Lasting Legacies
by Samuel Kowal
A career in fabrication for railroads took Ed Harris to nearly every corner of wildlife habitat in the United States. Now, he feels compelled to ensure that wild places endure.
Some 40 years ago, almost broke and looking for a change, Ed Harris said farewell to his mother and left his home in West Virginia. He packed his suitcase into a ‘72 Oldsmobile and headed out West. With funds dwindling somewhere in the middle of Iowa, he made it to Sioux City, where some friends happened to be working. There, he formally began a career in fabrication, though he’d picked up the trade years earlier, skipping high school classes to work on and restore old trucks.
In 1985, six years after making it to Sioux City, the economy went downhill. He left for Rapid City, South Dakota, “before they could shut off the lights.” Shortly after, he met his wife, Janet.
It was Thanksgiving of the same year, and Ed’s roommate had left town for the holiday. “I was just sitting there all bummed out because it was Thanksgiving, and I was all alone,” says Ed. “There was a newspaper lying there on a table with an ad that she had placed. She was looking for a companion, so I called, and we talked. We didn’t meet till after Christmas, but she ended up being the perfect partner for me.”
Seven years after meeting, the couple moved to Wyoming following Rapid City’s economic decline. Ed semi-joked to Janet that if they were going to be unemployed, it would be better to be unemployed in Wyoming, which had many more opportunities to hunt and fish.
It was there that Ed later started a fabricating business of his own, building whatever the railroad needed and couldn’t find anywhere else. He traveled far and wide, working in every corner of the country. Janet stayed behind to care for the house and their first and only child, George.
Decades later, Janet received the news that every family dreads. She had cancer. But rather than dwell on the diagnosis, the couple hit the road together so Janet could fulfill a dream of seeing what Ed had built across the country.
Janet lived with cancer for nine years before passing away in 2018. The couple shared 31 years of marriage together.
An RMEF member since 2014 and no stranger to the outdoors, Ed has always advocated that everyone must experience nature’s glory for themselves. “People ask me why I go outdoors, and so I ask them: When was the last time you’ve seen God wake up?” He adds, “Every morning out there is a different show.”
Ed recalls one morning when the landscape shimmered in a way “Hollywood could never replicate.” He was nestled into some brush at the edge of a clearing that overlooked an old riverbed. As the sun started to rise, he looked through the woods, and saw a wave of hoarfrost rolling in. It gently washed over everything around him. Even his bowstring became covered in feathery white crystals. Behind the mist and frost, the sun rose boldly into a crystal‑blue sky.
“Just then, two does come walking out of the brush on the other side of the fog; you could see in the sun that their eyelashes and whiskers were all frosted up and glistening, and the whole woods started to sparkle. They walked 15 yards from me, and I couldn’t shoot. I can’t explain that feeling,” says Ed.
RMEF Planned Giving Specialist Michelle Tucker says the way Ed’s face lights up when he shares the story shows how much he enjoys being in the outdoors.
“He looks at every little detail out there,” says Tucker. “He’s so enraptured with nature and its beauty, and he wants to share that with his son and grandkids.”
His three grandchildren, Bentley, Savannah and Hailey, share Ed’s appreciation of the outdoors and are the heart of his desire to give back to wildlife. He plans to leave a legacy of conservation and has included RMEF in his estate plans. By doing so, he is recognized as a member of the Trails Society, a group of valued supporters who have included RMEF as a beneficiary in their will, life insurance policy or retirement account.
Ed loves to take his grandchildren camping and hunting, which he says is in hopes of connecting them with conservation and our hunting heritage. He feels strongly about fair-chase hunting, and proudly displays his ethics. The back window of his car holds a sticker with an Aldo Leopold quote–the same one that runs atop each Situation Ethics article in Bugle.
Aside from partnering with RMEF to invest in wild places for his grandchildren to enjoy, Ed hopes to leave behind a memory of grit and determination. He says that in all his time working, he never had a project that he considered a failure; he just sometimes happened to build things that didn’t work, and from those, he learned and moved forward.
In a life without guarantees, he advises everyone not to fear the unknowns but to jump into new undertakings without regard for the “what-ifs.”
“Just do it; if you want to try something, do it. The worst thing that’ll happen is that you might learn something.”