Reed McManus, a mainstay of Sierra magazine's editorial staff for nearly 30 years, suffered a fatal heart attack on January 6 in Salt Lake City, where he was attending the Outdoor Retailer show. He was 59. That's Reed with his beloved pit bull, Sophie, above.
"Reed was one of the most experienced environmental journalists in the country," says Steve Hawk, Sierra's executive editor from 2010-2015. "He had the rare ability to apply his considerable wit to even the driest of subjects. The day before he died he sent me a text that had me cackling. But beyond that -- and more important -- he was a true gentleman, always."
Sierra senior editor Paul Rauber worked "cheek by jowl" with Reed every day for 25 years. "It wasn't always easy," he says. "Reed set high standards for himself and everyone else, and wasn't shy about letting you know when you didn't meet them. He was a meticulous researcher, an excellent writer, and a keen wit. The best thing I can say about him -- and the thing, I think, that he would appreciate the most -- is that he was a true magazine professional. His greatest loyalty was to our readers and their experience of reading Sierra magazine, which made him a relentless campaigner against any form of environmental cant and cliche. Reed's insistence on honest, heartfelt writing was a reflection as well of his deep commitment to the Sierra Club and its ideals."
Reed loved guiding trips for Sierra Club Outings, for which he had to pass a rigorous course of backcountry emergency medical training. Recalls Rauber: "I've shared a tent with him when a blizzard overcame our backcountry skiing expedition, and a raft as he learned to row (the hard way) down the Middle Fork Salmon in Idaho. He knew what wilderness was worth, and was always keen to share that with our readers, as in his 2007 feature about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Where the Caribou Roam."
Recently, Reed undertook to spotlight diversity in the clean-energy world in the series, Faces of Clean Energy (for example, here and here). "And finally," says Rauber, "he found an outlet for his mordant humor in blogging for the magazine (e.g. Defending the F-Word and Schadenfraud), wherein he served up current events in the environmental world with a side of easy wit. Reed has been an essential part of the tapestry of Sierra for over a quarter century, for which all of us, colleagues and readers alike, owe him a debt of gratitude."
Reed joined the Sierra staff in 1987, climbing the ladder from contributor to senior editor to interim executive editor. "Reed authored or edited countless stories -- some of them award-winning -- that have been integral to our member engagement," says Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune. "He and his contributions will be greatly missed."
Bob Sipchen, Sierra's editor-in-chief from 2007-2014, says "Reed was among the most lovable men I've ever met, one of the most creative magazine journalists I've worked with, and one of the biggest pains in the keister I've ever tried to 'manage.'"
Sipchen vividly remembers the day a representative from Tesla Motors showed up at Sierra Club headquarters with an apple-red roadster in need of a test drive:
Mischief in his eyes, Reed hopped into the pilot's seat. I admonished that we couldn't be away from work or the waiting PR rep for long. The bearded wild man hit the accelerator, pushing the electric convertible from 0-60 in those vaunted sub-four seconds. Grinning, he whipped the car nimbly through the San Francisco streets he knew so well and across the Golden Gate Bridge. The Muir Woods sign passed in a blur, and we whipsawed up Mt. Tamalpais' hairpin switchbacks, whooping, the office fading ever-farther into the distance. It now occurs to me that Reed may have been an incarnation of John Muir, the quiet Scotsman who once tied himself to a tree in a Sierra Nevada windstorm to fully embrace nature's fury.
Joan Hamilton, Sierra's editor-in-chief from 1994-2007, remembers Reed loving his cabin at Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada, telemark skiing, music (especially the Grateful Dead) and cars, like the aforementioned Tesla. "He loved wild places, but resisted the environmental movement's leanings toward gloom and doom," Hamilton says. "As a writer and editor, Reed hated alliterative headlines ('too easy') and any sort of 'eat-it-it's-good-for-you' writing filled with 'shoulds' and 'musts,' a genre he called 'eco-spinach.' His green pencil made many a manuscript -- including some of mine -- more logical, lucid, and fun to read."
Hamilton's predecessor, Jonathan King, who took Sierra's helm in 1987, recalls that Sierra Club membership nearly tripled during Ronald Reagan's presidency.
"With so many freshly minted members, Sierra's masthead grew to include half a dozen editorial staffers by 1987," King says. "Half of us on that staff were homegrown enviros with extensive Club resumes; the other half were magazine pros from other fields who learned about the issues by becoming immersed in Club history and chronicling its contemporary priorities and struggles.
"Reed straddled both worlds with greater skill and surety than any of us -- a quick study who smoothly tackled sensitive political stories from the get-go. But he also strengthened our ability to present outdoor-adventure features and columns with authority, for he was a real outdoors guy: an experienced backpacker and wilderness enthusiast whose skills and savvy would soon make him our go-to editor for pieces on topics ranging from ice-climbing to mountain-biking."
Marin County born and bred, Reed was an early single-track enthusiast who saw both sides of the then-controversial mountain-biking issue, and he penned a feature article for Sierra that helped reframe many readers' thinking on the topic. And it was around that time that the magazine started sending Reed out to chronicle his own adventures.
"Within a few years he'd reported from locales as varied as the rainforests of Australia and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, blending first-person adventure with pertinent politics with an ease that few writers could manage without substantial editorial hand-holding," King recollects. "It was a sign of Reed's enthusiasm for his work that before long he chose to share his newfound Alaskan expertise with Club members directly, as a trip leader on several Sierra Club outings to the Great Land. He's high on my lifetime list of Most Valued Colleagues, and he will be sorely missed by a great many of his own, past and present."
If this editor may be indulged a brief foray into the first person, among the memories of Reed I'll treasure most occurred at a recent departmental retreat on the Monterey Peninsula. It was Reed's birthday, and several dozen of us had made a big bonfire on the beach. As the hour grew late, everyone else trudged off to bed, eventually leaving only me and Reed to polish off a bottle of bourbon and jaw deep into the wee hours. It was immensely gratifying and bonding as one by one, the younger folks called it a night, leaving only us two 50-somethings still standing.
The last words in this bittersweet remembrance go to Reed's brother Doyle, also a career-long journalist:
"Reed's colleagues at the Sierra Club knew how devoted he was to them, to his work at Sierra, and to the cause of saving the planet. His friends knew him as a vigorous hiker, skier, expeditioner -- even, briefly, a scuba diver -- and an enthusiastic gourmet. But he was also a loving and beloved family man. He was fiercely devoted to his longtime partner, Kevin Adams; his mother, Lois McManus; his nieces and nephews Rachelle, Joe, Rosemary, Rob, Johanna, Peter and Grace; his brothers Chris and Doyle; and his sister-in-law Paula. He was devoted, too, to his late, sweet-natured pit bull, Sophie; now they are reunited. We miss him more than words can express."