an excellent snowboarder during winter visits to Beaver Creek, CO.

Growing up in high school and college, his musical interests leaned toward an earlier generation of the 1970s. Dylan and the Grateful Dead were the “golden age” idols of his imagination in which he might have lived. More contemporary jam bands such as Phish became his preferred proxies.

After graduation from OWU in 2011, he spent winters working in the ski mountains of Vermont. In 2013 he joined AmeriCorps and worked on two six-month conservation projects in Yosemite National Park stretching into the fall of 2014. During this period he saw some of the largest forest fires in the history of Northern California and Idaho, and his group had to be evacuated by helicopter. By then he had moved to Missoula, MT, and joined the U.S. Forest Service where he worked on a series of conservation and trail projects in the region of Northern Idaho and Montana. Brandt would spend the better part of the next eight years based out of Missoula working for the U.S. Forest Service of the Department of the Interior.

Brandt’s work could be dangerous. In September 2015 a roll-over truck accident resulted in a broken leg. He recovered, partially at home, and returned to the Forest Service in Missoula for the next seven years. In 2020 he enrolled at the University of Montana with a view toward earning a Geographic Information Science (GIS) degree. But the covid epidemic struck as spring classes began and university operation partially shut down or went on-line. By 2021 he left the Forest Service for an agricultural project in Northern California. The venture failed, so he returned to Missoula.

By the fall of 2023 Brandt began experiencing medical issues, including a series of seizures. He returned home to Kenilworth had a near-fatal auto accident due to a seizure at the wheel. He was hospitalized for three weeks, after which he was confined to skilled nursing care, then recovery at home. The period would take the next 2-1/2 years out of his life. By the summer of 2026, he had recovered 95 percent of his mobility, though not enough to ever snowboard or ski again. He used the recovery time to remain in touch with the friends from his youth while investigating education and career options for his future.

On August 4, after keeping a morning appointment in high spirits, he took a nap. Sometime within the next four hours an unknown incident occurred. At 2:30 pm EMT’s were called, but resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful. Brandt was pronounced dead at 3:40 pm.