Tuesday, October 26, 1995

LOGAN, Utah

From behind his executive editor's desk at the Mansfield (Ohio) News Journal, Bill Sedivy could always hear the whitewater calling him. Last spring, the 14-year veteran newsman listened, quit his job and hit the river.

The result is RIVER'S END - A COLLECTION OF BEDTIME STORIES FOR PADDLERS, Sedivy's 160-page tribute to and for those who love running rivers in kayaks, rafts and canoes.

Sedivy, 39, Professional-in-Residence in the Department of Communication at Utah State University, teaches students the journalist's craft while keeping an ear tuned for sounds of rushing water.

"As a subspecies, boaters tend to be honest, generous, intelligent, funny, sincere and just plain fun to be with," Sedivy says. "Most of my best friends are boaters. I met my wife, Maryl, on a boating trip."

After he left the newspaper newsroom in Ohio, Sedivy reached an agreement with the American Whitewater Affiliation to collect some of the best stories about river running published in the group's magazine since 1985, and put them in a book of bedtime stories for paddlers.

The 15 tales in RIVER'S END, he says, are "designed to help fellow paddlers endure those times away from the river."

Sedivy's whitewater tour runs from the New River in West Virginia to a float through the Grand Canyon, from navigating grizzlies in Alaska's Brooks Range to "Quebec's perfect river," from Idaho's Middle Fork to the Lower Meadow in southern West Virginia.

"For me, swapping stories with other boaters is an important part of enjoying the river experience," says Sedivy, himself a commercial raft guide. "I hope this book can help readers feel as if they're at the river."

RIVER'S END is published by Big Dog Publications, of which Sedivy is president. One-third of the proceeds of the book's sales goes to the American Whitewater Affiliation for use in its river conservation programs.

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