Edison Trickett
(July 11, 1916-February 24, 1999)

Edison was the third son of William Joseph and Jean Robertson Giffen Trickett. He married Joyce Marie Leebrick, on April 5, 1947, in Rockville, Maryland. They were married (nearly 52 years) until he died in 1999. I feel fortunate—and extremely proud—to say that I am one of the couple's children.

Ed was born in Gilmore, Maryland, and grew up in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, near the Maryland and West Virginia borders. He was tall, rangy and athletic. If I had to describe his looks, I would say he bore a strong resemblance to William Holden, the screen star of the 40s and 50s. (My mom thinks he looks like John Wayne.) He often told stories of coal mining in his teens, of playing ball under the only gas light in town, and running back and forth to nearby towns—often more than 10 miles away—just for the fun of it!

Although he served in the Marines—in Guam and the Philippines—in World War II, he never talked much about it, except for rare references to the malaria he picked up there. He did like to laugh about the way the troop ships made everyone—especially him—seasick.

After the war, and after a stint at the Dr. Pepper bottling plant in Washington, D.C., where he put his Electrical Engineering education to work updating the production line, he joined RCA, where he stayed for the next 30 years.

He was an avid gardener, raising everything from tomatoes and peppers to eggplant and kohlrabi. I don't know exactly what kohlrabi is—I think it's a member of the turnip family—but he seemed to put a great deal of stock in being able to grow it.

And when he wasn't gardening, he was building and fixing things. The man could fix anything! Often, it seemed, through sheer willpower. More than once, I saw him grind or bend an old tool to create an entirely new one. He was an early proponent of repurposing!

Ed, who filled out to 6 feet tall and 205 pounds, was a tremendous athlete. I never saw anything he couldn't do with a ball. Football, baseball, basketball. It didn't matter. He could hit a baseball out of sight. He could throw a football sixty yards on a line. He could outrun me until I was 17 or 18 years old (he was 53!) and even then, it was a close race! I know what you're thinking. But I was a sprinter, myself, and one of the fastest runners in my high school at the time.

And boy, did I take advantage of his athleticism. From the time I was 5 or 6 until I was in my late teens, I pestered him to play with me every night after he got home from work. I was usually waiting in the driveway with my glove (or a football if it was winter). And I don't remember him ever turning me down. As I said, we'd play whatever sport was in season; my brother, Wayne, would join in for three-man football (Dad quarterbacking). I always thought that he liked playing outside at least as much as I did and used my 'pestering' as an excuse that my Mom would buy to get himself out of the house.

As a matter of fact, Dad and I were out in the yard so often that a lady—a total stranger who passed by the house each evening on her way home from her job—stopped by one afternoon when I was about sixteen and asked about my father. She said she had traveled the same route for nearly ten years and had seen us in the yard so often that, when she hadn't seen him for a few days, she thought he must have died! She wanted to offer her condolences!

I should mention that Ed wasn't the only athlete in the Trickett family. I remember playing in several family baseball—and by baseball I mean hardball, not softball—games in the mid-60s that included my Dad, his father, William (who was nearly 80 at the time—and played the outfield!), his brother, George, and my brother, Ed. And I'm here to tell you that everyone could flat out play! (Ed, who is a professor of psychology and a popular folk music artist, was even sought after by major league scouts.)

To be continued...

Leebrick
Johannes
John
Daniel
George
William
Frank
Joyce Marie

Birth Year Events (1916)

Notable Births

Francis Crick
Betty Grable
Glenn Ford
Gregory Peck
Harry James
Jack Elam
Jack Paar
Jackie Gleason
Ken Curtis
Olivia de Havilland
Trevor Howard
Peter Finch
Ray Conniff
Dinah Shore
Jack Warner
Kirk Douglas
Walter Cronkite
Virgil Partch
Daws Butler
Sid Luckman
Forrest J. Ackerman
Roald Dahl

Deaths

Henry James
Rasputin
Eduard Strauss
Jack London

Politics

Woodrow Wilson Re-elected

Military

Battle of Verdun

Inventions

Lincoln Logs

Perspective
(1916-1949)

1916
Radio sets get tuners

1918
First Airmail service (Washington, DC, to New York)

1919
Shortwave radio invented

1920
Pittsburgh radio station broadcasts first scheduled programs

1922
Commercial broadcasting begins
First 3D movie

1923
Neon signs

1926
Goddard launches liquid fuel rocket
NBC is formed
First Pop-Up Toaster

1927
"The Jazz Singer" is the first "talkie"
Babe Ruth hits 60 homeruns
Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic solo

1928
Teletype machine debuts
Mickey Mouse introduced
TV studio built in London

1929
Stock market crashes
Car radio introduced
Germans produce audio tape
Carl Benz, automobile pioneer, dies