Edwin Howard Klink

West Point, 1965

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Tad Ono on August 15, 2008:

Ed Klink and I were roommates first semester Plebe year. At less than 180 lbs, it took a lot of guts, hard work and determination to play on the line but that's exactly what he gave to football and everything else he achieved in life--which was considerable--as a Harvard MBA Baker Scholar, businessman, artist and father. We hung out together all four years, Klink, Judy, Hiro and I. He and Mike Berdy were always looking after Hiro to make sure I was not abusing her excessively, in my youthful, tyrant ways. We shared a very memorable trip to Copenhagen and Paris after our senior year AOT, part of which we were joined by Johnny Johnson and Bill McCreary. Picture Klink trying to barter with one of the ladies in Pigalle with a telephone token. You can imagine what she told him he could do with that token. He wrote for me in the yearbook, and I for him. He was our best man at the wedding. We saw one another after graduation, at Ranger School, at Fort Jackson when he came back from VN the second time, at Harvard, and at Indianapolis, where he moved to found his business. Then, shortly after our 25th, where he told me about how he was searching for something and was not sure where he was headed, he and Judy separated. Klink went his own way, remarried, studied art, moved to Santa Fe and became an accomplished artist. He also distanced himself from the class and classmates. This was not a repudiation of WP, his old friends or the Army, but rather was Ed's way for him to pursue his new life, in his determined, focused way. His new wife was into New Spiritualsm; Klink had found his soul mate and a new life. About 6 years ago, he called out of the blue when he and his wife came to the islands to do some bone fishing in the Christmas Islands. He said, on the phone, "Ono, you'll never guess what I'm doing now. I've become a right brain guy". "OK, Klink, I give up". "Ono, I'm an artist." Of course, I laughed and told him he couldn't draw s---. "How about dinner, you still eat meat?" "Got some free range chicken?" "No, Klink, I don't but how about some salmon?" When Klink got into something, he really got into it. They came to the house, we had a very relaxing dinner over some wine, talking about life, what was truly important, etc. Klink had gone from being a very conservative Republican to a liberal/libertarian kind of guy. But he was very content, at peace. He was clearly operating at a different pace compared to the type A, take no prisoner entrepreneur pace that he was at the last time I saw him. We exchanged some emails after that but that was the last time I saw Klink. Never knew he was sick. I am very saddened that he left us so early and in the way he did. A guy who ate free range chicken ought not get lymphoma or any other dreadful thing like that. Klink, you were truly a one-of-a-kind and a dear friend and I will greatly miss you.

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