Edd's Gatherin' Place

Born: March 19, 1946

Married Status: Married with two children, boy age 35 (Information System's Technician, graduate of USC - TSgt in Munitions with the McEntire Air National Guard; Flight School - F-16 pilot deployed with the Base during the Gulf War, War in Afghanistan, & the Iraqi War) and a daughter, age 31 (Teacher for twelve years, National Board Certified, Clemson graduate)

Parents' Occupations: Mother (stay-at-home mother) now deceased, Father (Thirty-year veteran of the US Army Air Force [WWII], Air Force [Korean War], Intelligence officer) now deceased

Education:

1964 - Graduate (sorry about the honors, I was a little on the rough side); Edmunds High School; Sumter, South Carolina - Attended Edmunds only as a senior as we were previously living in Hakata, Japan

1965-1982 University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina (sorry about the time, I was a little on the rough side although I finished on a full EPA Fellowship) with Bachelor of Science degrees in Management and Marketing and Biochemistry/Physics

1996 - University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina; was planning to enter that Fall, with a full Fellowship, in the University of South Carolina's Graduate Physics program but suffered my first of three heart attacks and was unable to proceed - did enter on my own but could not finish because of health

Honors and Awards: Life Scout (finished all Eagle requirements but we transferred back to the United States and by that time, at the age of 18, I was unable to take the Board of Review) - my son made Eagle Scout and loves to let me know!.. Oh, there are many plaques and nicely framed papers over my desk at home but that is all they are now, plaques and papers

Media Experience: none

Government Experience

State Employee:

1974 - 1998 Environmental Manager; South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (medical retirement in 1998 from three heart attacks and a subsequent diagnoses of a rare brain disease at the Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida) - sorry, I like to live life on the rough side

Military; none as the Selective Service qualified me as 4F due to the loss of my left eye at the age of 4 in a childhood accident while in the Philippines (sorry, I was a little rough on the side) - attempts to join the military during the Vietnam War, even with Congressional help, was to no avail

Political Experience:

1965 - 2005 Conservative Activism (began conservative activism during the Vietnam War). Along with a "small" number of other activists, was in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations audience when the American traitor John F. Kerry gave his "Winter Soldier" testimony on April 22, 1971) - during the testimony, Fulbright allowed Kerry's fellow traitors to applaud and cheer while threatening us with expulsion

Personal Experiences:

I have lived in the following areas: Sumter, SC (place of birth); Melbourne, Florida; Bangor, Maine; Clark Air Force Base, Philippines; Cocoa Beach, Florida; Herndon, Virginia; San Diego, California; Hakata, Japan; and back to Sumter, South Carolina. During our stay in Japan, two friends and I went with my father to Frankfurt, Germany on a three month Temporary Duty Assignment (TDY). While there, my friends and I (we were in the summer between the tenth and eleventh grades of High School) toured Europe arriving back in Germany only twenty-one hours before our scheduled departure back to Japan.

With my father, mother, and three brothers and sisters, I have traveled from the east coast to the west coast and back only once. However, during the summer of 1966, two friends and I hitchhiked from Sumter, South Carolina to Bangor, Maine to Prince Edward Island, Canada (my great-grandparent's home) and then back to Bangor. From Bangor, we then hitchhiked across the United States to San Francisco, California in a little less than three months and then flew home making it back only one day before matriculation. Moreover, maybe to answer a nagging question, no, I have never done drugs!..

Confession time, my run-ends with law enforcement, minor only and as a juvenile, which never amounted to any major offences. For starters, let us go to Herndon, Virginia, sixth grade skipping school, hitchhiking to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC, and spending my entire day at the Museum of Natural History. Occasionally a guard would eventually stop me but more than not my father showed up after a drive from the Pentagon checking on his wayward son. This continued well into seventh grade except for a small hiatus when my parents forced me to go to a Catholic school but the poor nuns saw the light and unceremoniously "kicked" me out after only three months (rough side again).

My other encounters with law enforcement came on four other occasions, three with the Military Police (MP) in Japan and once with the local Sumter County Sheriff's office. The first offence with the Military Police came on a night while on my motorcycle (small 60cc Honda) speeding on base. Trying to outrun them, I tried to do a slide under the rear gate to the Japanese town of Saitozaki but in actuality went through the wooden barricade. The second offence came when I and fifteen other teens took our Boy Scout forty-one foot Boston Whaler for an unauthorized spin out to Izu Island for a night of partying and scuba diving. My offence, not having a fire truck present while we filled the boat tanks with fuel and the small matter of having broke the lock to the fuel pumps.

My last run in with the Military Police happened when several friends and I, along with our girlfriends, took a rather long 150-mile trip, again unauthorized, to the American Naval Base at Sazabo, Japan. On our return trip, we actually ran into a Typhoon, which literally drenched our motorcycles so that they were unable to run. I was the only one that spoke Japanese well enough to hock them for a very, very, tight 100-mile trip back home. Needless to say, the home crowd was within thirty minutes of authorizing an air and rescue for us and was not in the best of moods. For some reason, the Base Commander deemed me the ringleader and I was the only one punished with a 30-day restriction against riding my motorcycle. The motorcycles were picked up several days later by a military truck but my father paid for the truck's use and the price to get the motorcycles out of hock. Of course, taking the mufflers off the bike and sitting on the front porch of the Base Commander's house did not help my case. Yes, to answer any nagging questions, my father was Acting Base Commander at the time.

My brush with the Sumter County Sheriff's office was minor but had they shown up fifteen minutes earlier, it may have had a different outcome. As a senior in High School, we were drag racing our parents cars on a public road. I had just lost one race and was sitting along with my father's car in a driveway of a friend's house when several Sheriff Cars arrived. To make a long story short, the deputies did not charge me with any crime because of my location, parked and sitting in a legal driveway.

Since those few incidents, I have not had one other encounter with law enforcement other than support them in normal citizen activities. It is inevitable, if we survive adolescence and the teen years, most of us grow up as productive and law abiding citizens.

Other Experiences:

• Hiked the entire length of the Appalachian Trail by segments from 1972 to 1982. Held a private airplane license, cropdusted, flew many cross country flights, co-pilot on a single-engine Beaver aircraft from Bangor, Maine to Seattle, Washington (all with a certified medical waiver because of the loss of my left eye) until the onset of major seizures

• Accomplished 501 (just had to get in that last one) free-fall skydiving jumps until finally realizing enough was enough. During that entire time had to use my emergency pack only twice

• I watched with my family from a second story hotel room as thousands of black schoolchildren and young adult blacks took part in peaceful marches in May 1963, protesting Birmingham, Alabama's segregation laws. Police and firefighters used force to scatter the protesters with large jets of water causing children and adults to surge, fall, and hurtle down the street. Many were even bitten by police dogs. Not accustomed to segregation, a major changing point in my life