Hi Bob,

Nice chatting on the phone

I put a copy of the Winnie Dette Tribute piece (American Fly Fisher this Fall issue) in the mail to you today (Jim, I had one for you, too but I guess Mary is sending one out of the batch I mailed to her).

I quoted several entries from the Diary in the article. This piece, as Jim stated, could be looked at as a prelude to a project he conceived on the Dette files. I know Jim is quite passionate about the files and the Diary.

However, this piece is actually going to be part of a book (started in 198 about the many fly fishers I have come to know, mostly from youth (I'm working on a chapter right now about Doc Dwight Webster, the noted coldwater fisheries biologist from Cornell that was my faculty advisor at Cornell in the early 70's). Webster contributed the fly tying for the color plates of John McDonald's Origins of Angling. He was also very into acid rain (he and his grad student Carl Schofield first identified the source and named it). He was most noted for his Brook Trout studies in tghe Adirondacks and strain development. This story will go into a journal mag first also)

I wrote a piece on Walt (In September 1994 Fly Fisherman Mag) when he died that Spring) and my childhood relationship with him and the family (that goes back to 1969 when I first stayed with them, and then lived with them several summers). I had saved school lunch money (secretly) at age 15 to collect a few dollars needed for a round trip bus ticket to the Catskill waters from my home in Binghamton, 65 miles to the west. I traveled alone, and Winnie sent Walt out to find me that evening fishing, for fear I would miss my bus back home. Walt offered me a room in his home for a week, but I ended up staying there many months over the years.

However, when Winnie passed in 1998, we didn't get something out on her. Another good guy was going to write it back then (we discussed the idea), but it never got between covers in any publication.

Mary had mentioned this to me a year or so ago, and I promised her I would write something for her mother. Mary stated to me that a week before she died, she sadly said that she would probably just fade away, and no one would even know she was in the business (I didn't agree really with her sad comment).

So, that's when I pulled out of mothballs the piece I had started in 1998, and added several quotes from the Diary that Jim had so aptly felt had historical significance. It helped greatly with insight into her early years. Joe Fox actually told me about the Diary before I met Jim, but Jim was the one who was excited about its significance, and insisted I read it, which I did. Good Going Jim!

I mailed both pieces to you, Bob, so you can get "the rest of the story"

The American Museum of Fly Fishing has copies, too, and anyone can purchase one for a few dollars from them directly. Just call them (when they are gone, they are gone)

Thanks Jim!
Thanks Bob, too
-Mike Valla