Rogallo Hall of Fame Inductee – Ed Stein

Ed grew up in New York State and was fortunate to have the opportunities to pursue a variety of adventure activities. While in college and graduate school, he worked as a ski instructor, interspersing that time with riding motorcycles and racing road bikes. However, his true sense of adventure developed during his time in the military. He attended jump school and was part of a sport skydiving club, performing in military skydiving demonstrations.

These experiences came together while he was in France participating in a bike race with a group of international ski instructors. While riding up the Puy de Dôme—one of the occasional climbs featured in the Tour de France—he saw people flying off the summit with what appeared to be square parachutes (later discovered to be parapentes). With his background in skydiving, this immediately captured his interest and sparked a desire to pursue the sport.

Upon returning to the United States, he found an instructor with the American Paragliding Association (APA), which at the time was still in its infancy. From that point on, he became fully immersed in paragliding.

In 1990, he became an instructor, and in 1991 he was accepted to the U.S. Paragliding Team. Following the world championships in France, he became deeply involved in competition flying, participating in numerous European World Cup events as well as competitions across the United States. As a sponsored pilot for the manufacturer ADVANCE, he flew nearly every day—whether in the air or kiting on the ground, rain or shine.

He played a key role in opening paragliding access to sites that had previously been exclusive to hang gliders. Drawing on his background as a ski instructor, he helped open one of the major ski resorts in Lake Tahoe for paragliding and hosted paraski clinics. In addition to holding cross-country (XC) distance records at local sites, he has hosted—and continues to host—numerous XC clinics for local pilots. Notably, some of his students have gone on to surpass his own distance records.

He was also selected as a member of one of the first sponsored tandem clinics in the United States. Over the past 20 years, he has been actively involved in organizing tandem flying festivals in Ghana, West Africa, and was hired alongside a colleague to assess a mountain in Nigeria for paragliding potential. Beyond these festivals, he has contributed to training members of the Ghana military and police service in basic paragliding skills, with the goal of developing their capabilities as first responders rather than for recreational flying.