There’s was a good article in the Cape Gazette yesterday about my friend and colleague, Ed Wright. Following is a teaser.
Sorting through details, connecting the dots and unraveling mysteries are Ed Wright’s things.
From naval intelligence to genealogy, Wright has always been a details guy.
Surrounded by books at Colonial Roots, his small shop on southbound Route 1 just north of Five Points, Wright muses about family histories, and the growing, curiosity-driven interest in ferreting them out. “You answer one question, and it brings up so many more,” said Wright.
His interest in genealogy started when he was in the Navy, working in Washington, D.C. He was in communications and intelligence at the time, and a petty officer suggested he visit the National Archives to learn more about his family. So, he went. “I looked at the Census records. They revealed a lot on my family, but I made a lot of mistakes and too many assumptions,” he said.
Just as his intelligence work required him to sift through piles of data to draw conclusions, genealogy requires the same. Wright thinks in some ways the two pursuits are linked.
His 21 years in Naval intelligence provided training for his second career. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1956 and embarked on a career that took him through the Philippines, Okinawa and California, where he met his wife, also a Naval intelligence officer.
“I had six months seniority on her until we were married. Then I lost all my seniority,” Wright said.
Read the full article in the August 9, 2010 edition of the Cape Gazette.
