I have just been told of the passing of my old friend and
fellow curmudgeon, Edward Hite, known to all of us as Ned.I
have known him since his Virginia days and when I moved to
delaware he was the State Archivist, or some such
position...Always on the edge, always willing to project
another view, he was a great gale of fresh air for all of us
(once we became hardened by his steely comments). For us in
delaware it truly marks an end of an era. Ned scattered his
critiques far and wide,like a whiff of intellectual
grapeshot.  Someof them were useful, some were poorly aimed,
all seemed to follow his peculiar dialectic. I remember the
conferences of the seventies when giants walked among us;
James Deetz, Ed Rutsch, John Cotter, etc. I remember Hite
engaging them all in discourse. He was our Socrates (or more
realistically Diogenes)and he tested our theories without
any invitation.When I taught the first course in Industrial
Archaeology at penn there was ned to encourage me in what he
called the "lunatic fringe"(he must have been a life
member). When I spoke about ephemeral products of culture
like the paper leavings of McDonald's ,Hite was there to
goad me on. I recall a conference where I chaired a session
on I.A. and Rutsch asked me where Mao was. He meant Hite.
Hite had finished his talk, walked off the stage and out the
doors of the symposium. That time he spoke of his greatest
love, bog iron furnaces and their resultant complexes,etc.
Yes he was merciless in sometimes ill considered remarks.All
of us have been hit, some more than others. But I believe he
embodied the old Hamlet addage that if he hurt anyone its
because he shot his arrow into the air, missed his real
target, an idea, and hit his friend.I will miss him terribly
and am very happy that I had several stimulating, albeit
rambling, dialogues with him in Rehoboth at the last MAC's.A
book dealer there was supposed to have his essay on archive
research methodology. When I told ned that he didnt have it
he said he would send it to me.He obviously had another
issue on his mind.
Hopefully, in the future , there will always be places for
people like Ed Hite. I look at my large photo negatives and
prints of the now vanished 18th century redding tannery in
Middletown, delaware, and recall how ,when he found out I
was going to research it, sent them to me. Big cameras are
better than small ones, he resolutely told me.I warmly
recall our conversations about arcane subjects which was
obviously a specialty of ned's, I remember with fascination
visiting Lackluster Lodge ,his truly singular historic house
in camden, delaware.
Delaware has been dealt a double loss recently, first Ron
Thomas and now Ned. The tide of mortality must be collected.
I miss them both, so different and yet so idiosyncratic in
their own ways.Like Fitzgerald's wondrous metaphor in the
Great Gatsby, both of them had found themselves in a boat,
rowing against the current of their age, borne inexorably
into the past.I am convinced that the love of past time and
its resultant material assemblages bewildered Ned all his
life...

Ave atque vale Ned....I will miss you terribly and thats the
god's truth.   dgo