A Remarkable American

Just learned Ed Bearss has passed at 97. A remarkable American. Severely wounded as a Marine fighting in the Pacific in early 1944, spending two years in hospitals and permanently losing use of one arm, Ed went on to a long career with the National Park Service, serving as its Chief Historian, and an even longer career as tour guide, author, lecturer, and preservationist. He appeared in Ken Burns Civil War series and for those fortunate to have undergone the Ed Bearss Experience he is one of those rare unforgettable characters you meet in life. From 2012 to 2015 I was on four Civil War battlefield tours on which Ed was one of the guides and was fortunate to host Ed twice and spend extended time with him on his last two visits to our Civil War Roundtable in Scottsdale.  The photo below was taken in January 2019 when Ed and I visited the Commemorative Air Force Museum in Mesa. With Ed is Dennis Fennessey, president of the museum.

It was on my first hosting tour with Ed that I drove him back and forth to Tucson to visit the Museum of the Horse Soldier.  During our four hours on the road I took the opportunity to ask him a lot of questions and once you got Ed started he really could get on a roll.  I learned he'd attended the first major league All-Star game in Chicago in July 1933 and we had a mutual love of baseball.  He knew every Secretary of the Interior since the Kennedy administration and had worked with Lyndon Johnson after his retirement in setting up the LBJ Ranch Historical Site (he also had a plethora of stories about LBJ which were hilarious and outrageous).  In response to my questioning he took me through his wounding at Suicide Creek on Cape Gloucester on January 2, 1944 and his two year sojourn in Australian and American hospitals.  I will never forget that drive.

Two stories from my battlefield tours:

The very first one was at Antietam.  Ed led the tour of The Cornfield, the site of brutal, bloody fighting on the morning of September 17, 1862.  At that point, I really didn't know who Ed was.  All I knew was that it was a hot, humid Maryland day and this old guy (he was only 89 at the time) was yelling at us (even Ed's whispering voice was booming) to stay hydrated.  Meanwhile I noticed that on our 3 hour tour around the field Ed did not take a sip of water!

Three years later at The Crater at the Petersburg battlefield, Ed, as usual, was moving very quickly ahead of most of us, turned around, admonished us keep up with him and warned that "stragglers will be shot"!

Ed's voice during his set pieces whether on tour or in speaking engagements has been described as a “battlefield voice, a kind of booming growl, like an ancient wax-cylinder record amplified to full volume—about the way you'd imagine William Tecumseh Sherman sounding the day he burned Atlanta, with a touch of Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill.”  In a Washington Post piece listening to him was described as like hearing a Homeric bard.

On his last visit to Scottsdale, Ed overslept and I had to get access to his hotel room to wake him in order to make his early morning flight (Ed traveled alone).  Running so late I had to help him get dressed.  That experience gave me first hand knowledge of the extent of his wounds (a useless left arm and a right shoulder so damaged it had little strength) and I realized how long it must take him each day to get dressed on his own and marveled at the mental strength of this man who coped by himself, got through every day with no complaints, and why, in turn, he expected the best effort from everyone around him.