Edgar May, Vermont Senator, The Embodiment of a True Statesman

June 27 1929 – December 27,2012

Edgar May, he was the rarest of politicians.  He never hungered to be more than a state representative or to help those who he felt were the  voiceless in our society.  He was a pragmatist, working across the aisle in order to get the job done, he was magical in his way of bringing people together to solve a problem.  He was a true Kennedy progressive and I feel his loss personally, he was my dear godfather.

I wanted to share his story because for me, he is a symbol of everything in American that is possible, that is good, that is right.

He escaped on the last boat out of Switzerland in 1940 with his younger sister (Madeleine Kunin, she would later become the first woman Governor of Vermont) and his widowed mother.  You see, they were Jews, escaping the horror of the Nazis.  Most of Edgar’s French relatives perished in the Holocaust, even his favorite uncle who has served as a father figure.

Edgar and Madeleine remember their mothers first words when they could see Ellis Island, and amid the cheers and veracious clapping of the passengers, her voice rung so true. she said “This is America, anything is possible here”.  For Edgar and his sister, it was a prophecy.

One of my favorite Edgar stories was when he was a summer camp as young teenager and Albert Einstein came to visit the boys.  Edgar, after shaking Einsteins hand, refused to wash that had for a week, hoping against all hope, somehow, his DNA would be infused into his own brain and suddenly be a math whiz!  Alas, after it became clear that was a failed strategy, he washed that precious hand.

http://www.vnews.com/news/obituaries/3546411-95/kunin-edgar-center-springfield

He attended night school at Columbia University of General Studies while working as a file clerk for The New York Times. A course in journalism taught by Prof. John Hohenberg, inspired him to become a reporter.  He completed his studies at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University where he received a B.S. degree, summa cum laude. He was inducted into the school’s Hall of Achievement in 1997. He was a veteran of  the Korean conflict and served as a speechwriter for military officers, while stationed in Chicago.  He became a resident of Springfield in 1965, after he purchased Muckross Park, which became his life long, much beloved home. He treasured listening to its roaring waterfall and spent many summer days swimming laps arranging picnics at his pond, and tramping through the woods.  His nephews and his great nephews caught their first fish in Edgar’s pond.

His journalistic career began when he worked as a freelance writer for several years. His first reporting job was for the weekly newspaper, The Bellows Falls (VT) Times. He later worked for the Fitchburg (MA) Sentinel and The Buffalo Evening News.   While in Buffalo he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 for local reporting for a 14-part series on the public welfare system, entitled, “Our Costly Dilemma.” Other awards include the Walter A. Bingham Award of the Buffalo Newspaper Guild for outstanding journalism in Western New York; Page One Award Buffalo Newspaper Guild, and Best Feature Award from the New England Weekly Press Association.

The series resulted in a book, The Wasted Americans, in 1964, which brought him to the attention of the Lyndon Johnson administration. Sargent Shriver asked him to join The War on Poverty. He served as Inspector General of the Office of Economic Opportunity and fondly recalled establishing Head Start Programs throughout the country. He was also Deputy Director of VISTA, the national service program designed to prevent poverty.

He was a close friend to my family.  He and my father worked together at OEO under the Johnson administration, creating the head start program and working to improve access to food for poor families.  When Edgar was still recuperating from his accident, he came to live with us in our DC townhouse, in hopes of lifting his spirits, my mom and dad named my middle name after his beloved wife Louise (I am Elena Louise) and our bond was instantly formed. He officiated at my wedding, being a Justice of the Peace, he gave it the Jewish flare I needed!

Shriver invited him to be his special assistant in the American Embassy in Paris. During those years, he lived in the same apartment building as the writer, James Jones, and became part of a social group of writers who enjoyed many evenings of fine wine and hearty camaraderie. He was a Senior Consultant to the Ford Foundation, 1970-1975, where he wrote for Corrections Magazine. In addition to prison reform, he focused on drug abuse prevention and enhancing citizen participation.

He married his second wife, Judith Hill May, in France, where they met, and returned to Muckross Park in Vermont in 1973. Although they divorced in 2001, they enjoyed life at Muckross Park for many years and provided a welcoming second home to the Kunin clan of nephews and nieces.  May served in the Vermont House of Representatives, 1974-1982 and the Vermont Senate, 1984-1990, where he chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee.

When he returned to Vermont, he was not ready for retirement, and turned his energy to revitalize the city of Springfield, which had experienced a decline because of the loss of its highly regarded machine tool industry.  When the city received a grant from the state in return for situating a prison there, May successfully lobbied the Springfield Board of Selectmen to use the grant to build a health and recreation center for the community in an abandoned Jones & Lamson machine tool building.  He spearheaded an ambitious fund raising effort, was personally involved in the construction of the center, and recruited a substantial amount of donated material and volunteer labor, including female prisoners from the local correction center. He took great pleasure in watching groups of children cavorting in the pool, and seeing elderly citizens step carefully into the therapy pool. The community recognized his contribution by naming the center in his honor—“The Edgar May Health and Recreation Center”–on his birthday in 2009.

 

Edgar loved a good bottle of wine, good food, and good women.  He was as down to earth as one could be and yet could fit into any social circle, he never needed to impress, he just wanted to enrich his life experience and those of his fellow human being.

He always declared, every time we visited,  ” I have lived a life full of gifts, more than I could have ever have imagined, when I die, I will have no regrets.”