I just received this message from Boreegard (aka Mike O'Neil) about Gary Shaver.
ANNUS HORRIBILIS
The terrible news that Gary Shaver’s Beaverkill Trout Hatchery over there in Lew Beach, Sullivan County was barred from delivering trout for stocking (at least this year), came as a shock. His fish had tested positive for three pathogens—Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis Virus, Aeromonas salmonicida, and Yersinia ruckeri (Enteric Red Mouth), and while this did not prohibit him from selling his trout for human consumption, it effectively put the kybosh on his stocking operation for the rest of 2009. Those of us who have bought the Shaver’s beautiful, plump, lively trout each year (in my case to stock the fly fishing section of Woodland Brook) would have to scramble and make other arrangements—if that were still possible. Then came the worst possible news. On March 13th, in the middle of a work day (nearly every day was a work day for him), Gary suffered a massive heart attack and died before he could be admitted to the hospital.
The poet might weave limpid lines about the sublime beauty of nature—its gentle rains, the verdant mountains, the fiery sunsets. But try to wrench a living from the tempestuous, unpredictable vagaries of nature and you will soon discover that it is a hard road to travel in the best of circumstances. It takes a special person to carry it off, and Gary was just such a person—one with heart and solid resolution, and a droll sense of understated country humor that saw him through when others might falter. But this terrible year, this annus horribilis, was too much, even for him. To his wife Betty, mother Gloria, his children Sherry, Fred, Kevin, and Lisa, their spouses and their children, we send our profound commiserations, and love.
- Mike O'Neil
