Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
He was my dad’s friend, but then again, he was a friend to just about everyone who knew him. He always had a smile, an extended hand and said just the right thing to fit the situation. He was one of the men of my youth, the father of my friends David and Linda.
Ken Asay passed away at the venerable age of 93 last week.
I visited Ken just a couple of weeks ago at Westward Heights. I planned to make it a regular stop on our frequent trips to Lander but plans rarely turn out the way we think they should.
Ken was a mainstay are Wind River High School events for years. He often came up to talk with me before and usually after games between my Wranglers and the Cougars, and for decades later when I was photographing and covering games. Football or basketball didn’t matter, Ken always had that infectious grin and an insightful comment on the game.
His first question was always how my mom and dad were doing. After Dad passed seven years ago, he was always concerned about how Mom was doing. That was Ken in a nutshell, a concerned man, who genuinely loved his community.
In his professional life, Ken was one of the “red shirts” you often encounter if you hunt or fish. He shared his love of the wilderness with anyone in earshot.
On my visit with him a couple of weeks ago I learned something new I hadn’t picked up in nearly half a century of friendship. Ken was from Lovell.
It was a “duh” moment for me since I’d known a lot of Asay’s from Lovell, Cowley and Byron over the years. Yep, that was his family and I soon learned why he didn’t speak of Lovell very often.
Ken got into a situation with a Lovell High School teacher long ago. The encounter got a little physical and Ken punched the teacher, getting a free ticket out of school in the process.
What do you do when you’re 17-years old in a small, isolated, rural Wyoming town with no prospect of graduating from high school? You join the Navy.
Ken enlisted in 1948 and served a four-year hitch.
How many of us know what our parents do or did in their personal lives when they’re away from us? Kids are so self-centered that most don’t notice and few even care as long as there are meals on the table, gas in the car and today, power to recharge their cell phone.
Ken mentioned that he and my dad often talked of their days in the Navy. Dad served on the USS Iowa from 1951 to 1955. Yes, their service overlapped.
Ken loved the outdoors, working for Wyoming Game and Fish, first as a game warden then as a habitat manager and then a unit manager.
A lot of people focus on big game, elk, deer, pronghorn and moose, with a few more involved with wolves and grizzlies. That wasn’t Ken Asay, he was a bird man.
When I ran into Ken at football games or early season middle school basketball games we often spoke about pheasants, ducks and geese. Sandhill cranes were a popular topic as well.
If anyone in Fremont County knew more about migratory waterfowl habitat, pheasant areas or those giant, honking cranes than Ken, I haven’t met them yet.
He was a veritable “fount” of information when it came to birds. Though he retired long ago, he kept up on the Game and Fish habitat programs, served as a resource for working biologists and habitat managers and remained enthralled with birds.
I remember him calling geese his babies, that’s how much he enjoyed waterfowl.
Between the girls’ and boys’ basketball games at the new Wind River gym in Pavillion (new to Ken and I since we started seven miles away at the now crumbling remains of the Wind River gym at Morton) we sat down during one Saturday afternoon game and I asked him about what I perceived as a change in Canada goose migratory patterns.
It was a subject he loved. He explained that the milder weather we were experiencing had the geese staying here through the winter as opposed to the 1970s when the skies were sometimes filled with thousands of them on their migratory trek south to Texas or Mexico each winter. As was his way, he made no judgement on the change, just noted that it had happened.
Living in a senior care facility can be a lonely, frightening place for many new residents but I found Ken with his windows open, sitting in the afternoon sun when I stopped by.
“There’s a little forked buck that comes by just before sunset,” he said as he pointed out the window. “He has a couple of does and a few fawns with him most of the time.”
I thought to myself, “What a perfect view for an old game warden.”
Ken had a mischievous side of his personality too, that’s where the twinkle in his eye originated.
When I asked him how it was living at Westward Heights, he was frank, and to the point.
“It was time,” he said. “I had a little trouble keeping my balance, but it’s not bad here.”
When you’re a veteran, and a veteran of a life in the wilderness, meals can be a big deal.
“The food’s not bad,” Ken said. “One of the guys keeps a bottle up front. When I ask him, he pours me a glass of the good stuff. Who could complain about that?”
Somewhere, years ago, we talked about the changes in the Game and Fish Department. It seemed that the focus had changed from game management to grizzlies and wolves. Ken agreed. He noted that the change came from the people in the department and who they were looking to hire.
Biologists and management specialists were replacing the types of people who used to be hired.
“You don’t need to know how many sandwiches you could make from a loaf of bread, how far you could drive your pickup without running out of gas, or what the distance was with your rifle on that buck standing on a ridge,” Ken said. “It’s all about statistics, public relations and image these days.”
Once again, no political commentary, just his view of how things were, without noting whether they were good or bad.
I’m going to miss our little conversations at court side and in the stands. I planned on stopping by through the winter, but fate has other plans.
We’ll all miss that smile.