EDWARD A. "NED" COLT

1956 - 2015

Colt, Edward A. "Ned" After cramming several lifetimes' worth of adventure into 58 years, Ned Colt died peacefully on February 10 in Boston, surrounded by his family, in the aftermath of a stroke he suffered on Naushon Island, Massachusetts. Born in Philadelphia on April 27, 1956, Ned grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts, where his love of adventure and the outdoors showed itself early, in his explorations of the mill pond at the family house on Cape Cod and his clandestine rides on ice floes in local rivers. After graduating from Noble and Greenough School, he attended Connecticut College, where Ned carried out his love of learning in the wider world by spending a semester at sea; a semester at the National Theater Institute in New London; and semesters off during which he worked in Argentina, backpacked through Latin America, and crewed on charter boats in the Caribbean. After graduating in 1980 with a degree in theater, Ned worked briefly as an actor in New York and a carpenter in Boston. He found his path in broadcast journalism, a career to which he was drawn because of his love of travel, his curiosity, and his gift for establishing instant and long-lasting bonds with people. He worked as a news reporter and producer in Duluth, Jacksonville, and Raleigh before landing at Channel 7 in his hometown of Boston. But Ned's curiosity was global. In 1992, he became the first Fulbright Scholar posted to Albania, where he co-designed and taught a journalism curriculum at the University of Tirana. Then he and a friend started a freelance news production company, through which they spent four years covering the Balkan War to the BBC, the CBC, NBC, NPR, and the Christian Science Monitor. This was the first of many conflicts Ned would cover. During the bulk of Ned's career, from 1996 to 2008, Ned worked as a foreign correspondent for NBC News, using the power of broadcast journalism to bring attention to suffering people around the world. Based in Beijing, Hong Kong, and London, he covered wars, revolutions, and natural disasters in more than 25 countries, including East Timor's struggle for independence, the fall of Indonesian president Suharto, the tsunami in Sri Lanka, and the earthquake in Kashmir. He was also able to draw on his interest in the environment by reporting on efforts to preserve orangutan habitats in Borneo and panda habitats in China. Much of his time was spent covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, often under difficult or hazardous conditions. In 2004, while covering the uprising in Fallujah, Ned and his TV crew were kidnapped and held for three days by Iraqi insurgents, a situation in which Ned's grace under pressure served him and his colleagues well. In 2009(ck), Ned left NBC and became an Adjunct Professor of Journalism at Boston University. Wanting to learn how to provide more direct help to the people on whom he had reported for so many years, Ned went back to school, earning a master's degree in public administration at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, from which he graduated with honors. He then worked as a communications officer for the International Rescue Committee, based in Islamabad and Amman. At the time of his death, Ned was based in Erbil, Iraq, working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, trying to bring the world's attention to the humanitarian crisis caused by the conflicts in Iraq and Syria. Though Ned spent much of his career abroad, he always looked forward to returning to the place he considered his true home: Naushon Island, off Cape Cod, where he was able to spend time with his beloved family and friends and express his lifelong love of the sea. There, he masterminded the design and construction of a shared vacation home, and used his carpenter's tools to help build it. Whenever he visited, Ned was the champion quahog digger, the most avid snorkeler, the most persistent lobsterman, and the most dogged bushwhacker. He was the guiding force behind the annual work week at the island's arboretum, where he and his friends pruned shrubs, cut away catbriar, and planted saplings before cooking good food, drinking good beer, and laughing and talking long into the night. In 1997 Ned met his future wife, Cathy Robinson, a Canadian news producer and writer who shared not only his interest in humanitarian work but also his love of travel and adventure--and increased his happiness by a factor of a thousand. Ned had to cancel their second date because, as he explained, "I've got to cover Mother Teresa's funeral" (a line, though perfectly true, that could be used only once). He and Cathy helped fund the college tuition of a young Afghan man he had met on assignment in Kabul. During the eighteen years Ned and Cathy spent together, they scuba dived the Great Barrier Reef, skied Val d'Isère, and bungee-jumped in New Zealand. They celebrated Ned's fiftieth birthday by swimming with great white sharks in South Africa and Cathy's fiftieth by swimming with whale sharks in the Philippines. Two weeks before his death, Ned and Cathy swam with manatees in Florida. Ned was predeceased by his father, Henry F. Colt, Jr. He is survived by his wife, Cathy; his mother, Lisa, of Easthampton, MA; his brother Harry and sister-in-law Sandy Bell Colt of Belgrade, ME; his brother George and sister-in-law Anne Fadiman of Whately, MA; his brother Mark of Medway, MA; his nephews, Ian and Henry; his nieces, Maya and Susannah; many much-loved cousins; and numerous friends from around the world. All of us will remember Ned for, among other things, his humility, his idealism, his mischievousness, his stubbornness, his devotion to friends and family, his rich baritone voice, his capacity to make even a walk to the dock seem like an adventure, his ability to make us laugh so hard we couldn't breathe, and his deep generosity: a quality apparent even during his final hours. A celebration of his life will be held in the spring. In lieu of flowers, please send a donation to the refugee or environmental organization of your choice.