Parkinson’s is a disease. To Dix Hills’ Ed Norris, it was also a challenge and an adventure.

“He did outdoor activities of every kind, from snowmobiling to paragliding, and he continued to do them” after his 2000 diagnosis of the progressive nervous-system disorder, said his friend Malcolm Stitt, formerly of West Babylon and now of upstate Pawling.

“It took a while in the early phases for him to [learn to] talk to his arms and make them do what he wanted,” Stitt said, “but he had no problem being out in high-risk situations."

In one extraordinary incident, Stitt recalls, “He was hang gliding and got hit by some wind gusts, and it knocked him down in elevation. And he was down around power lines — those big, massive power lines with the big stanchions, a hundred feet high — and he actual

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