Asa died April 19, 2008. He lived in Lafayette, Oregon. Asa was born February 14,1922 in the family home in Pinkstaff, IL.

He grew up in Colorado, the son of an itinerant minister. After two years at Kansas Wesleyan University he was drafted in 1942 and reported to a CPS Camp at Downey, Idaho.

In 1943 he was accepted to the smokejumper unit in Missoula where he jumped that season. After the war, he finished his degree at Kansas Wesleyan and then graduated from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver.

Asa pastored many churches in Oregon, worked for the headquarter office of United Methodist Churches and retired from the ministry in 1987.

In 1993 Asa wrote and published "Static Lines and Canopies," a collection of remembrances of the CPS-103 Smokejumpers who kept the project alive during WWII.