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Ernest Schwiebert
A Ph.D. in Fly Fishing to Go with Others…
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Ernest George
Schwiebert (known as ‘Ernie’ by many) was a writer, artist,
architect, entomologist, fisheries biologist, conservationist and
legendary fly-fisherman. As his son, he was larger than life
because he had all this in his head and was all of these people at
a very deep level. In the timeless movie, A River Runs Through
It, one brother says to the other: “I want to be a
professional fly-fisherman.” His brother replies: “You can’t do
that, there is no such thing.” I want to believe that my father
was as close as anyone can become without endorsement deals. It is
his body of work that speaks for itself. Although no longer with
us in body, he is with us in spirit and is wading the celestial
stream in search of the stout trout, or, as he put it, “the mythic
sword” that leaps from the river in search of its prey or while in
the fight.
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Ernest Schwiebert
made scholarly contributions throughout his full and storied life in
disciplines from writing in all forms, to architecture and planning,
to the art and science and pursuit that is fly fishing for trout and
salmon (and, on occasion, other game fish from fresh and saltwater).
He wrote over 15 books about fly-fishing and architecture. In these
two disciplines (and in the many others listed above) that he loved
and pursued with passion, he was an independent thinker to the last.
He was a complete philosopher and a champion of long-term vision from
every angle, every side and every scenario.
My
father was born in Chicago, Illinois on June 5th, 1931. His
father, Ernest Schwiebert, Sr., Ph.D., was a noted historian on the
life, times and teachings of Martin Luther and The Luther Reformation
as an academic movement. He grew up following his parents from
academic institution to institution, mostly in the Midwest. His family
summered in Colorado and Michigan, where he was introduced to fishing.
Ernest Schwiebert became a serious angler at the age of five when one
of his first casts into a Michigan Creek surrendered a twelve-inch
brown trout caught with a Light Cahill. He attended high school at New
Trier, north of Chicago. He garnered a B.A. degree in architecture
from The Ohio State University in 1956 and was heavily involved in the
planning and building of The Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO
from 1956 to 1958. He was in the Air Force ROTC and commissioned with
the Air Force during his time in Colorado at the Academy during its
inception. Before he was thirty, my father had fished the major rivers
of Europe and South America as well as the waters of the United States
and Canada and gained worldwide recognition as an authoritative
writer, conservationist, artist and angler.
Schwiebert was the Lowell Palmer fellow in architecture at Princeton
University from 1958 to 1962 and received a Master’s degree (M.A. in
Fine Arts in Architecture) and dual doctoral degrees (Ph.D. in Fine
Arts in Architecture and Planning and a Ph.D. in the History of
Architecture) from Princeton. His thesis dissertation, The
Primitive Roots of Architecture, encompassed all of these degrees
and was 5 volumes in length. He has been the subject of and has
written countless articles in newspapers and magazines. His first
book, Matching the Hatch, published in 1955 during his
undergraduate years is considered a classic and was followed by many
important books. These included (but are not limited to) Salmon of
the World, Remembrances of Rivers Past, Nymphs, his
monumental two-volume Trout, Death of a Riverkeeper, and
a River for Christmas among selected others. As evidence of
further competence and respect, Ernie has over twelve references in
Arnold Gingrich’s book, The Fishing in Print and fourteen
references in Paul Schullery’s American Fly Fishing, A History.
Gingrich considered Schwiebert’s position impregnable as the leading
angling author of our time and that he had an impressive ability to
absorb entomological detail and convert it into pleasing prose for his
readers. During this time, my father practiced architecture and
planning (specializing in airport and military airbase design) for
almost 15 years with a firm in New York, NY. His architectural work
took him to places such as Chile, Pakistan, Tibet, Malaysia,
Australia, and Argentina. He often took his fishing tackle with him.
Ernest
Schwiebert has made a major contribution to wild trout and salmon,
their genetics and habitat in his writings, in lectures to
conservation and fishing organizations and to educational
institutions. This work, combined with his research into
fishing-relevant stream entomology, has given generations of anglers
and fisheries professionals new insights into the importance of wild
salmonids. My father was a pioneer in the fishery conservation
movement and was involved in the founding of Trout Unlimited, the
Theodore Gordon Flyfishers, the Federation of Fly Fishers, and the
establishment of the American Museum of Fly Fishing. He has served as
a Director of both Theodore Gordon Flyfishers and the Atlantic Salmon
Federation, and on the scientific advisory boards of TU, FFF and The
Nature Conservancy. He was founder and president of the Henryville
Flyfishers in Pennsylvania and a life member of the Spring Ridge Club
of Pennsylvania among other angling clubs including the Anglers Club
of New York and the Flyfishers of Boston. In recognition of his
contributions, a Trout Unlimited Chapter in New Jersey, the Ernest
Schwiebert Chapter of TU, is named for him. He cherished this chapter
and his membership in these many important clubs and federations
immensely.
His “Elegies and
Epilogues” address as banquet speaker at the Wild Trout IV Symposium
in September 1989, reported in the Symposium’s Proceeding, was
eloquent and gave special meaning to scientific and management efforts
for wild trout. Here, he was given the Aldo Starker Leopold Memorial
Award from The National Park Service which he treasured immensely. My
father was honored with numerous awards. Among them were the Gold
Medal of the American Institute of Architects, The Arnold Gingrich
Literary Prize, and life memberships in numerous fishing institutions.
In
2005, he gave two important speeches to the opening of the American
Museum of Fly Fishing at its new home in Manchester, Vermont and to
the FFF Conclave in Livingston, Montana. They ended similarly and they
are characterized best by letting my father do the talking:
I will conclude with
a story.
My obsession with
fishing began in childhood, watching bluegills and pumpkinseeds and
perch under a rickety dock, below a simple cedar-shingled cottage in
southern Michigan. My obsession with trout began there too, when my
mother drove north into town for groceries, and took me along with the
promise of chocolate ice cream. We crossed a stream that was utterly
unlike those near Chicago, fetid and foul-smelling, or choked with the
silts of farm-country tillage. It flowed swift and crystalline over
the bottom of ochre cobblestones and pebbles and like Hemingway’s “Big
Two-Hearted River,” it mysteriously disappeared into thickets of cedar
sweepers downstream.
And a man was fishing
there.
The current was
smooth, but it tumbled swiftly around his legs. It was a different
kind of fishing, utterly unlike watching a red-and-white bobber on a
tepid childhood pond, with its lilypad and cattail margins, and its
callings of redwinged blackbirds. His amber line worked back and forth
in the sunlight, and he dropped his fly on the water briefly, only to
tease it free of the current, and strip the moisture from its barbules
with more casting. It seemed more like the grace of ballet than
fishing.
And then the man
hooked a fish.
My mother called to
the angler, and gave me permission to run and see his prize. I
remember getting my feet muddy and wet, with a Biblical plague of
cockleburrs at my ankles, but it did not matter. The fish was still in
the man’s landing met, and he raised it dripping and shining in his
hand. It was a brook trout of six inches, its dorsal surfaces drak
with blue and olive vermiculations, and its flanks clouded with dusky
parr markings. Its belly and lower fins were a bright tangerine, with
edgings of alabaster and ebony, and it glowed like a jeweler’s tray of
opals and moonstones and rubies. I had witnessed something beautiful,
and I wanted to be part of it.
People often ask why
I fish, and after seventy-odd years, I am beginning to understand.
I fish because of
Beauty.
Everything about our
sport (and our cause in terms of TU) is beautiful. Its more than five
centuries of manuscript and books and folios are beautiful. Its
artifacts of rods and beautifully machined reels are beautiful. Its
old wading staffs and split-willow creels, and the delicate artifice
of its flies, are beautiful. Dressing such confections of fur,
feathers and steel is beautiful, and our worktables are littered with
gorgeous scraps of tragopan and golden pheasant and blue chattered and
Coq de Leon. The best of sporting art is beautiful. The riverscapes
that sustain the fish are beautiful. Our methods of seeking them are
beautiful, and we find ourselves enthralled with the quicksilver
poetry of the fish.
And in our
contentious time of partisan hubris, selfishness, and outright
mendacity, Beauty itself may prove the most endangered thing of all.
Ernest Schwiebert,
Closing of Speeches to the American Museum of Fly Fishing and to the
Federation of Flyfishers in 2005.
My father had
battled and had overcome prostate cancer during these appearances. Not
long after the FFF Conclave speech in August 2005, he fell very ill to
a second, separate and fatal primary renal cancer. He died on December
10th, 2005, at his home in Princeton, N.J., surrounded by
his books, books of others, and his many original drawings and with
his wife, Sara, his son, Erik, and his brother-in-law (a true brother
that he never had), Tom Mills. He was 74. He is survived by the above,
by a daughter-in-law, Lisa (the daughter that he never had) and two
wonderful grandchildren, Elisabeth, 6, and Turner, 4.
However,
Ernest Schwiebert has more to say. Nymphs II is in the publishing
pipeline with Lyons Press and The Globe Pequot Press in Connecticut.
His entire family is collaborating on a book of his original drawings.
Late in life, he also had other literary projects that are finished
and ready for publication of subjects of his interest unrelated to
fishing.
My father
will be with us always. His son would ask that you go catch a stout
trout or salmon for him at your earliest convenience (or any other
game fish that is convenient now for the time and the weather. With a
well-dressed and well-presented fly preferably. Have a thought for
Ernest Schwiebert when you perform this task. His son also believes
that his Dad would wish that all people approach his or their
cherished disciplines with an open mind, with independent thought, and
with a long-term view. And, by being mindful to the art and the
science and the beauty of all things.
And, I would like to
think that he earned a Ph.D. in fly-fishing to go with his dual Ph.D.
degrees in architecture. He was both people and them some, and he
pursued both disciplines fully.
Remembrance of
Ernest Schwiebert following his death on 10 December, 2005
NOTE: Aspects of
this tribute are modified from a brief biography written by Marty
Seldon for the FFF.
Erik M.
Schwiebert, Ph.D. March 27, 2006
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