By Jim Casada

From the moment when I first shook and howdied with Ed Park, he made an immediate and highly favorable impression, one that never changed. He was already wheelchair bound, thanks to a stroke he suffered in 1991, not long before our initial meeting. Such a development, when the man was in the prime of his life, might have been so devastating to many as to leave them permanently depressed. Not Ed, he accepted his lot in life and made the best of it.

His chosen profession as an outdoor writer wasn’t one which lends itself to material riches, but it is an incredibly rich lifestyle, and Ed wasn’t one to let something like a stroke stand in the way of a staunch work ethic. He adjusted to his handicap with courage and the graciousness and gentility, which were hallmarks of his personality. To know the man was to love and respect him.

While I saw him on an almost annual basis during the years I was an active member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, our personal contact had been missing in the last few years. On the other hand, thanks to the wonders of e-mail and the emergence of Predator Xtreme as a magazine to be reckoned with in the world of outdoor communications, we actually became closer.

Ralph Lermayer, the magazine’s editor, had the good sense and recognition of talent to hire a guy others seemed to have forgotten, and what an asset Ed was to the magazine. An indefatigable researcher with a real nose for a story and the persistence of a bloodhound in following the trail once he picked up the scent of some development of note, Ed constantly amazed me with the material he dug up. Those of you who read his work in the magazine and on this Web site were the beneficiaries. Seldom did a week pass when I didn’t get some sort of information from Ed, and it came simply because he was unfailingly generous in helping his fellow sporting scribes.

Just a week before getting news of his death at the age of 78, he had sent me an e-mail with a helpful link to a story on a subject he knew I was researching.

You’ve got to admire a man who lived life to the fullest, never mind a handicap, which would have short-circuited the career of anyone with less guts and determination. Beyond that, he was a gentle man who lived a simple life dominated by closeness to the good earth and a love of communicating the joys it can bring to hunters. I will miss this gracious soul, a gentle man whose life epitomized the ways of a gentleman. My sympathy goes to his wife Lois and his loved ones. They will miss him terribly, and his passing leaves a deep sense of loss in the minds of all of us who were proud to call Ed a friend.