By Joe Ranzau, Treasurer
Most of you knew Gill, or knew of him. For the rest, a short introduction. Gill Ediger started caving as a kid in the storm drains under Sinton, co-founded a grotto at Texas A&I University in 1967, and spent the next fifty-plus years making sure Texas cavers had community, places to gather, reasons to show up, and someone to needle them into doing some of the work. He co-founded the Texas Cavers’ Reunion in 1978, then ran more than twenty of them. He chaired the TSA multiple times, the first and last 27 years apart. He edited The Texas Caver. He compiled the first full membership directory in decades. He led trips to Mexico that turned first-timers into lifelong cavers. He spearheaded building the cabin at Cueva del Brinco for Proyecto Espeleologia Purificacion. He printed many of the T-shirts. He married cavers to each other, some with legal authority. He was also a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, a railroad engineer, a rafter, and a rancher of sorts, and none of that ranked above caving for him.
Gill died on January 4 at 78 after a long decline. Many of you helped care for him in those years. That was his own philosophy coming back to him.
Now, the news I have as Treasurer. Gill left his estate to the Texas Cave Management Association. Per his explicit wishes, the board is in the process of setting up as a permanent endowment to benefit Texas caving. Permanent means the principal stays put and the earnings do the work, year after year, for as long as there are caves in Texas and people who care about them.
Honoring Gill’s legacy
I want to be plain about what this means. Gill did not have children. Cavers were his family. He spent his life building the caverns where our community happens: TCR, the newsletters, the directory, the campground kitchens, the sauna and hot tub, the house on Mockingbird in Austin where you could park your truck while you went to Mexico. His last decision was to make sure that work keeps going after him. It is the same instinct that had him banging pots at dawn on the river so everyone made their miles. He is still getting us moving.
For those who worked and played alongside him, the lesson is not subtle. One person, showing up for fifty years, changes what a community is. Gill did not wait for permission or a committee. His rule was that there are no rules, and his practice was that somebody has to do the work, so he did it. Then he handed you a job.
The board will report on the endowment in future issues of Passages and at our meetings as it is put to use. We would rather do this carefully than quickly, and I expect Gill would have had opinions on both counts.
Two thanks. First to the care team and folks who managed his estate, who spent years keeping Gill safe and at home for as long as possible. Second to Gill. You gave us TCR. You made sure we could contact each other. And you didn’t stop there: multiple caver cabins, a lot of bumper stickers, and now a permanent endowment. We will use it well, just as we’ll value any bequests made by cavers.
Gill wrote a poem in 1970, asking to be laid to rest in a long cave where passing cavers could see him. In a sense, that is what this bequest does. Every project it funds will have him in it.
Vaya con Dios, Gill.
