Photo by Phyllis Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, agrees with the keeper’s assessment that the Memorial program for Tony Earl Sunday at Monona Terrace was a most fitting wrap for the Earth Day weekend, bringing together as it did multiple people who worked with Tony to accomplish meaningful things in the name of conservation, like saving the Great Lakes from commercial greed, creating land and water preservation laws that had the people’s best interest at heart and recognized women’s rights and those of different races, sexual bent, and economic status.
The keeper considers it a high honor to have been among Tony’s many fishing/baseball/beer drinking friends, and to have won the only cribbage game he and Tony ever played one year at the fishing camp: “A quirk.” Tony said.
Life, of course, is nothing but quirks, and they were on grand display Sunday as the keeper and Phyllis listened with Tony’s family and friends as they reviewed a life that defined what it means to be a worthy member and leader of the human race.
Photo by Bill Stokes