As is the case with many monumental inventions, the Frisbee wasn't really the product of any one person's imagination. But Ed Headrick, who died last week of a stroke at age 78, deserves credit for taking an idea that existed in various forms and in various places around the country and coalescing it into a form that, with a little marketing help, caught on and became a part of the American culture.
Few people ever have the insight to find an idea like this whose time has come. Most people, if they do think up such a thing, forget to write it down until the idea passes forever with the moment. But Headrick not only perfected the modern Frisbee, he lived for Frisbees. Some would say he even became Frisbees, which is literally true in a macabre sort of way. At his request, his remains are to be cremated and molded into a limited number of discs.
Perhaps this is to put a literal stamp on the words of his son, who told the New York Times, "When we die, we don't go to purgatory. We just land on the roof and lay there." But it isn't our place to judge such things. We are instead intrigued by the life of a man who, in a small way, changed the way Americans spend time in the park and gave dog owners a new toy that could be thoroughly enjoyed by both dog and owner.
By the time Headrick got a job at Wham-O in the mid '60s and was told to find a use for all of the left-over plastic from the Hula-Hoop craze, various people already had begun to toss discs through the air for fun. In New England, college students used pie tins from the Frisbie Baking Co., of Bridgeport, Conn. They developed a game around the discs. A decade earlier, a man named Walter Frederick Morrison invented a flying disc of his own, but the time wasn't right. He sold the idea to Wham-O, but kept his name on the patent, which ended up earning him a lot of money.
So the idea was ready-made for Headrick, but he made it fly. He perfected the design. He founded the International Frisbee Association, and he invented Frisbee golf, a game the Times estimates 4 million people play today.
In retrospect, the idea seems like such a natural for the times. The nation was transfixed by tales of flying saucers, its own fledgling space program and a new television show called Star Trek. But retrospection always is 20-20. It's much harder to see those things at the time. Such was Headrick's contribution to modern American life.