About Ed

Ed readily admits that he was born during World War II. 1940, to be exact. His father was a printer, plying his trade at Simplex Wire & Cable Company in Cambridge, Mass, ultimately to retire having run a very large print shop. Ed’s mother was a housewife who later went back to work at various low-paying jobs which allowed her to do her favorite thing - shopping. Ed had a brother, Bob, who was 14 years Ed’s senior. Bob died several years ago having spent most of his adult years bedeviled by alcoholism. His sister, Michele, is three years younger, something she makes sure Ed remembers each year.

Ed graduated from Belmont (MA) High School in 1957 and went on to Tufts College, where he lasted in his first attempt only one year. Actually, he was present in the area of the college often, but to say he was there for that year would be stretching the truth. He left at the strong suggestion of the Dean of the college and went off into the world to seek not so much his fortune, but a job. He worked at a state hospital as an aide for a while, then landed at the experimental foundry at MIT through the good offices of an early mentor, Howard Taylor, father of a friend and Professor of Metallurgy at MIT. While there, Ed took various courses at Boston University, Harvard Summer School, Wentworth Institute, and other schools in the area. When the MIT foundry closed down and everyone was laid off, Ed went to work briefly as a carpenter, then again as an aide, this time at McLean Hospital, a private psychiatric hospital in Belmont, another job that he greatly enjoyed.

Eventually that Tufts Dean agreed to let him back in. Ed finally finished his Tufts requirements in 1966, though he’s listed as Class of ‘64 at Tufts.

Upon leaving college Ed did what many good English majors did: he went to work for an insurance company. He worked first for Continental Casualty Company (which later became known as CNA Insurance), then for Prudential, then for Life of Virginia. He decided to become a software salesman when the Virginians decided that they’d had enough of Northerners and fired his ass. So he and his family moved to Illinois, where he’s been ever since doing lots of different things: sales, marketing, business consulting, web development, computer training. Today he continues with the web development and also is a licensed professional chauffeur and drives a limo part time for a small company owned by friends.

In the middle of all this work life, in 1968, Ed decided to go off to graduate school in English. First a part-timer, he quickly discovered that he was a far better student in grad school than ever he’d been in college. He was strongly encouraged by his teachers at Northeastern University (Boston) to apply for a teaching fellowship. The next year he was a full-time grad student in a department that included Robert B. Parker (about whom, go here), a recently minted Ph. D. who was to earn fame as the author of the “Spenser” mystery series. After attaining his M.A. in English from Northeastern, Ed went on to another teaching fellowship in the Ph. D. program in English at State University of New York at Stony Brook. He completed most of his pre-dissertation requirements, including passing his oral exams. However, the economic climate had changed radically. When Ed entered the SUSB program, there were 3 to 4 jobs available to each exiting Ph. D. in English. When he finished his orals three years later, there were as many as 20 exiting Ph. D.’s for each available job, and post-Ph.D.s were scraping by teaching part-time for pittances at multiple schools. So, by now having two kids and lots of debt, Ed and his family moved back to Massachusetts, where he resumed his career with Prudential. He had, of course, intended to complete his dissertation while out there in the work force. It never happened. So the world has never learned how and why a small cabal of late 18th-century religio-political extremists in England were mainly responsible for the preservation of the Anglo-Saxon language and its remaining literature. Ed has refused, oddly, to give up his many Anglo-Saxon texts and facsimiles and his Old English reference works. He even reads them every now and again.

Ed sings in a barbershop chorus, the famed West Towns Chorus and in a barbershop quartet, Kensington Road (see the separate page on Kensington Road). He is also an active member of The Unitarian Church of Hinsdale (IL), is its web master, and is a past President of the Board and recent Chair of the Finance Committee of the church.

In 1963, while at Tufts the second time, Ed married his wife Judith. He’s still married to her. They have two grown children, Carla, a nurse, and Jeremy, a popular bartender in Chicago. Judith attained her Ph.D. in nursing and is an Associate Professor of Advance Practice Nursing at University of Illinois at Chicago School of Nursing.

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