Somebody on the other side needed a good hand

Photos by Ed's friend Bill Huddleston

Ed and Diane on the deck of their Mesa del Caballo home.

Ed and Diane with his parents, Fern and Ed Sr.

Gentle giant watched over us while we slept

My Mesa del Caballo neighbor and friend Ed Schwebel died last week in a freak accident.

The details aren’t important. Who Ed was and what he stood for is.

Because Ed Schwebel was perhaps the sweetest, gentlest, kindest man I have ever known. And those aren’t words I use often when talking about my fellow man.

Ed probably would have shrugged his shoulders at being called sweet, kind and gentle. He was who he was, and he was very comfortable just being Ed.

One of those things was a technology geek. He taught online computer courses for the University of Phoenix, and he had one of those cellphones that could stand up and dance. Whenever I had a computer problem, no matter what time of day or day of week, his reply was always the same: “I’ll be there in 20 minutes.”

He helped me start the Rim Country Gazette Blog. He helped me set up Google Analytics to track its readership. He helped me set up the Google ads that one day may return a few dollars for the hours and hours spent in front of the computer.

And, most important, he helped me keep things in perspective.

One day, he sent me an e-mail telling me to take out some of the strident language at the top of the blog about what we stood for compared to a certain newspaper with propensities in the other direction.

“We have important work to do,” he said. “We don’t have time for that stuff.”

I thought about it a few minutes. I resisted. And then I took out the language. Because he was right. In fact, Ed was usually right.

He always counseled calm in the midst of a computer storm. If something went down or wasn’t working, I would call Ed in a panic. He would walk into my office in that cool, collected way of his and quietly tell me what to do and, more important, what not to do – let a computer malfunction get the best of me.

When we had a problem installing Google Adsense on the blog, Ed took it home with him.

“I’ll figure it out by tomorrow,” he said in his soft, reassuring voice. “This thing isn’t going to beat me.” And of course it didn’t.

I’ll never forget the day a few months ago when we were clearing the forest around Mesa del Caballo. When we got done that day, Ed realized he had lost his very expensive cellphone somewhere in the forest.

He tried calling himself, only to realize it was on vibrate. We were convinced he’d never see it again.

Suddenly, Ed said he could hear the thing vibrating.

None of us could hear what Ed did, but we dutifully fanned out through the area in search of a vibrating phone. Of course it was Ed who found it – the only one who could hear the darn thing vibrating.

Ed was so many things to his neighbors, family and friends. He was lighthearted, had an impish sense of humor, and was a gracious host – often opening his home for neighborhood gatherings.

He was also up all hours of the night. We know this because of the e-mail messages we’d find the next morning time-stamped 2 a.m., 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. It was somehow reassuring to know that Ed, like Santa Claus, was awake keeping a twinkling eye on things while we slept.

I know what Ed’s loss means to the Consort and me, but I can’t even begin to comprehend the loss that his family feels. Or his friends, Minnie and Randy. They knew him so much better than we did.

It is such a cliché to say we are all better people for knowing Ed. But I don’t know another way to put it. Because for me, Ed Schwebel proved you could be a real man without all the pretense and artifice.

And that summed up Ed. Nothing was going to rile him. And nothing was going to beat him.

Except death – the battle we all lose when our time has come.

The only consolation I can take from it is that the early death of this gentle giant is proof positive that there is intelligent life on the other side – and somebody over there needed a good hand.

It doesn’t make sense any other way.