Losing one of our own

May 27, 2008

It is with a heavy heart that I mention that Ed Stephan, one of the Carpetbagger community’s most trusted and admired friends, died over the weekend.

Ed first emailed me four years ago, letting me know about a fascinating report on war casualties. He quickly became someone I turned to for advice, insights, and a sounding board. By 2005, I invited Ed to do some guest posts, all of which were brilliant. A few months later, we added a comments section to the site, and Ed quickly became one of the site’s most astute and discerning voices.

But outside the site, Ed Stephan was my friend. I enjoyed seeing pictures of his woodworking projects — he was extremely talented — and hearing about his vacations.

I will miss him terribly. On behalf of the site and its readers, I extend my most heartfelt condolences to Ed’s family and friends.

very sorry to hear about Ed. He sounds like a great guy.

  • Steve, I share your sadness and extend my condolences to you and all of Ed’s friends and family. Ed’s posts brought a strong and thoughtful intellectualism to the comments, and he mixed in interesting personal history in humorous anecdotes in a way that let his personality shine through. In the three years I “knew” Ed on your site, he was never combative or offensive, but always passionate. Ed was one of the great chroniclers of the human costs of the Iraq war through his extensive work on his own web site to show the trends in casualties — and how they made lie of the words the administration tried to sell. Always the professor, I learned much from Ed here; his contributions and warmth will be missed.

  • I am so very sorry to hear that. There are certain people whose names you always look for, as they always have something fanastic to add to the discussion. Ed was one of thoase people.

    My deepest sympathies to his family and the for the terrible loss for our family here.

  • I remember Ed’s posts too; they were generally excellent and added much to the site. Please convey this regular reader’s condolences as well.

  • My condolences to his friends and family, I did not know him but he sounded like an intelligent person

  • Ed was a very impressive man. If you never read his bio, please check it out:

    http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/

    I recently made the mistake of asking him to explain a graph line on one of his charts. His response was a multi-page formula. I couldn’t possibly tell you whether the formula was right, but I have no doubt it was. His passion and intelligence will be missed.

  • Ed’s insights wil be missed. My condolences to his family who I feel confident will have many memories of him to carry them thru this difficult time…

  • Damn, Ed. You were one of the few folks whose comments I always read and whose insights I enjoyed. I’ll miss you, man. Peace.

  • I haven’t been commenting here very long, but long enough to know to look for Ed’s posts. I will really miss his contributions, and I extend my condolences to his family and friends.

  • From one pedagogue to another: Journey well, Doc. I’ll catch ya on the flip side.

  • I’m sorry to hear of his death. I visited his website a few times and he seemed to have a great breath of knowledge and interests.

    How old was he? Was his death sudden?

    My condolences to his family and wider-ranging world of friends and students.

  • Ouch.
    That hurts.

    I had been wondering about him.
    I pulled his tail a lot…
    Because I always knew that he read my teases
    With the wry wise grin of a true guru.

    Atticus…
    You will be both missed
    And remembered: We got you in archives…
    So you aren’t off the hook just yet…

  • Why is it always the good guys?

    I wonder if someone can do a “Best of Ed” post…

  • Don’t know why this is, but I was thinking about Ed over this weekend. I knew that he had medical problems, however, every once in a while he would manage to post one of his insightful comments. This weekend I realized that I hadn’t read anything from him for quite a while and was wondering how he was. I am sorry to hear that he has died.

    My sincere condolences to his family and to anyone who knew and loved him. He will be missed by all.

  • Ed was one of the reasons that I first started visiting this site on a regular basis. His comments were always insightful, sometimes snarky, and consistently interesting. I’ll miss his postings.

  • I’m sad. Ed was a excellent communicator and his voice was one of the things that engaged me here at TCR when I first discovered Steve’s blog and kept me returning for his erudite, far flung and well worded observations. His ability to pluck relevant parallels to current affairs from history and culture always helped to create clarity and often provided humor along with the enlightenment.

    I seem to remember hearing that he had recently traveled to Europe and I would imagine that would have been one of the things he would have desired doing the most before leaving our little blue marble in space.

    My condolences to his family and friends. I know a larger than life presence has been removed from your lives and ours.

    Question authority. It’s what he would have wanted.

  • Anyone who has spent any length of time in this comment section gets the feeling that some posters become friends and still others become more like family. Ed was one of the family. His words have been part of my life for nearly four years and I appreciated the great work he did with tracking the war casualties, something that went beyond an academic exercise and was more a labor of grief.

    To everyone else in the CB family, stay well and raise a glass in Ed’s memory.

  • Oh my, what a shock. How sad. I am so sorry. My condolences to his friends and family.

    I have enjoyed Ed’s posts and comments for a long time and have found them to be most astute and enlightening.

    I will truly miss him.

  • I feel like I just got hit with a brick in the face. It’s weird how a community like this becomes family over the years. My condolences to his family and friends. It won’t be the same without him, and I’ll miss him.

  • What sad news… I always enjoyed Ed’s wonderful comments. Best thoughts and prayers to his family.

  • When I first started to read and comment at TCR, there were only a handful of established regular commenters. I quickly realized that Ed was one of the best. He’ll be missed.

  • Ed Stephan was the first fellow commenter here who I got to know as a friend “off list,” way back in early 2005, when comments first opened here. Over the years, he was one of the nicest guys I ever met – and I am sure had I met him in the “real” world he would have been exactly the guy I knew in the “virtual” world. As someone who has done enough woodworking to know Really Good when I see it, Ed was Really Good. He was the kind of professor who makes me rail against the lessers as the waste they are, and I am sure, had I been fortunate enough to be his student, he would be #4 of the three teachers I can remember out of 18 years of education as being good and worthwhile.

    I have to say, I was wondering why I wasn’t getting responses from him as often to my off-list e-mails, now I know why.

    Ed was definitely one of those guys of whom I am proud to list myself as “a fellow liberal” to them. He was a true Liberal in the best sense of that word.

  • ed was truly one of a kind. like many of you i searched out his comments to broaden my understanding of issues. his posts… to quote zeitgeist… “brought a strong and thoughtful intellectualism to the comments… he was never combative or offensive, but always passionate.”

    my thought is… to honor ed… perhaps we should try to be a bit more like him 🙂

    and ohioan @ 16 had a wonderful idea… “I wonder if someone can do a “Best of Ed” post…”

    my thoughts are with ed’s family and friends…

  • What a terrible loss for all of us! Ed was one of the people whose comments I always read, and was one of the people that made the Carpetbagger Report one of the first things I read. I can’t always comment, but I try to visit this site often. RIP Ed; we will all miss your beautiful mind, and I for one will never forget your eloquent posts.

  • You read these blogs on & off, you read comments, sometimes you post coments of your own, other times you just read and learn, agree or disagree, and ponder … and you don’t always (or at least I don’t always) remember that there are living, breathing humans behind the posts. Bloggers and commenters become airy, disembodied beings, with personalities and quirks, but somehow immortal, or rather non-mortal, just as we treat computer monitors and keyboards as non-mortal. Objects, texts, not people. You click from one blog to another, glance from one comment to another, just as you might turn from one page of a book to the next. Then you read news like this, and feel this ache, at realising you thought you knew someone but actually you never, really, knew them.

    I’ll miss you, Ed. I wish I’d gotten to really know you.

  • I share the feelings of everyone here and add my sincere best wishes to his family and friends. I wish I’d had the chance to know him better in real life, he would have made a very interesting friend.

  • Wow, that is really sad. Like many others here, he was someone that I always stopped to read since he had an insight into life that I can only hope to have. Steve, please pass along all of our condolences – I know you have – I’m sure his family would be proud to hear that he really was a respected voice out here on the ‘tubes.

    Homer

  • I had the honor of meeting Ed through one of his neighbors (who introduced me to this site). Ed and his wife were gracious hosts and he will be missed here in Bellingham as well as the online community.

  • I will miss sitting on Ed’s back patio drinking boxed red wine and ranting about greedy conservatives. Unfortunately people with great minds do not always have healthy hearts. Ed has suffered with heart problems for years and had a massive heart attack at his home last week at the age of 68. He will be sorely missed by his loving wife, neighbors, friends, former students, colleagues at Western Washington University, and his friends on CBR.

  • This is very sad news. Ed was one of the “EF Hutton” voices at TCBR. My sincere condolences to his family and his friends (including those who read / post here).

  • I like the “EF Hutton” analogy.

    While I’m going to miss Ed’s comments I think it speaks volumes about the quality of this blog that he chose to participate here.

  • I’ve been reading TCBR for just over two years now and have always looked forward to seeing Ed’s contributions; he’s been one of the favourites and I’ll miss him, his knowledge and his wisdom as well as his sense of humour.Glad he managed to have his Italian holiday recently.

  • Ed Stephan’s comments were always something to anticipate when reading a topic’s postings. It’s a sad moment and a true loss.

  • I was just reading some of the comments today and was kind of surprised not to see any from Ed there, then I ran further down the postings and found this. Bummer! Ed and I had corresponded off-site a bit and I always looked for his pieces here. RIP, Edward. You’ll be missed.

  • I am very saddened to learn of Ed Stephen’s passing. Joining the previous comments, I express my condolences to his family, loved ones and friends. That number of friends certainly includes frequent Carpetbagger readers and regular commentators.

    I always looked for Ed’s comments when scanning responses to Steve’s items and will miss his perspective greatly. We all will miss him.

  • Thank you, all familiar “names” to me, since I faithfully read Carpetbagger and always looked for Ed’s comments-even though I could have simply asked him what he’d written, since he was usually sitting at his computer across the room from me. I want you all to know how much both of us have appreciated the high quality of Steve’s work and the (mostly) excellent commentary.
    Edward and I met in graduate school at the University of Oregon. In seminars, he drove the rest of us nuts with his ability to turn academic gibberish into something that usually resembled sense. He loved to teach; he couldn’t NOT teach. And TCR gave him a wonderful forum to persuade, inform and occasionally cross swords with knowledgeable, wise people.

  • My deepest condolences, Karen. Perhaps you’ll continue to read CB, and grace us with your own perspectives from time to time. I’m sure they’d be appreciated.

  • Thank you, Karen, for adding your perspective. All of us were fond of Ed, even though we hadn’t met him in the flesh.

    I was truly stunned and saddened by the news. My deepest sympathies to you and your family and friends.

  • I just wanted to add my condolences to Ed’s family and friends. Like many others who read and post on this blog, I regarded him as one of the Really Smart People whose comments were always worth reading. We are all enriched for knowing him, however tangentially, and are poorer because of his passing.

  • I am sorry to hear about Ed’s death. He always had intelligent and apt comments. My condolences to Ed’s family, friends and colleagues.

  • I’ve been kept away from the CBR today and seeing this tonight hit me today like the proverbial ton of bricks … I started noticing in the open thread some references to Ed and had been missing his comments lately. Sadly, I now know why, and will sorely miss his incisive, often acerbic comments that sliced right to the matter at hand, no matter the subject. As many others have noted, all I, too, can offer are♠ my deepest sympathies and condolences to his family, friends, and I am sure, the hundreds of students he enlightened over the years. Like many others, I’ve been a longtime reader and sometimes commenter, and always gravitated straight toward whatever Ed had posted.

    Ed, I think it’s safe to say that you left a very rich legacy in our minds and lives, as well as many others. You will always have my deepest gratitude for your contributions.

  • Karen;

    As many others have said, Ed’s comments were always terrific. In some people you get a sense of their humanity. That’s a challenge to achieve in print. Ed was part of something special about TCR. There is a sense of community, and he contributed to that. Other than that I’m at a loss for words.

    I, for one, would love to hear from you whenever you feel ready to rejoin us.

  • I will miss Ed Stephan’s contributions. I remember he was always insightful and accurate. He kind of kept people straight when it came to historical matters. My condolences to his family and friends. He will be missed.

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