In Passing…Glen Sterling
Glenn Ray Sterling of Hulett, Wyoming March 3, 1942 – October 2, 2019

Glen Sterling, 77 of Hulett, Wyoming, was born on March 3, 1942 in Colorado Springs, Colorado to Joe and Dorothy (Austin) Sterling and he went home to be with his Lord, October 2, 2019 surrounded by his loving family.

Glen crammed many careers into his short life. He began bull riding while he was still in high school and rodeoed for 10 years. In 1970, he settled down in Schuyler, Nebraska where he began trapping and
making trophy saddles. He also invented the Sterling Trap while living in Nebraska and made and sold thousands over the years. In 1986, he moved to South Dakota and began his career with the South Dakota Game and Fish Department where he stayed for 30 years.  In 2003, he met and married the love of his life, Connie Erie. After his retirement from the South Dakota Game and Fish Department, they moved to Hulett, WY, where he continued his fur trapping and hunting. He also began building airplanes. He has built and sold twelve to this date. All are still in service today around the country, as well as in Africa where a doctor uses it to fly to his patients in remote areas.

Glen is survived by his wife, Connie; son, Glen Jr. “JR.” and his wife Sissy from Huron, SD; daughter, Audra Jedlicka and her husband Dale from Schuyler, NE; and stepdaughter, Tara Burnham and her
husband Gerald from Cedar Rapids, IA; grandchildren, Clint Jedlicka and Ashley (Jarett) Andersen, Toby Sevyn, Brady (Karen) Andrews, Lacey (Dave) Rohe; great-grandchildren, Haley, Eli, Kasey, Maddie,
Waylon, Halie, Dawson & Carson; and many numerous and wonderful nieces and nephews. Glen is preceded in death by his parents, Joe and Dorothy Sterling; sister, Ruth Noe from Weatherford, Texas;  brothers, Duane Sterling from El Paso, Texas, and Larry Sterling from Hot Springs, Arkansas.  Memorials
have been established to benefit either the Hulett Senior Citizens Center or the Hulett Ambulance Service.  Our husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather and brother will be greatly missed. The family wishes to give a special thank you to Lesa, Kim, and Heidi of Sharon’s Home Health Care.
A Memorial Service will be held at 10:30 AM on Saturday, October 19, 2019, at the Greater Hulett Community Center in Hulett, Wyoming.Arrangements are under the care of Fidler-Roberts & Isburg Funeral Chapel of Sundance. Online condolences may be written at www.fidler-isburgfuneralchapels.com.

Dave Hastings added:

The loss of anyone we care about can be a tough blow, but when we lose someone like Glen, the loss is marked far and wide. Finding the words to address that loss is a tough job. Men like Glen leave a legacy behind, both in in what they accomplished, but more important, who they are.  His quest for the best trap(meaning most reliable, practical, humane, efficient, and maintenance free)
coupled with his lack of concern for cost or marketability, led him to the trap that defines high quality.  And yes, you can buy cheaper, but you cannot buy better. Producing it free from issues like cost of
production and price-point margins, he simply approached that the way he approached everything he  did: he made it the best he could conceive, and ignored all other input and complications.  For decades of my involvement with the Trapping BMPs project, trap characteristics and performance became a very focused study, and most of the innovations that proved to be humane, practical, and
efficient in that 40 million dollar project were already incorporated into the MJ 600, decades ahead of the BMP process.
It is one thing to create something of remarkable quality, but another thing altogether to produce an airplane, and to do it so well and with such confidence that you get in it and fly it all over the country;  which he did. As testimony to his character, he was not the least bit arrogant about his work, but at the same time, he did not give a second thought to testing his work at 5,000 feet.  Traps and airplanes, of course, were only a couple of the products Glen created. In all of his endeavors and careers, he simply excelled. Few coyote callers will ever compare to Glen’s ability to not only coax in
the wily livestock killing coyote, but to take that killer out at distances that will boggle most riflemen.

That was, in fact, not just how he made and did things, it was how he lived. Whether he was making a saddle or riding a bull or making a friend, his focus and his passion for the best produced only one kind of outcome: the best.

Men like Glen are so straightforward that it only takes a couple of minutes to know exactly where they stand.  He didn’t have a political bone in his body, and was not patient with anything but the plain and
simple truth.  The fact that the FTA recognized Glen with the Hall of Fame plaque so recently has doubled in its meaning; so glad Glen was with us to receive it.  Glen will clearly live on in the hearts and minds of us who knew him; and certainly so in the artful way he created things like his traps. And his innovations will last far beyond us all. Glen’s goal was never to be a person famous for inventing or creating something. He just wanted the best of himself. But the results have, and will, benefit us all for decades to come.

We will miss him deeply.
Dave Hastings