"I wanted to fly ever since I saw my first airplane," Ed says. Born in Utica, Mississippi, he saw that first plane in the "sixth or seventh grade." Years later, he enlisted in January of 1942 in the U.S. Army Air Forces, and eventually trained in B-26 bombers. Sent to Sardinia, he and his bomber crew joined the 319^th Bomb Group. He was later ordered to Corsica where he piloted a B-25. He flew missions to bomb railroad yards, harbors, and shipping in France, as well as to pound German positions at Monte Casino. After his last mission Ed returned to Boston on the USS America. He was sent to Columbia, South Carolina where he trained in A-26s, a new airplane, before shipping out to Okinawa. Ed was seventy-five miles from Nagasaki when the second atomic bomb was dropped. He got home on December 23, 1945, but was soon called back to active duty. He worked in maintenance of atomic bombs, attended atomic energy school, flew in B-29s and B-47s, and served as an exchange officer with the RAF in England. Retiring in 1967, Ed taught mathematics at Airline High School and at the Barksdale campus of Louisiana Tech University. He also finally graduated from college in 1970.