Outdoors Writers Awards /By Will Elliott
Author provides a boat-load of emotion
Outdoor-writer icons from across North America gathered in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the annual Outdoor Writers of America Association (OWAA) conference. Attendees view new products, talk trends and topics sources, and greet new and old friends connected with all manner of outdoors pursuits.
Top tourney winner Kevin Van Dam, a resident of nearby Kalamazoo, took time from the Bass Elite Series competitions to drop by and talk tackle with writers during a breakout session on Monday.
Jim Zumbo, a hunting writer best known for his current series on the Outdoor Channel, presented awards during an Honorary Awards Banquet on Tuesday. Numerous other print, audio, and video media personalities and editors made presentations and/or shared the four days of connecting with fellow communicators in the city best known as home base to former president Gerald R. Ford.
But it was the keynote speaker, a guy familiar to folks in the Grand Rapids and central Michigan area, who communicated his story most poignantly when he delivered his address following the Opening Ceremony breakfast.
Typically, OWAA officials select a key news-making figure involved in some sort of state, judicial, or social issue currently making the hot-button/hot-potato circuit in the media.
Instead, this year’s speaker, John Otterbacher, arrived as an area writer who had recently published his first book that is titled “Sailing Grace.” The book won a Best New Non-Fiction award from National Indie and was a finalist as a National Best Book in USA Book News. But most writers in the room had yet to hear about—and from—this personable, articulate guy who had served in the Michigan legislature and as an assistant professor of psychology.
Personable and glib, Otterbacher keyed on health issues he had supported as a legislator and educator. But it was his own series of health issues that grabbed the audience right at the start of his address and held their attention through a later book signing and craft-improvement seminar after his speech.
Most who suffer a heart attack make adjustments after the first or second occurrence. Life’s directions become more defined, health concerns heighten, and plans generally tend toward slowing and carefully monitoring one’s activities and involvements.
Otterbacher’s attacks came with such intensity and frequency that his cardiologists gave him less survival hope with each in a series of eight major heart failures and procedures. “I said to my wife Barbara in October that if I survived until next June we would go sailing,” he recounted. He described his wife’s response as the cocked head of a pet dog when you say something new and unfamiliar.
He survived that cold Michigan winter, found talented friends skilled at outfitting his 50-foot sailboat Grace, and gathered Barbara and their two daughters, Katie, 9, and Erin, 5, for the start of what was to be a six-year sail down the Great Lakes, through the Erie Barge Canal, at sea to South America and eventually to his family’s homeland in Ireland.
Adventures abound with his “all-girl crew” and the destination sights best seen at sea level. But it was the 1998 decision to face death with an effort to live a fulfilled life that makes his talks and text so powerfully heart-rending.
For details on the author and book, go to sailing-grace. com.
Area award recipients
Writers from Alaska to Florida attended and many took home awards, but New York State led the list of major honors presented at the close of this conference. Jay Cassell, currently with Field and Stream and formerly with Sports Afield and Outdoor Life, received the overall Excellence in Craft award for his many years of editing and book writing.
Closer to home, Western New Yorkers will remember the Bill Hilts Sr. columns he produced for years in the Buffalo Courier-Express. A founding member of New York State Outdoor Writers Association, and a regular attendant at OWAA conference since 1961, including a 39-year skein of conference presence, Hilts served in all offices and directorships from president to virtually every committee OWAA had standing.
During more than half a century of outdoors writing, Hilts kept a string of at least a half dozen writing assignments going. He currently serves as editor of North American Bear Foundation (NABF) and contributes freelance writings to outdoors publications.
For his lifelong efforts, he was presented the Ham Brown Award, the highest honor OWAA accords to one of its nearly 2,000 members. Often, years will pass before the next Ham Brown is formally presented.
Folks around Sanborn, including son Bill Hilts Jr, take pride in “Ol’ Bear” Bill’s highest national writers honor. Often asked to emcee area banquets and gatherings because of his dry wit, his acceptance speech was to the point. He held up his award, looked around the room and said “Thank you.”
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