Ed Thomas

I would like to devote my first blog post to the late Ed Thomas. Thomas' passing seemingly ignited a chain reaction of newsworthy deaths in the past month, and I believe he was largely overlooked after the initial shock and sadness passed.

I'm not going to be able to give you any new information on Ed Thomas. I can't devote a thousand words about how great of a man he was to his family, any better than his son could; or to the A-P Falcons, like his team could; or to his friends, like the community could. But I can certainly have my opinion of Thomas as a human being, from a perspective taken from about 83 miles away.

What I know is that there is much to be learned from the life of the Aplington-Parkersburg head football coach, to state just one of numerous titles Thomas will be remembered by. He was a molder of men, ultimately sculpting four of his players in to multi-million dollar-worthy NFL beasts. Tell that to the 8-A football squads in central Texas. He was the face of mass makeover of a small town, all but literally wiped from the U.S. map by the most devastating natural disaster in Iowa's history. But his efforts to rebuild Parkersburg from the ground up, and his ability to lead the town's high school football team to victory every Friday night, was shadowed by his faith in God; the same faith that gave him strength and will to do all that he did for his town.

Potentially with another half of his life to live, Ed Thomas was taken from this earth far too soon. The crowd of mourners at his funeral would give most Triple-A baseball crowds a run for their money. It is one thing to mourn the passing of an American icon, television personality, or star athlete; it is another to see a man, a changer of lives, a rebuilder of hopes and dreams to everyone he knew, innocently plucked from a tiny town like Parkersburg. Not that you have to be the man Ed Thomas was, but why wouldn't you want to be?