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Fly Tying Group
Buszek Award Winner: 1992
Stan Walters
(first posted November 6, 2008; last updated March 4, 2009)
undated photo of Stan doing what he liked best: tying
Undated photo, probably around 1986 (?)
(photo courtesy of Marty Seldon, March 4, 2009)
Stan Walters was the very first fly fisherman I knew about after I moved to Eugene for graduate school at the university. Donna was teaching at the newly opened Edgewood school and one day she told me that one of her students had a father who was an enthusiastic fly fisherman and that I should meet him. At the time I knew nobody else who fly fished and I was trying to learn the local area on my own by trial and error. I met Stan but we never did get to fish together until the formation of the McKenzie Flyfishers a year or two later.
I liked Stan right away, not only because we were both transplants from the East where we had grown up not much more than 100 miles from each other, but simply because he was such a really sweet person. Unlike some who pass up no opportunity to impress you with what they know, there was never any pride or pretense about him. His modest and reticent manner tended to conceal deep reservoirs of knowledge and experience which could only be revealed through many hours and days shared in fly fishing activities.
The McKenzie Flyfishers was barely started when President Bill Nelson had us committed to hosting a big weekend gathering of fly fishermen for the purpose of organizing a national federation of fly fishing clubs. Stan was chairman of that committee and those of us who worked closely with him for nearly a year grew to know and respect him for his enthusiasm, his tact and sensitivity in dealing with others, and his unflagging good humor.
Stan's aversion to self-promotion kept his reputation as a fly tier largely confined to his home area until 1992 when he was finally awarded the Buz Buszek Memorial Fly Tying Award presented annually by the Federation of Fly Fishers since 1970. For more than twenty years he was content to teach his classes here while others from more populous regions were being promoted for this prestigious and coveted award. He may have been disappointed at being overlooked, but I never heard him mention it.
Stan again chaired committees for Northwest regional conclaves in Eugene in 1975, 1985 and for the Silver Anniversary International Conclave in 1990. The 1990 FFF Conclave is still being talked about by those who were there as the best ever. And people all over the country keep asking me when the Conclave is going to be in Eugene again. Much of the credit for its success was due to Stan's leadership.
Had he been so inclined, Stan could have attained international celebrity equal to any fly tier whose books, videos and magazine articles proliferate today. But Stan was a teacher and had no aspiration to become a professional fly fisherman by turning his avocation into a career, and many hundreds of flyfishers today are his beneficiaries.
Stan legions of friends will remember him each in their own way.... I like the way Isaac Walton recalled a departed friend as an excellent Angler, and now with God.
- Skip Hosfield, from his eulogy at Stan's funeral.
undated photo
I have to agree with Skip that Stan was a very sweet and kind person, even to a newby like me back in the early 90's. He was greatly accomplished as a tier, but you would never hear him bragging about himself. You had to pay attention and listen if you were to find out all of his accomplishments. He asked me to tie in Eugene for the Silver Anniversary, even though I was new and only tied simple flies at the Conclave. He still made me feel as though I had something to contribute and that he was just one of the guys. He was a gem of a gentleman as well as an excellent tier, and we will miss him.
- David Nelson, November 2008