For the week of March 20 - 26, 2002

Ehlers remembered as colorful, endearing

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By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer

Someone transported Wood River Journal reporter Chris Ehler’s desk setup to the Senior Center in Hailey for his memorial service Friday. A tip jar stood near a lime green lava lamp that bubbled next to a computer monitor covered with every conceivable shape and color of plastic chatchka. By all accounts, the desk was nowhere near as colorful or endearing as the man who will never again sit behind it.

A memorial service for Chris Ehlers’ featured the reporter’s desk. He was known to enjoy "some really strange things," friend Scott Boettger said. Express photo by Willy Cook

Ehlers died March 9 in a car accident east of Idaho Falls. Here’s a little of what his friends remembered.

His favorite fishing fly, just because of the name: the woolly bugger.

His nickname, even though he was only 41: Geezer.

His reason for collecting hundreds of beverage can pull tabs: "because each one is different."

He was a man who broke the ice at his new job as a newspaper reporter five years ago by shouting across the newsroom to his new boss Wayne Adair, "line two Wayne, it’s your parole officer."

Fishing buddy and close friend Scott Boettger said Ehlers "didn’t care if he caught fish. What he cared about was enjoying the moment," not only in fishing but in all aspects of his life.

"What I loved about Chris was how comfortable he was with himself."

Most residents of the Wood River Valley knew Ehlers as a reporter for the Wood River Journal, a weekly newspaper with offices in Hailey.

Chris Ehlers enjoyed fishing for rainbow trout on Silver Creek. Photo by Patricia Healey

About 100 people showed up Friday at the Senior Center to pay their respects to the man who wrote the news and made friends with many he wrote about.

Mayors, county commissioners, police officers, reporters and editors all gathered to pay their respects to a "man who was never a threat to anyone," said Commissioner Dennis Wright. "Sometimes, with our job, you don’t particularly want to see a reporter come through the door."

Tawny Baker, a former Journal advertising manager, said Ehlers was "creative," "wacky" and "sincere."

Weekly newspaper work can mean "too many hours for not enough money," said former Journal publisher Dan Gorham. But Ehlers was "unflappable" in the face of stress and "thought it was pretty neat that he could write stories for money."

He was a "southern gentleman who wasn’t impressed by power or wealth," Gorham said, recalling a media frenzy surrounding the divorce of Hailey movie-star couple Bruce Willis and Demi Moore a few years ago.

The celebrity press "landed like aliens on Paul’s Market," and Ehlers, rightly, "casually stonewalled them," Gorham said.

"I loved Chris," said Patricia Healey, Ehler’s girlfriend and a Journal copy editor for 20 years. "He became everything to me."

Additional private memorial services are scheduled in Englewood, Fla., the state where his family lives and where he lived before moving to Hailey in 1997.

An obituary appears on Page A25 of the printed edition of this week's Idaho Mountain Express.

 

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