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Edson B. 'Ed' Snow Pompano Beach, FL QCWA # 4481 |
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COL. EDSON BLY SNOW, USAR - RET. COCONUT CREEK, FL
Retired Colonel Edson Bly Snow, USAR, passed away quietly on Nov. 24, 2011, at home in Coconut Creek, Fla., just 10 days after his 97th birthday. He was born in New York City, N.Y. on Nov. 14, 1914, the only child of Clarence Edson Snow and Grace King Larmonth.
He and his future wife, Edith A. Quinlan, both attended the Lincoln School of Teachers College, Columbia University, an experimental school financed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. They were "matched" by the school in the fourth grade, but didn't start dating until their senior year in high school.
Ed and Edie went to Boston, MS., together - he to MIT, she to Wellesley College. He graduated from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, where he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
Upon graduation in 1936, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Signal Corps Reserves and started a career with Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY, as an industrial engineer.
In 1938, Edie convinced him that they could live on 35 dollars a week and they were married.
He was called to active duty in the army nearly a year before Pearl Harbor, serving stateside at Fort Monmouth, NJ, Washington, DC and Lexington, KY. He served the last two years of WWII in North Africa and Italy with HQ Fifth Army and the British-led Army Group. After VJ Day he went to HQ US Forces in Austria, where General Mark Clark promoted him to Lt. Colonel.
Although he returned to Kodak after the war, he stayed in the Army Reserve for 30 years, retiring as a full colonel.
After retirement, Ed and Edie divided their time between Canandaigua, NY and Pompano Beach, FL, where he served as president of both the Upstate New York and the South Florida Units of the Wally Byam Caravan Club for Airstream trailers.
In 2003, he and Edie attended the Airstream rally at the Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex Junction.
Edie predeceased him on June 11, 2005.
Ed received his first "Ham" amateur radio license in 1930 and continued operating his "rig" well into his nineties. Under his call letters, W2BZN and later, W2UN, he was a member of the DX Century Club, certifying that he had conducted two-way communication with other amateur stations in at least one hundred different countries. He was also a life member of the Royal Signals Amateur Radio Society.
Edson is survived by his daughter, Wendy Anne Snow Love and husband, Charles, of Essex Junction and son, Dr. William E. Snow and wife, Irene, of Cleveland Heights, OH; six grandchildren, Andrew Love and wife, Jessica, of Salt Lake City, UT, David Love and wife, Esther Acosta, of Austin, TX, Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Snow of San Diego, Calif., Michael Snow and wife, Stacie, of Cincinnati, OH, Laura Snow of New Haven, Conn. and Sarah Snow of Salt Lake, UT; and one great-granddaughter, Arzelia Jane Love of Salt Lake City, UT.
Ed and Edie's ashes will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery in the spring.
Published in The Burlington Free Press on Jan. 3, 2012