Ed Kociela
– By Josh Warburton –
They say a person’s success in life can be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations they’re willing to have. By that measure, Ed Kociela’s life was a raging success.
Ed passed away Monday morning, May 8th, 2023 at his home in Baja, Mexico. He leaves his grieving wife Cara, who I’ve also known for many years, and other family member and countless friends.
I first met Ed when I was a teenager, working my first real job as a classified layout person at The Spectrum around 1995, and Ed had just recently come to work there as well. By then, he was already a weathered and sometimes grumpy newsman, much like a character in a movie. He’d worked in Los Angeles and certainly seen some shit in his days. St. George, by comparison, must have seemed like Mayberry to him.
My memories of him during that time are now hazy. I worked in the classified department where I was part of the advertising wing of the paper, which often felt at odds with the news-gathering arm of the publication where Ed worked. So while we were all in the same building, there was always tension there, and sometimes Ed was part of that tension. He loathed that any news decision was ever impacted by the advertising department, but such is the way of most publications that are reliant on advertising to survive.
I left The Spectrum in early 1997, not terribly long after starting The Independent in 1996. The powers that be at The Spectrum were fine with our little rag existing for a while but then thought better of it, and let me go. From that point, I was in my own publishing world, and while our paths would cross just occasionally, I was doing my thing, and he was doing his, which was being the news editor and regular opinion columnist at the region’s daily paper, a big job. I’d read his columns, see all the (often negative) feedback he’d receive, and marvel at how he would continue to crank out opinion piece after opinion piece, which were often very contrarian to the more conservative masses of southern Utah.
Many years later, in 2011, Ed would make a big move away from The Spectrum and southern Utah to slower-paced life in Mexico, and his writing moved to St. George News. I think I’d hoped he would consider writing for us after he left The Spectrum, but he chose a publication with a larger (and certainly louder) audience, and almost certainly for better pay than we would later offer him. I even reached out to him in 2015 and literally asked him, “You ever consider coming over to the darkside Ed? I have a feeling our readership would be a lot more receptive to your ideas. :)”
He politely replied that he was happy where he was, and I could understand why. He was a pretty big fish in a still fairly small pond, and that pond had a lot of readers and lots and lots of commenters.
We later mourned the loss of our mutual friend, writer Michael Flynn together.
Then in early 2019, St. George News decided to make some major changes in their editorial lineup, letting go of Ed and two of their other prominent opinion writers, Bryan Hyde, and Howard Seier. Despite their strong ideological differences, Ed encouraged me to reach out to both of them to see if either might like to come and write for us, and while Bryan passed, Howard has written for us ever since, the yin to Ed’s yang, if you will.
Just as I do, Ed believed that the best ideas rise to the top, and through spirited discussion and debate. He was happy to be challenged, but he also had very strong opinions of his own, on just about everything. Evidence of that are his 230 columns that he wrote for The Independent over the last four years alone, which was a continuation of the eight years of weekly columns he wrote for St. George News, where he only missed a single week of being published in that Transition. That followed many more years before that when he wrote and edited for The Spectrum, so to say he was one of the most consistent and prolific writers in and for the Southern Utah area is an understatement.
In many ways, Ed was like a father to me, but even more of a kindred spirit, and even though he lived far away, I very much appreciated his presence in my life, and I will miss him dearly.
From one long-haired, guitar-playing, raider-loving, hell-raising, politics junkie writer to another…Godspeed, my friend.
Viewpoints and perspectives expressed throughout The Independent are those of the individual contributors. They do not necessarily reflect those held by the staff of The Independent or our advertising sponsors. Your comments, rebuttals, and contributions are welcome in accordance with our Terms of Service. Please be respectful and abide by our Community Rules. If you have privacy concerns you can view our Privacy Policy here. Thank you!
Click here to submit an article, guest opinion piece, or a Letter to the Editor
