Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 4, 1994 TAG: 9408180082
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By WENDI GIBSON RICHERT STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
``And I don't know any reason why I can't,'' she says, quite seriously.
Relaxing in her air-conditioned house - on a day when the temperature topped 90 humid degrees - Edwards says she plans to spend her remaining 62 years being the best mom, grandmother and friend she can be.
She also anticipates 62 years without the time constraints that ruled her preretirement days. ``I don't have to run somebody else's schedule, which I've done all my life. And, if I don't want to do something, I don't have to. It's just a wonderful feeling.''
Edwards left the council in May, after almost 11 years of heading the organization. But her interest in the well-being of others goes back to 1949 when she moved here from her hometown of Danville to attend National Business College.
Once in Roanoke, Edwards met ``a handsome young man'' who would later become her husband. She and Thomas Earl Edwards were married for 40 years before he died four years ago.
While raising their two sons, Earl and Leo, Edwards became active in Grace Independent Church in Roanoke, teaching Bible school, keeping nursery, starting a sewing circle and stitching draperies for the parsonage. When her first-born, Earl, attended elementary school, she worked with the PTA and the patrol boys at school. Then, when she took Earl to the American Red Cross to register him for swimming lessons, she signed up herself. She also earned her swimming instructor's credentials, and began her long service career in the '60s, teaching swimming, first aid and advanced lifesaving for the Red Cross. She would remain with the Red Cross for 22 years.
When Leo was born in 1965, Edwards recalls toting him to the Red Cross with her whenever she had to teach a class. She even used him as a model to demonstrate first aid on infants.
``He was a real Red Cross baby. I guess you could say he was our victim - that sounds better than `dummy!'''
In 1972, Edwards moved from Red Cross volunteer to paid staff when she became the director of youth and safety. She remembers her husband telling her, ``Well, good, maybe you'll only be gone eight hours a day now.''
A year later, she was named director of disaster services, in charge of providing relief to areas of Southwest Virginia and southern West Virginia that were struck by natural disasters, mostly flooding. She also became a national instructor for disaster services, and was spending more time in other communities than in her own.
In 1980, Edwards' husband became disabled. ``My mind began to think toward the fact that I needed to be available more. I just needed to be with my family more.''
Two years later, when she was driving through a flooded section of Louisiana, where she'd been sent on a disaster assignment, she thought, ``I could disappear, and they would never find me.'' She knew at that moment it was time for a change.
A few months later, Edwards learned that the head of the Safety Council was nearing retirement. Edwards applied for the job, interviewed one April day at 1 p.m. and was offered the position at 3 that afternoon. She started June 1, 1983.
``I shed a few tears,'' she says of her last day at the Red Cross. ``But the Red Cross is something you never leave. It's a part of my life. It's still a big part of my life and what I believe in.''
At the Safety Council, Edwards combined her business schooling with the training she picked up at the Red Cross to bring recreational, home, workplace and road safety awareness to Southwest Virginia. The budget there grew from $28,000 to $100,000, and so many volunteers were recruited that, if a dollar value were put on them, they would have totaled more than the budget.
Edwards says her biggest reward with the council was ``getting our local governments to coordinate on our drunk driving problems. The council purchased 10 portable breath analysis machines for the police departments to use in fighting drunk driving.''
Working for the council was not easy, though. Her biggest challenge - and a constant one at that - was ``getting people to realize they are responsible for their own safety.''
Edwards is still impassioned when she cites the number of traffic fatalities - 119 a day - that could have been prevented. ``Safety, it's a part of our life. It's something we take for granted.''
For now, Edwards plans to catch up on her yard work, have her house painted, and visit out-of-town relatives. She also quilts and crochets beautiful dolls using the tiniest of stitches. Of course, she's still volunteering, serving on the leadership advisory board for the Roanoke City Cooperative Extension Unit and helping the community as a member of the Women's Club.
``I've had an excellent life, and I haven't planned a bit of it,'' she says, smiling. ``When I look back, it's been God's will. I'm not gonna worry about the next 62 [years]. They're already planned.''
by CNB