Bernard Victor (Lefty) Kreh passed away yesterday at his home in Cockeysville, Md. He was 93.
The outpouring of memories and tributes on social media represents the profound effect the man had on our sport, his friends, and his fans.
LINK (via: The NY Times)
Tribute from a non-social media Brit
I was honoured to meet the man in Surrey, England, in the early to mid 1980s, when John Goddard (of “Caddis” fame), a good friend of Lefty’s, invited him over to give a casting demonstration to a small group of British flyfishers.
In those pre-fishing television, pre-internet casting demo days, Lefty was a relevation, casting a fly in a way that few of the Brits present, unless very well-travelled, had seen before: not merely with precision but with apparently effortless distance.
Afterwards Goddard introduced a young guy who was present, a man who had given a talk to his local, Surrey Branch of the Fly Dressers Guild, of which he was Chairman, a few months earler, to Lefty.
We shook hands. I think I managed a “Thank you, Lefty. Fantastic casting…”
He gave me a warm, friendly, hugely enthusiastic smile and a few words that left me walking away as if on imported air.
Probably the last of the Old Greats.
My wife and I had traveled to a small gymnasium in Darien, CT because I read in the paper of a Fly Fishing Show. The show was small with very little in saltwater fly fishing but Lefty was there. He began his presentation with a smile and friendly way of explaining what is fly casting. Lefty asked for a volunteer…
I pointed to my wife! Shock and horror! But he had my wife casting within 10 minutes. We were all drawn in by a gentle man who could talk to everyone in the room like he knew you. One lady me t to me said, “That looks easy the way he does it.” What a nice man. Last January we spoke about his wife……he loved her very much.