A giant is now gone: Ed Kirby

SHARON — Ed Kirby, who died on Monday, Feb. 1, at the age of 93, embodied everything that was good about the Northwest Corner of Connecticut.

That’s of course a lot of weight to put on the shoulders of one person, but Ed Kirby could handle it. He was a tall man with broad shoulders, a deep, growly voice and a gentle manner. In the days since his death, he has been memorialized by many people who knew him from the many interests that he had — which is a lot of people. Without fail, he is described first and foremost as kind and as a gentleman.

But Ed was much more than that. He was also, among other things, remarkably fun.

In my early days as a reporter for this newspaper, and as  a new resident of Sharon, I had the good fortune on several occasions to go out with Ed in search of information on some aspect or other of local history. 

Ed would pick me up in his Jeep and off we’d go. As we drove the back roads of Salisbury and Sharon he would point out bits of history that were invisible to the naked eye: the old mill between the two towns, now completely gone but Ed knew it was there (right near Dick and Patricia Walsh’s house, if you know where that was); or the old Cedars summer camp, a sprawling summer destination for glamorous city folks. 

Not a scrap of wood, not an indentation in the grassy fields would ever betray that the camp used to be there at Long Pond Road. But when Ed talked about it you could practically hear the ice cubes clinking in the glasses and smell the suntan lotion. 

He had a way of bringing history to life and making you feel like you had only missed it because you’d glanced away for a moment. Boom, it was gone but Boom, it appeared again when Ed would tell you about it.

I can’t recount all the many things I learned from Ed; no one can, there was just too much of it. 

What did WGBWS stand for?

Many of us were lucky enough to go out in the Jeep with him, including of course his closest friend, Sharon resident Barclay Prindle, who has plenty of secrets of his own to reveal. One of those secrets was the meaning of the license plate on the famous Jeep. It cryptically read, “WGBWS,” which Prindle said stood for, “Wildcat Gorge Boozing and Wilderness Society.”

It all began back in the late 1960s when Ed was invited out West by Northwest Corner resident Bill Hart, “who did oil and gas exploration,” Prindle recalled. 

Ed was a geology teacher at Housatonic Valley Regional High School as part of his long and storied career in the Region One School District. Ed was sort of an autodidact about geology, but as with everything, once he decided to learn about it, he became expert very quickly. 

So off he went, to what turned out to be the location of Robbers Roost, where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hid out. He brought along on the trip his friends Barclay Prindle and Jack Mahoney (almost all stories with Ed involve him bringing along other people). The three of them took a deep dive into Western outlaw lore. They returned annually, to visit with new friends, to participate in many new organizations, and to do research in this new area of interest. 

“Ed did more research on this period than anyone had done before,” said Richard Paddock, a Salisbury resident, a historian and a member with Ed of the Friends of the Beckley Furnace in North Canaan (which Ed led the effort to restore; more about that later). 

“Ed read records and dug up documents that I think other people never knew about. For Butch and Sundance, he read the old Pinkerton reports that were written by the people who were tracking those guys.”

Eventually Ed befriended Butch’s sister, who claimed that her brother did not in fact die in that shootout in Mexico. She made several trips to Connecticut to visit Ed, and spoke to students at the high school.

This interest in the Wild West sparked a signature part of the appearance of the Three Amigos: Ed, Barclay and Jack all sported notable mustaches.

“Mine is more of a handlebar,” Prindle said. “Ed’s was more straight across.”

One reason for the facial adornments, Prindle said, was that every year they would attend the annual conference of one of their Western organizations. 

“The mustaches were part of our Western look. There’d be a dress-up day, and we’d dress as characters. Ed would dress as Sundance.”

Life on the Miles estate

Richard Paddock also recalls traveling around with Ed in the Jeep, which offered a sort of Magic Carpet Ride into area history. 

Ed and Dick shared a similar background: Both had grown up on the estates of large property owners in the Northwest Corner. Dick spent his childhood on the Scoville estate in Salisbury; Ed had grown up on what is now the Miles Sanctuary of Sharon Audubon, which was still owned at that time by Emily Winthrop Miles. 

In interviews, Ed sometimes described his childhood in this remote section of Sharon as lonely. He spent a lot of time exploring the woods, and apparently he spent time doing farm chores there before and after school.

These days on the farm contributed to his desire not to be a farmer. Ed said to me at least once that the things that grow most abundantly in Sharon soil are the rocks.

It’s possible that those lonely childhood years are also a reason why Ed was always surrounded by other people, including his loving family. He married his high school classmate, Mary Tobin, who survives him at home in Sharon; together they had five children.

Ed just loved to be around people, and people were attracted to him. He was a big presence, an attribute that might have been enhanced by his many years as a school teacher, coach and then a high school principal and then assistant superintendent, all in the six-town Region One School District. 

Liz Shapiro was head of the Sharon Historical Society from 1994 to 2013 and spent countless days, months and years with Kirby. He was chairman of the board of the historical society for many years, and wrote several history books that Shapiro helped edit. And yes, Liz got to take many rides in the Jeep, including some when she was very pregnant.

“Ed was someone you could put in front of any number of people of any age group in any size audience,” Shapiro recalled. “He could talk to 4-year-olds and he could talk to 100-year-olds with no problem. 

“The only time I ever saw him have trouble was when we filmed him for the documentary, ‘Visions of Iron,’ which tells the history of the iron industry here and also has some personal stories about his life growing up in Sharon. 

“That was the one time I saw him struggle, and I realized that Ed really thrives with an audience. 

“He becomes something larger than life when he’s in front of people.”

A presence, but never frightening

Bunny McGuire and Dot Cecchinato both worked with Ed when he was principal at Housatonic Valley Regional High School. Dot had also been at the high school as a student, just a few years younger than Ed. 

“He was a very nice person, and I think people responded to him by being nice to him. Because that’s the kind of person he was,” Cecchinato recalled.

“He was the sort of person who always tended to the other person, not to himself.”

Bunny McGuire was a student when Ed was still a teacher (he graduated from Housatonic in 1945, Cecchinato graduated in 1947 and McGuire graduated in 1955). 

“He was a teacher and a coach when I was there and everyone loved him,” McGuire recalled. 

When he was promoted to principal of the high school, he called up his former student and recruited her to be his assistant, a job she held from 1975 until long after Ed had gone on to other jobs in the district. 

“He was an excellent principal,” McGuire recalled. “He was so fair. His door was always open and he had time for everyone. He was a good disciplinarian, too. He would talk to the students; he would never yell. He would give them as much time as they needed. I’ve seen parents come in, and they’d be upset about something, and they’d always leave with a smile on their face.”

North Canaan Selectman Christian Allyn, a fairly recent graduate of Housatonic and of the University of Connecticut, was not at the high school yet when Kirby was an administrator or teacher but he learned many important lessons from a man with whom he has many ties.

Most important, he said, is to honor the words of Theodore Roosevelt: “Walk softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far.”

From geology to the iron industry

Lynn Kearcher, who still lives in Sharon, said, “Ed Kirby was my principal, my geology teacher and the chairman of the Sharon Inland Wetlands Commission, of which I was a member.  

“He was an extraordinary man and an extraordinary teacher, taking his geology students into the field, so that we could learn firsthand how our Earth was formed. He made us climb into caves in Falls Village, measure the acute angle of a rock surface and then find the connecting outcrop, sometimes miles away.  

“Flippantly, one day in class I said, ‘Mr. Kirby, but why does geology really matter?’ Without a pause, he replied, ‘Ask me that when you wake up during an earthquake.’”

It was in part his interest in geology that led to his interest in the once-thriving iron industry that helped create and shape so many of the area towns. 

As with his interest in nearly everything, Kirby didn’t just do book learning about the history of the industry. He dug deep into old records and papers, and literally dug deep into the soil. It was through his efforts that lime kilns were rebuilt in several area towns, including Sharon and North Canaan (where he was chairman of the Friends of the Beckley Furnace and where he continued to give tours until recently).

With his interest in local history and his knowledge of what Sharon looked like back in the days when the Green in the center of town was a thriving commercial district, it was only natural that Kirby would become an important part of the town’s historical society.

Journalist and newscaster Brian Ross is a member of the board of the historical society, and recently interviewed Kirby on-camera, drawing out some of his memories and knowledge of life in old Sharon. 

Ross said the same thing that many people said when describing Ed’s interest in his town: “He spoke with such energy and wonder about Sharon. His eyes sparkled when he talked about growing up here, and about the Miles estate. 

“He was a real gentleman, and had strong feelings about a lot of things, especially his family. He felt such love for them.”

Ed Kirby Field at HVRHS

One might get the sense from this article so far that Ed was largely an academic (except of course for the wild times out West). 

But he was also a notably good athlete and particularly excelled not only at playing baseball but also at coaching it and at encouraging talent (see the interview with Steve Blass by Patrick L. Sullivan, here).

Perhaps Ed was such a good coach because he was a player himself. Barclay Prindle recalls that he first met Ed when he was a student at the high school and Kirby was a young coach of the high school ball team.

“He was a tremendous ball player,” Prindle said. “We belonged to a league and played a lot of New York state teams. He was very good, even when he was in his 70s. He played first base, and he hit the ball beautifully.”

In honor of his contributions to Northwest Corner baseball, the baseball fields at Housatonic will now be named for Ed Kirby, according to Housatonic Valley Regional High School Principal Ian Strever. 

“In addition to being a titan in the history of Region One, Ed Kirby is a monumental figure in the history of the Northwest Corner and a man whose handshake and voice commanded respect,” Strever said. “He was a father figure to many students and the model of a lifelong educator and learner. It is hard to overstate his contribution to our area and to adequately express our appreciation for him.”

If he said it, it must be true

Roberta Willis was the state representative for the 64th District for many years, and during that time on more than one occasion had the privilege of offering a General Assembly citation to Ed. 

One occasion for that was in November 2013, when the Sharon Historical Society awarded its first Edward M. Kirby Lifetime Achievement Award, to Edward M. Kirby (of course).

Before offering the citation to him, Willis, who grew up in Sharon, spoke about Ed’s contributions to the preservation of the town’s history. 

“When Ed Kirby says something in his very commanding voice, you can’t argue with him,” she said. “He once said that there are rattlesnakes on Sharon Mountain because there’s a special kind of quartzite in the caves that they like. Has anyone actually gone looking for rattlesnakes in these caves? No, and why would they? If Ed says there are rattlesnakes in the caves, they must be there.” 

On the difficult choice of finding subsequent honorees of the Edward M. Kirby Lifetime Achievement Award, she said, “Frankly, I don’t know how the board is ever going to find someone else worthy of it.”

This week, after Ed’s death, Willis said, “Ed was a giant of a man with deep roots in our community.  It was a community he loved. A gentleman whose presence, knowledge and most certainly his deep, rich voice would command anyone’s attention. Any question to Ed would always be answered with a story about a person, a place or event that took place here.  Ed did not have ‘one true calling,’ he had many. He leaves behind a remarkable legacy.”

Perhaps the best words to sum up Ed Kirby and his life come from his close friend of so many years, Barclay Prindle.

“He was my baseball coach in high school. He was my hero then and during the time of all his adventures, and he remains my hero now that he’s gone to where he’s gone.”

For more details on a full life, see the obituary for Edward M. Kirby this week prepared by his family, here.