A Shreveport native, Edgar was born to Edgar and Velma Warren Gleason. He spent his early years in nearby Dixie, where his father farmed and ran a general store. Many customers, Edgar recalls, rode horses and mules. Young Edgar, who worked in the store and on the farm, remembers how his father would "give away baskets of food" to hungry neighbors during the Depression. The family moved to Shreveport where Edgar took three years of ROTC while attending Byrd High School. He graduated in 1945 at age 16. Edgar entered Centenary College, worked as a sports reporter in his spare time for The Shreveport Times, and graduated with a bachelor of science in history, government, and economics. He joined Company C, 10^th Special Infantry Battalion, a local unit of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves. He was called to active duty in August of 1950, and shipped out in October with the unit to Kobe, Japan on the USS President Jackson. Upon landing at Wonson, Korea, he was assigned to Baker Company, 1^st Battalion, 1^st Marine Division. Edgar participated in the struggle at Chosin Reservoir, where his unit held the road and a pass at the base of the mountains, and helped cover the retreat for the rest of the division by fighting off Chinese attacks. Fifty per cent of the casualties, he estimates, were from frostbite. His unit was sent up to Uisong for about six weeks, where most of the fighting, he says, was in skirmishes in Operation Killer. It was so cold, he recalls, he had to place C-Rations against his body to thaw them out. Edgar, by then a corporal, was later placed in an S1 section in battalion headquarters in Masan, where he served for three months. From Korea, he was sent to Quantico, Virginia, for Officers Candidate School. He received his commission in June, 1951, and was assigned as company commander of E Company, 1^st Recruit Training Battalion at Parris Island, South Carolina. There he finished active duty and was released in May of 1952. Back home, Edgar took over the family's farm operation and also became a distributor for Exxon. He remained in the Marine reserves until retiring in 1976 as a lieutenant colonel. He married Mary Elizabeth Queyrouze on June 12, 1954. They have two children and one grandchild.