ED

As I said in a previous post, this has been a couple of rough weeks. I shared my Kitty Cat Saga… (Rascal is still hanging in there, BTW, but I did not feel it was the place to memorialize my dear friend, Ed in a post with the cats.) As some of you also might remember, I sometimes do postings about folks I consider heroes in my life… people I truly admire for one reason or another… and Ed fits in that category. I have known Ed since sometime back in the 70s… we were among the handful of people who started a couple artsy groups here on the shore, the Eastern Shore Art League and ACES, the Arts Council of the Eastern Shore. Ed and I tended to be on the same boards all the time, he was usually treasurer, I preferred being VP but occasionally got stuck as president, so we spent a lot of time working together over the years. When our new school was being built, Ed set up my dark room for me. He was a wonderful photographer back in the day when it took serious work and a bit of genius to produce awesome photos. I really admired his talent.

Ed and I agreed politically and had the same religious/spiritual feelings which made things comfortable since neither of us felt any need to work on converting the other. He was much in the ‘live and let live’ mode, tho he did not always suffer fools gracefully. In many ways, Ed was quite, what I tend to call, understated. He was a brilliant man but extremely humble. There was no need to tack a bunch of initials before or after his name, no need to impress. He spent much of his life in quiet service to others, without the need to pound on his chest and brag, ever. In all the years I knew Ed, I swear I never heard him once brag about anything he did, and trust me, he had a lot he could have bragged about.

Ed was comfortable. I just thought of that, comfortable… a perfect word for him. He had a great sense of humor, a brilliant wit, a very mature satirical sense of humor. Lesser lights often missed what he was saying. Personally, I enjoy folks who can make a pun in Latin and never crack a smile – except in his eyes. His eyes always danced with humor. When one or two of the rest of us would crack up to the bewilderment of the rest of the group, he would not be able to hide his grin, then he would shrug with one of those, gee, what’s the matter with them looks. Yes, I will miss his humor.

On the other hand, sometimes his need for a good laugh would just take a hold of him, but when that happened, the world got to see it. Many years ago the Arts Council decided to put on a Murder Mystery dinner. Ed and I poured over possible scripts and both picked the same one. We were also in charge of casting. The word wicked comes to mind. We rolled on the floor casting our Murder. Folks don’t know who anyone else is going to be until the night of the performance dinner. Our Mystery involved an Italian gangster as the murderer, a nightclub act, a priest, a nun (the Sister was the killer’s sister), his mother (an Italian mama) and the usual police and misc. cast of innocent and guilty. Ed decided to play the role of the Italian mother of the gangster, I, in all my purity, was the nun. Gee, that made Ed my mother! For those of you who knew Floyd, he was the priest. Enough said.

            

In the last few years Ed has been involved with SPOTS, our group working on the Train Station down town. He was invaluable at our plant sales and saved our butts at our Autumn in Onley event picking up the slack whenever someone was not at their post. True, Ed had slowed down… leukemia will do that to ya. But he kept on going, having a hip replacement and then cataract surgery so he could see to drive at night again to make it to our board meetings in the winter.

    To say I will miss him is an understatement. But I also know there are many others who will miss him, too. Guys like Ed are few and far between. Those of us who knew him were so lucky.