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- [dunbar_tree.FTW]
Edwin went to sea on fishing schooners as a boy, graduated from Eastern State Normal School (now the Maine Maritime Academy) and in 1906 from Bates College (starring there in baseball, basketball and football and for four years on the all-state
football team [once as an end, once as a tackle and twice as a fullback]), then was principal and coach at Hallowell, Maine, then teacher and coach at Lincoln High School, Cleveland, Ohio (where his life-long nickname "Chief" originated). During his
ten years at Lincoln High School he also operated summer camps for boys in New York's Adirondack Mountains, where he became friends of naturalists Ernest Thompson Seton and Dan Beard, and was in the group with them which worked with General Sir Robert
Baden-Powell to bring Boy Scouting to the United States.
During World War I he was athletic director at Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, Ohio. His effectiveness there led Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. to induce him to come to Akron to coach its basketball team in the industrial league; he coached at Goodyear from 12
May 1919 until he retired 01 Sept. 1953. [After W.W. I he had a choice of three positions: recreational director for Goodyear, one with the federal Park Service, and an opportunity to go to Bermuda to be in a motion picture with Ann Kellerman, a
famous swimmer.] He started every heat of the Soap Box Derby from its move to Akron in 1935 until the late 1950s, served on the Akron Recreation Commission, 1934-51 (chair, 1941-51) and the Akron Board of Education, originated the father-son banquet
and pioneered the industrial recreation movement; he was in wide demand as an inspirational speaker.
His career at Goodyear was celebrated 20 January 1954 with an open house at the Goodyear Gym in Akron. Sportswriter Jim Schlemmer offered an extensive tribute in the Akron Beacon Journal the previous Sunday. He wrote, "Swimmer, cyclist, skater (he
once skated nonstop from Cleveland to Akron on the frozen canal); Conner might have succeeded Jack Johnson as the heaveyweight fistic champion is his desire for that kind of business had been equal to his ability...
"Instead, even before coming to Akron, he devoted his space time to church work and already had won recognition as the originator and developer of the Father-Son Week idea.
"...Long years spent in Boy Scout work built intimate friendships with General Baden-Powell, Ernest Thompson Seton, Dan Beard and others. They called him Coach or Chief like everybody else...."
His obituary in the Akron Beacon Journal calls him "big in body, in voice, in mind and in ideals." He was an avid, serious fisherman, tying his own flies. He died fishing from a boat in the Indian River. He is buried beside his wife in Castine,
Maine. He was a mesomorph in body type. Historian Phil Perkins told A. E. Myers in August, 1995 that Ed Conner had been touted as a contender for the national boxing championship, but that his wife (Vivian) protested strenuously, and he therefore did
not fight. He was member 73083 of Lafayette Chapter of the Ohio Society of the Sons of the American Revolution as a descendant of Capt. David Dunbar, Jr. of Massachusetts.
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1881 - 1960 (79 years)
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