[GeoStL] Dick Kelty Passed Away
- From: "Mike Griffin" <griff@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <geocaching@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:15:56 -0600
For those of you who love the outdoors and know good equipment, you will know
this was a sad loss. Mr. Kelty was a great innovator with outdoor equipment..
His legacy has touched the lives of many outdoor enthusiasts. I bought my first
Kelty backpack in the 60's.. Today, I own tents, sleeping bags and a youth
backpack that Soldier of Fortune and Bridge w/a T have both used on trips. My
son grew up with a Kelty strapped to his back..
Here is an article from the LA Times...
I love the last line... It was just like Dick to say something like that..
Mike
Asher Kelty, 84; Innovations Made
Backpacking Popular
By Dennis McLellan
Times Staff Writer
January 15, 2004
Asher I. "Dick" Kelty, whose innovative aluminum external-framed backpacks with
waist straps revolutionized backpacking in the 1950s, has died. He was 84.
Kelty, who suffered from congestive heart failure, died Monday at his home in
Glendale, according to his wife of 57 years, Nena.
For five decades, the Kelty name has been synonymous with backpacking.
A onetime cottage industry launched in the Keltys' two-bedroom home in Glendale
in 1952, Kelty Packs
Inc. earned a reputation as the Cadillac of backpacks.
>From heavy and cumbersome wood frames and canvas bags, Kelty went to a
>lightweight aluminum
frame contoured to the human body and a nylon bag.
He also padded the shoulder straps and added upright partitions inside the bag.
And his "hold-open
frame," which was threaded through the top of the bag, allowed easy access.
But most significantly, Kelty added the waist strap, which took the weight of
the pack off the shoulders
and redistributed it to the hips.
"I call Dick the Henry Ford of backpacking," Nick Clinch, an explorer for
National Geographic
magazine, told Nena Kelty in "Backpacking the Kelty Way," the book she co-wrote
with Steve Bogain
in 2000.
"I blame him for the overcrowding of the wilderness," Clinch said. "By taking
the weight off the hiker's
shoulders and putting it on the hips, he took the misery out of the sport. He
made it enjoyable for people
to go backpacking."
Rick Ridgeway, a mountaineer, writer and filmmaker, shares a similar view of
the man who outfitted
Ridgeway's 1976 expedition to the summit of Mt. Everest and later hired him as
a consultant for his
company.
"Like many innovators in America, he was inspired by a need for a piece of gear
that he couldn't find,"
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
1/16/2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-kelty15jan15,1,2445960,print.s...
Ridgeway told The Times on Wednesday. "He didn't like the packs that were
available, and he decided
he had to make one himself."
Born in Duluth, Minn., in 1919, Kelty moved with his family to Glendale in
1922. He made his first
visit to the Sierra Nevada at age 6 on a family camping trip, thus sparking a
lifelong passion for the
outdoors in general and the Sierra in particular.
During the early years of World War II, Kelty helped modify B-17s and B-24s in
Northern Ireland for
Lockheed Overseas Corp and then became Lockheed's liaison at an Army Air Forces
base in England,
where he met his future wife. He later joined the Navy.
Returning to Glendale after the war, Kelty worked as a carpenter and resumed
hiking and camping in the
Sierra. "He just loved that country and went there at every opportunity," Nena
Kelty said Wednesday.
The idea for what became known as the Kelty Pack was born on a warm July
afternoon in 1951 when
Kelty and his friend Clay Seaman were hiking in the Sierra above Independence.
Both men were burdened by their heavy and awkward Army-surplus rucksacks, which
had U-shaped
frames made of wood.
But while hiking down a trail, as Kelty recalled in a 1979 interview with The
Times, Seaman let out a
yell.
"Hey, Kelty - look, I've found something!"
Kelty turned around and saw that Seaman had placed the bottom supports of his
backpack in his rear
pants pockets.
In so doing, he had caused much of the pack's weight to shift from his shoulder
to his hips. Now he
could stand up straight and, best of all, the pack felt lighter.
At that moment, Kelty later recalled, backpacking's modern era began.
"We didn't fully understand then the significance of what Seaman had
discovered," Kelty told The
Times. "But after we got back, I started making some packs in my kitchen out of
nylon and aluminum
tubing. They had waist straps, which put most of the weight on the hips."
Kelty made two of the packs at first, one for Seaman and one for himself.
Then he made packs for a few other friends. Later in 1951, Kelty recalled, a
stranger turned up at his
door one night: It was a friend of a friend who wanted Kelty to make a pack for
him, too.
"I guess it was at that moment I first saw a business opportunity in
backpacks," he said.
The Keltys launched their business with $500 borrowed against their house,
which served as their
factory.
Working out of his garage, Kelty cut and shaped the aluminum frames, which were
professionally
welded. And on her kitchen table, his wife stitched together the nylon for the
bags on her Singer sewing
machine, which was soon replaced by two commercial machines.
Page 2 of 3 Los Angeles Times: Asher Kelty, 84; Innovations Made Backpacking
Popular
1/16/2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-kelty15jan15,1,2445960,print.s...
They made 29 backpacks in 1952, 90 in 1953 and 220 in 1954. As sales grew, they
moved out of the
house and into increasingly larger buildings.
In 1972, Kelty Pack was sold to Boston-based CML Group, which added other
backpacking equipment
to the line. Dick Kelty remained the Kelty chairman until retiring a few years
later. Kelty Inc. is now
owned by American Recreation Products Inc., headquartered in Boulder, Colo.
In addition to his wife, Kelty is survived by his son, Richard, of Santa
Barbara; daughters Anita Nitta of
Manhattan Beach and Angie Herman of Willits, Calif.; five grandchildren; and
three great
grandchildren.
Contributions in memory of Kelty may be made to Big City Mountaineers, Dick
Kelty Scholarship
Fund, 710 10th St., No. 115, Golden, CO 80401, or the Los Angeles Times Summer
Camp Campaign,
File 56984, Los Angeles, CA 90074-6984.
There will be no memorial service; instead, Kelty encouraged his friends to "go
take a hike!"
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
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