By Hal Walter
Any of the following about Ed Quillen may or may not be true. And if it isn’t, it might as well be, since Ed has left us in an untimely fashion and I’m now free to libel him at will.
Don’t blame me. It’s totally unfair to everyone that the likes of myself are left to write eulogies for Ed, who is probably best known as a Denver Post columnist and contributor to Writers on the Range, but who is regarded among faithful readers as a legend in Western journalism. Ed is one person who should be granted a day pass from death, so that he might come back to write his own epitaph.
Some of this story is from dim memory. I first became aware of Ed decades ago as a young aspiring journalist. I’d heard the stories. He was a fearless wildman of a community journalist who burned through corrupt community governments wherever he found them.
It was at the Colorado Press Association convention, and I was there as an intern for The Colorado Statesman. He and wife Martha were walking by and a sea of bright-eyed young journalists simply parted. Someone nudged me. “That’s him … Ed Quillen.” The pair strolled past and I could feel the air of reverence among all who stood by.
Which was really ironic because over his lifetime Ed elevated irreverence to an art form toward virtually anyone – including himself, but excluding his immediate family. I wouldn’t catch another glimpse of this legendary figure for at least another 12 years, until one day, out of the blue, he called me on the phone and told me of his plans.
He and Martha were starting a regional magazine called Colorado Central, a project he described as “a way to make some extra money in their spare time on their kitchen table.” Now this wasn’t exactly Amway, and he needed some help filling the white space around all the ads he hoped to sell. Perhaps I could put together some words for his magazine. He warned me right up front that he was now a publisher and would be following the standard practices of exceptionally low compensation and tardy payments to writers.
Over the next couple years I’d begin writing a monthly column for Colorado Central, and the friendship would go on for nearly two decades. Since Ed had been forthright about the payment practices, I tended to wait until the last minute to write the column. He’d call me well after the deadline to “nag” about the column, sometimes leaving a message that just said, “Hi, this is Ed, I’m just calling to nag. So, nag, nag, nag, nag.”
This system worked and I never missed a month for what is now about 200 columns. I guess one thing I owe to Ed is that he made me write. Something. Every month.
In the early days, he was the substitute editor when Jim Little, owner of the Wet Mountain Tribune in Westcliffe, went on vacation. Ed liked to meet for lunch at Susie’s, a long-gone dive where he could chain-smoke, quaff cheap black coffee by the gallon and eat greasy burgers while we talked. When I met him there he always looked at me with this who-the-hell-are-you expression as I approached. Different hats I tended to wear probably threw him, but moreover I think my visage did not exactly match my writing style.
Once, as we were leaving Susie’s on a gray winter day, Ed was outside at the curb, smoking, his head bobbing and arms waving wildly as he excitedly pontificated on some point of political absurdity. I could see the wolf coming up behind him. It was coal black and trotting straight down the middle of Main Street. Gradually I became more interested in this than in what Ed was saying, and he realized my attention had been diverted. He turned slowly to see what I was watching and grew silent. His arms remained outstretched, the smoke curled from the cigarette between his fingers. We watched the wolf, tongue lolling side to side, trot right on by and disappear down the street like something out of a Cormac McCarthy novel.
“Excuse me, but that was a wolf!?” he said with both a sense of exclamation and interrogation.
“Oh yeah,” I answered calmly, trying to act like this was just a typical everyday Westcliffe occurrence.
The sea had parted again, and I think Ed recognized not only was I not making up all this stuff I’d been writing, but that there was value in my form of “journalism,” which was really more like journaling, as opposed to his, which was pithy and humorous commentary on our political climate and society at large.
I learned to watch what I said around Ed, as I never knew when some wisecrack I made would show up in his Denver Post column complete with attribution. A few years ago, when I was laid off from my job at the Pueblo Chieftain, Ed actually congratulated me.
He once wrote in an email to me: “I sometimes imagine this happy planet where writers can just write, though I know it’s not possible, at least in this era.”
I had coffee with him just over a year ago. Ironically we met in one of those art-deco cappuccino bars in Salida, and at first I did not recognize him sitting there at a table waiting for me. Ed had never exactly been the picture of health, but I realized diabetes was taking a toll. Still, he was as sharp as ever and we had a great chat while drinking way too much coffee. Some things never change. I’ll cherish that afternoon forever.
Ed was certainly no distance runner but he seemed to have an understanding of pack-burro racing, its heritage and history. He provided a promo quote for the back cover of my book “Wild Burro Tales” and it is one of my most cherished components of the entire project. In April the film “Haulin’ Ass” was screened at the Salida Steam Plant, and Ed was a featured speaker. He talked about “What would Jesus drive?” and captivated the small crowd with his stories and humor. After his talk I was honored to do a reading from my book as a follow-up. I suppose that was fitting for the last time I saw him.
Weeks later, Ed’s death seems more shocking to me than an ultra marathoner keeling over on the trail, and I don’t know why that is. Perhaps it’s because Ed Quillen was such an important person in my life, and truly bigger than life itself. A legend from first glance to the very end. That’s how I’ll always remember him.
Hal Walter writes and edits from the Wet Mountains. You can keep up with him regularly at his blog: www.hardscrabbletimes.com
