They will celebrate Ed Ziegler Saturday afternoon at his alma mater, Newport Central Catholic High School.
It won’t be the first time. But the question is: Will a three-hour memorial, from 1 to 4 p.m., be nearly enough time for this Renaissance Man who did it all and did it all so well before his Oct. 30 death at the age of 77?
Growing up on Ann Street on the west side of Newport in the Corpus Christi Parish, Ed excelled in sports – especially football – as well as academics at NewCath at a time when the football part wasn’t all that easy.
As the lone Northern Kentucky team in the Greater Cincinnati League, one of the top handful of high school football leagues in America, the Thoroughbreds were led by Ed to their first-ever winning season against the likes of Cincinnati Elder, St. Xavier, Purcell and Roger Bacon when those were some of the best programs in the nation.
But it wasn’t the speed and quickness, the toughness and two-way skills as a running back and linebacker that made the 6-foot, 200-pounder one of the most heavily recruited Kentucky athletes ever and NewCath’s first high school All-American football player. It was the fact that not only were all the traditional powers recruiting Ed, so were the Ivy League schools and all three military academies in a preview of what was to come for him as a scholar-athlete.
But it wasn’t just football at NewCath. Ed was that rarest of athletes who, as a track and field star, threw the shot and the discus while also running as a part of a champion 880-yard relay team. And wrestling in the super-heavyweight division, he once pinned an opponent in 12 seconds.
Ed was one of a kind. Just read the loving essay he wrote about his hometown, and the wooded and natural Cote Brilliante neighborhood his parents grew up in on Park Avenue in Newport that gave way in part to The Pavilions shopping center.
Or how that essay, reprinted in the Northern Kentucky Tribune five years ago, turned into a loving portrait of a grieving World War II family with the loss of their beloved son, Vince Steil, Ed’s uncle, in his early 20’s as a hero fighting in Germany, as a part of the series Our Rich History, edited by NKU Professor Paul A. Tenkotte.
It told how Ed, as a nine-year-old, was walking the neighborhood’s woods, only to discover his late uncle Vince’s initials carved into a large beech tree, now given way to parking lots where they did also honor him with a plaque there for the young men from the neighborhood lost in WWII.
At Notre Dame in a time when freshmen weren’t eligible to play varsity, Ed was hampered his sophomore and junior seasons by a recurring hamstring injury but came on as a senior in 1969 for Ara Parseghian to lead Notre Dame in rushing. “Now that Ed’s well, we have a top performer in our backfield,” Parseghian said of the then-213-pounder who led Notre Dame against the likes of Southern California, Michigan State, Northwestern and Navy as both a runner and pass-catcher.
“It would be a shame for a player who loves football as much as Ed to be sidelined again,” Parseghian said. But after college, Ed chose a different path, heading off to the UK Law School where he got his law degree before pursuing a master’s in law at George Washington U., where he earned highest honors.
And then a career as a law professor at the University of Denver School of Law, where he would become one of the nation’s top legal scholars with his work on zoning, urban planning, constitutional and administrative law and protection of property rights. A co-founder of the school’s leading institute on community planning and sustainable development in the western United States, Ed authored a five-volume treatise and classroom casebook that is the last word on the subject, having been cited in appellate courts in all 50 states as well as the Supreme Court.
Mentioning the Supreme Court here, avid outdoorsman Ed, who loved fly-fishing, was an occasional fishing buddy with his good friend, the late Justice Antonin Scalia. And as a global visiting scholar, traveled the world, lecturing in Europe and China.
But on his retirement, Ed was hardly finished being Ed. Outdoorsman Ed also worked on his poetry, publishing a 10-poem collection, What the Heart Already Knows.
He also took a leadership role in the Notre Dame Players Medical Research Project with Boston U. in its efforts to assess the impact of playing college football on former players’ mental and physical health for those who played from 1964 through 1980.
Ed not only assumed a leadership role here with work that has been described as “tireless,” he posthumously donated his brain tissue to the BU CTE Brain Bank for research purposes.
While most of Ed’s family lives near his Castle Pines, Colorado, home, his sister, Sylvia Burke, lives in Union.
The words from his Denver colleagues concluding his obituary say it well as a theme for Saturday: “We honor Edward Ziegler’s life, his service, his intellect, his kindness, and lively spirit. His global travel and lectures reflect a scholar who not only mastered his field but shared it generously across borders, cultures, and continents. In his memory, we recommit to the values he advanced: thoughtful development, respect for private property, sustainable communities, and the transformative power of teaching and inquiry. May his work continue to guide and his spirit continue to inspire.”
Indeed.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X @dweber3440.