Peggy Clifford

I knew Ned for 50 years. I loved him on sight and I still love him.

He was perfect.

Even his imperfections were perfect. As you may have noticed, he was bald, but in his presence, men with hair looked over-dressed.

Talent was in him like light He could have been a great painter, a great architect or a great designer, but he had no interest in the either/or concept, or limits of any sort.

And so he made brilliant paintings. designed striking buildings that derived from no “school” but his own, conjured and made furniture that renders all other furniture obsolete, and he was a professional golfer, a teacher, a ski instructor, a businessman, a politician, a rancher, a writer, and a fierce advocate.

He didn't do all those things at once, though he almost always did several things at one time, but he never seemed to be in a hurry. In Satchel Paige's words, Ned “jangled gently as he moved.”

Ned was a pluperfect anti-politician. In 1970, he and Hunter Thompson ran on the Freak Power ticket in Aspen/Pitkin County, Colorado. His platform was a visionary, but practical program for preserving both the pristine wilderness and the unique character and small scale of the town. Its simplicity and logic were dazzling. As residents rallied in support of Ned, business and real estate interests launched an ugly scare and smear attack; Freak Power lost by a narrow margin. 26 years later, Ned made another foray into politics as the Libertarian candidate for governor of Connecticut. The primary plank in his platform was, to put it as politely as possible. school reform.

Ned lost the election, but children and parents won a passionate, eloquent champion. In newspaper columns, a blog and on public access TV, Ned had at the schools and the people who run them. His last book will be published next year. Among its possible titles is “a dangerous man,”

Ned was dangerous -- in the way that Jefferson and Thoreau were dangerous. And that's not bad for a former captain of the Yale golf team.