Ed Zern

Early life

Zern was born in Farmington, West Virginia. His father was a professor at the School of Mines at West Virginia University, a mine inspector and a sportsman; and in particular, a fly fisherman. Professor Zern died when Ed was only 15, but he had taught his son flyfishing, and that remained one of Ed's passions for the rest of his life. Ed also accompanied his father on inspections of mines, and he was troubled at the sight of water pollution from mine tailings. The environment as related to the quality of hunting and fishing preoccupied Ed thereafter.

Ed was a member of a Boy Scout troop in his youth, and learned to hunt squirrels with a .22 rifle with the other members. This also brought him closer to the sportsman's life of hunting and fishing.

Zern decided at an early age that he wanted to be a writer. He attended Pennsylvania State University, graduating with a degree in English literature in 1932. Zern then took the $400 he had earned writing for the college newspaper and went to Paris, France, ostensibly to write a novel. The money ran out after four months and Zern returned to the United States (without a novel) and got a job as a merchant seaman that lasted 18 months.

Writing career

Zern then married, became an advertising man and cartoonist in Philadelphia and began a long series of humorous promotional ads and cartoons for Nash Motors. He continued hunting and fishing in his spare time, but when he said he was disappointed in what he read in sporting magazines of the day, his wife suggested he do it himself. He wrote an article and submitted it to Field and Stream and received a $60 check in return, which was about twice his weekly income. He wrote another article; Field and Stream paid $75; and before long, Zern turned to freelance writing as his main source of income.

Zern submitted a couple of humorous articles to Collier's, and the editor at Collier's, who had left the magazine to work for a book publisher, suggested that Zern write a novel about fishing. Zern reportedly said, "To Hell With Fishing," and that became the title of the book, which was published in 1945. It was a success, selling hundreds of thousands of copies, although Zern is quoted as saying, “I don’t think many fishermen bought it; people bought it to give to fishermen.”

Other books followed. Zern also continued to work in advertising and was a contributing editor of a new magazine, Sports Illustrated, for four years. He continued to write regularly on both humorous and serious topics ranging from trade matters to travel, and he was published in True, the travel section of the Sunday New York Times, The Flyfisher, Audubon, and other publications. In November, 1958, his "Exit Laughing" column appeared in Field and Stream, and was in every issue for more than 30 years thereafter.

Conservation activities

Zern was a member of many conservation groups, including the Theodore Gordon Flyfishers (he was a past president), the Atlantic Salmon Federation, and the Boone and Crockett Club, an organization started by Theodore Roosevelt and others for the preservation of big game animals.

Zern was deeply involved in environmental issues and conservation, but excused his less-than-strident advocacy of these causes in print, saying, “I have problems being serious." He detested "game hogs" (hunters and fishers who take more than the limit), those who pollute the air and water, and he thought that a strong conservation ethic is about the finest trait any sportsman can possess.

In 1953, Zern created an annual Conservation Awards Program, originally sponsored by American Motors Corporation (who made the Nash Automobile), and later sponsored by Gulf Oil Corporation. The awards were presented annually to 10 professional conservationists employed by nonprofit organizations, and to 10 persons whose conservation efforts were voluntary. As of 1983, Zern himself was still the Program Director for the award. At the time of his death, it was known as the Chevron/Times Mirror Magazines Conservation Award.

Humor and style

Zern, as mentioned above, had a degree in English literature, and his absurd humor showed a "well-disguised intellectualism.... The main reason that Ed Zern is not listed up there with S. J. Perelman, Robert Benchley, E. B. White and Peter De Vries is because he wrote for the sporting set at Field & Stream instead of the smart set at The New Yorker."

For instance, in his articles for Field and Stream, Zern would casually mention Wagner (comparing his operas to big game hunting), Bach (trout fishing with a dry fly), Proust and Joyce. He once included an offhand "book review" of "Lady Chatterley's Lover":

"Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley’s Lover has just been reissued by Grove Press, and this fictional account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoorminded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways of controlling vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savor these sidelights on the management of a Midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer’s opinion this book can not take the place of J. R. Miller’s Practical Gamekeeping."

Zern also spoke out for equality in hunting and fishing. He said that he once had to explain to a visitor what "restricted" meant on the signs for hunting and fishing lodges. "'It means,' I told him, 'that if you are a game-hog and a spoil-sport and a discourteous scoundrel and a Gentile, you are welcome to stay there, and if you are a true sportsman and a conservationist and a gentleman and a Jew, you are not welcome.'" Zern continued, editorially: "Personally, I believe wholeheartedly in “discrimination”— against game-hogs, fish-hogs, violators of the written and the unwritten laws of sportsmanship, conservation, decency, and courtesy. But I don’t want to be welcomed to a hunting or fishing camp or hotel simply because I am a Pennsylvania Dutchman, and I don’t want some of the finest sportsmen I know to be turned away because they are Jews."

In his regular "Exit Laughing" column in Field and Stream, Zern dealt with such absurdities as using hemp seeds for bait in England. Noting that marijuana impairs the faculties, he asked, "Is he fearful lest the local perch should fail their bar exams, or the pike flunk their courses in nuclear physics? If the I.Q. of an wandle barbel or roach or tench should slip from 1.6, which it normally is, to 0.7, for instance, I doubt the tight little island would get appreciably looser." In the same column, he mentioned a fellow who dreamed he was a pileated woodpecker and awoke with a hangover (leaving the reader to imagine the effect of having a hangover and knocking one's head against a tree to find food) and told another "tall tale" of a fisherman who pulled on his line so hard that "the fish was turned completely inside out."

Family and death

Zern died on March 25, 1994, of Parkinson's disease. Typically for him, he made jokes about his ailment, saying, "I shake a lot. But it keeps my wristwatch wound." He also claimed that his shaking hand caused a tied fly to more closely resemble a real insect when in the water.

When he died, he was survived by his companion, Sandra Weiner; his daughter, Erica; son, Brook; brother, Gordon; and two granddaughters.

Legacy

During his career as the writer of "Exit Laughing" in Field and Stream, Zern was read by millions of people. The magazine's subscription averaged about 10 million at that time. Zern's column was on the back page of the magazine where it could be located at once.

When he retired from Field and Stream in 1993, the magazine’s managing editor, Maggie Nichols, said, “No one could possibly take Ed’s place.” "Exit Laughing" disappeared from the back page of the magazine. However, "out of respect for sales", his old columns began to be reprinted.

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