I didn't know Tony Dean personally, but like many South Dakotans, I often felt as if I knew him. I don't know if it was the patriarchal voice he employed as the Dakota's senior voice on matters of the outdoors, whether his reach extended well beyond the conservation and outdoors community, or if it's simply because I would listen to him as I drove to pick up my children from school each day.
In researching this, it was sobering to read through Dean's own Web site and see the suddenness in which Dean was with us and then suddenly gone. The personal messages which chronicled his hospital stay, his return home and then, ultimately, his death, is a reminder that our time here is limited.
I'd like to think that such reminders will remind us of the commonalities we share and push our focus past the things that divide us. In the blogosphere, this rarely seems the case.
However, in this case, was immediately obvious throughout the blogosphere that I wasn't the only one who was saddened by the news that Dean had died Sunday after suffering complications from a recent surgery. It was also obvious that other's felt it much more deeply.
Here are just a few farewells offered up by blogs and bloggers throughout the High Plains and Midwest.
There's a reason one prominent South Dakota blogger calls Kevin Woster's "Take It Outside" the best blog in South Dakota.
It isn't the most widely read blog, even on the Journal site (Mount Blogmore, where Woster is the senior member, takes those honors). It doesn't have the furthest reach as far as topics, remaining pretty solidly in matters of the outdoors and issues affecting area outdoorsmen.
But it does hit its target squarely, and in this post, "Farewell, old friend," it couldn't have been written more squarely.
Woster's own thoughts strike upon what made Dean so well-loved and well-known among us all. It wasn't the salesman, the politician, the TV and radio personality that truly drew us to Dean. It was that he was one of us, and he spoke of the common experience.
Popular figures generally rise to their prominence today because of their differences, whether that be personal or political. With Dean, it was because of the common ground he covered - often, quite literally, as Woster explores in his parting message to the beloved Dean on "Take It Outside."
Chet Nodland's offers up some vivid memories of growing up in the days before cable television when Dean's fishing show was part of weekend TV experience the same as Saturday morning cartoons, Sunday morning all-star wrestling and - of course - church.
Dean's reach was certainly strong throughout the entire High Plains/Midwest area, and Nodland's brief post attests to that.
He has has some video of Dean speaking in Denver during the recent Democratic National Convention. Just a warning first: If you have any form of motion sickness, either get out the dramamine or close your eyes and just listen to the audio. It's a bit shaky, the same way San Francisco was a bit shaky during the 1989 earthquake.
Pat Powers finds the right tone at South Dakota War College, noting that Dean's sudden declining health certainly wasn't the type of thing that should be splashed all over a Web site.
One thing that I've noted, though, that is a testament to Dean and his broad appeal is that although he was very outspoken, he was respected. The line "Whether you agreed with him or not" prefaced nearly every memorial over the past few days of Dean. Most people realized that although he Dean was highly vocal in his personal and political views, he was respectful in presenting them.
Not really a blog, fishingbuddy.com's open forum got plenty of longtime anglers, outdoorsmen and well-wishers who flocked to the site when they heard that Dean had passed away.
Among my favorites, showing the breadth of Dean's influence and how in tune he was with the folks he wrote to and for, was this:
Bob kellam | Oct 19, 2008 6:36PM
I always Admired Tony and admired his positions on things like swampbuster and particulary sodbuster. I was thinking of his last writings on breaking up native prairie a couple hours go coming home and seeing some native prarie under the plow with huge rock piles on it!!
Outdoors people lost a great ally, even if a lot of them didn't realize it!
Simply said, I don't know whether there will ever be a South Dakota figure - political or otherwise - who will be championed by a Web site such as targetglobalwarming.com and still remain much loved by legions of Dakotans.
Perhaps its the fact that Dean was less about Democrat and Republican and more about being a longtime advocate for the Dakota way of life. Perhaps its that he spoke his mind regardless of what you or anyone else thought of it but still espoused a breadth of things we all hold dear. Or perhaps it was simply his charismatic, plainspoken ways that gave people comfort that he wasn't angling, he was speaking his mind.
