July, 2001

A letter in my mailbox this morning from Apryl Kennedy, way over here in the Czech Republic where I live now and I knew the moment I fished it out of the box that Ray was dead. I don't know why those thing are, but they just are…sometimes you know. Been two years now, almost exactly two since I last saw them both, took a long slow ride out across Tomahawk Lake with Ray at the wheel, nosing into all the bays we fished, throttling down to watch a couple loons dive and surface, then home to fried walleye and conversation. I'm at an age now where friends die, but I find myself today in sudden unexpected moments of tears streaming down my face, remembering.

Thirty years we fished together and more than forty we've been friends. You can't fish with Ray over the long haul and not be his friend. A controversial guy I guess in some ways and if the personalities don't fit, you soon find yourself going your own way. But if they do, you're locked in…a Kennedy man, a fisherman and a friend. There weren't any other kind. If you weren't a fisherman or a hunter or, in that best of all worlds, both, Ray just pretty much made small talk and skedaddled.

Guiding's going the way of so many time consuming professions in this time deprived world we've fashioned for ourselves. A part time job now for schoolteachers in the summers, plumbers with a knack for the lakes, guys who pick you up at nine and drop you off at five, spend their time worrying over the minnow bucket and make their livings elsewhere. Ray was on the lake at 6:30, fished along side you cast for cast, always reaching a little further, putting you in the good water and working the edges with his extra long cast, keeping you in the game and working hard. You didn't slack with Ray and if you were up to it, he wouldn't come in until it was too dark to see the bait splash. It was a pace he set that never pushed, just brought you along on the tide of his enthusiasm. Any fishing was good, Musky fishing was best.

So he's gone now and there'll be no more Kennedys on the lakes. His big wooden inboards no longer back out of the boathouse at dawn and the hunched silhouette of Ray on the lake at sunset is a memory. The lunch ground on Tomahawk is long gone and it's a fitting thing because the days of the great guides are gone as well. He was a great man, a great friend and a great guide, perhaps the greatest.

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