Ed loved to operate heavy equipment. Even though he had a Construction Electrician classification and was an apprentice power lineman by trade in civilian life he was selected to operate the large double barrel paving machine when the concrete pour began on the 500 foot long airstrip extension at K3 in the winter of 1953. Ed and I had gone to Construction Electrician school together and we served for a year in CBD 1509 on Kwajalein Island together. It was while there that we volunteered for duty in Korea and were sent to K3 Korea in the last year of the war. Ed had a lot of friends and I was fortunate to be one of them. The last time I saw Ed was in the Spring of 1954 in the Navy transit barracks at Yokosuka, Japan where we were both waiting for transportation back to the states. I was ahead of Ed on the list and was due to leave before him. He knew that I was short on money and was insisting that I should let him loan me some money when he knew full well that the odds were against us ever seeing each other again. That is the kind of person Ed was. In 1955 after serving his country for four years in the Seabees Ed returned to civilian life and took up his trade where he had left off. In 1958 he was electrocuted in an accident on a powerline pole in Lubbock, Texas while doing the work that he loved. We lost a real good one when we lost Ed.
