Ed Headrick died August 12, 2002. Improving on a pie plate that people were flying around, in the 1960s Headrick designed the first “professional model” of the Frisbee flying disk for Wham-O, which had been selling the toy for a couple of years by the time he joined the company. The main complaint was the disk was “wobbly” in flight. By adding ridges to the top, he gave the Frisbee better lift and a straighter, more stable flight. The improvements were enough to earn Wham-O a patent on the toy.
“I felt the Frisbee had some kind of a spirit involved. It’s not just like playing catch with a ball. It’s the beautiful flight,” Headrick said. “We used to say that Frisbee is really a religion — ‘Frisbyterians,’ we’d call ourselves. When we die, we don’t go to purgatory. We just land up on the roof and lay there.”
His ashes will be mixed with plastic to be made into a special edition Frisbee for family and friends. [This is not a joke.]