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John Thomas Edge of Oxford, Mississippi, died August 30, 2022, 101 minutes after he turned 96.
John Thomas Edge was born August 30, 1926, in Crestview, Florida, to James Alexander Edge and Hazel Pritchard Edge. His father worked road construction crews during the Depression, following jobs across small town Georgia and South Carolina. When John Edge was around 10, the family settled in Columbia, South Carolina.
There, he ran the streets of the Black Bottom neighborhood with his friend William Price Fox, who became a novelist and included Edge characters in his books. At around 14, John Edge ran away to Atlanta, Georgia, where he sold newspapers on the street and slept amid the viaducts in what is now known as Underground Atlanta. At 16, he ran away to Savannah, Georgia, where he worked as a welder, building Liberty ships.
John Edge enlisted in the service at 17. At 18, the Navy sent him to the South Pacific, where he trained as coxswain on landing crafts. When the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan, his crew shifted from practicing invasion to hauling troops off islands. After World War Two, John Edge moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he married his first wife Mary Beverly Evans Edge, mother of his only child, John Thomas Edge Jr. In Atlanta, he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration with honors from University of Georgia via night school classes.
His work as a civil servant began soon after. Throughout that career, John Edge broadcast his belief in reform, redemption, and the power of government to make positive changes in the lives of marginalized people. He also believed in the power of words. An avid reader, he consumed everything William Price Fox wrote and subscribed to The Angolite, the literary magazine published by inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary.
John Edge worked for the Bureau of Prisons, first at the US Penitentiary in Atlanta and later at the Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1956, Judge Augustus Bootle swore in John Edge as a probation officer in the US District Court in Macon, Georgia. In that position, he worked pivotal civil rights movement cases, including the successful federal prosecution of Ku Klux Klan members who violated the civil rights of murder victim Lieutenant Colonel Lemuel Penn.
John Edge was a man of strong principles and big ideas: In 1970, he co-founded an integrated golf club in Gray, Georgia, near his home in Clinton. When a state politician promised support in exchange for the installation of gaming machines, Edge refused and accepted failure. In 1974, he joined neighbors to form the Old Clinton Historical Society and successfully campaign for placement of the early 19th century village on the National Register of Historic Places. The next year, he applied for and lost a bid to study criminology as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Cambridge in Great Britain.
In 1982, John Edge retired from his position as Chief Probation Officer in the 70-county Middle District of Georgia. Later that year, he organized the Dismas House of Macon (later Dismas Charities) and directed this halfway house for federal prisoners until 1990. After retirement, he cooked often, delivered Meals on Wheels to seniors and AIDS patients, and traveled with his second wife Mary Ann Clinton. After she died in 2016, John Edge moved to Oxford, Mississippi, to live near his son and his family.
In Oxford, he dressed very well, read voraciously, dated smart women, made great friends, donated to local causes, encouraged his grandson, inspired his son and daughter-in-law, railed against contemporary fascism, argued gently and kindly for empathy and civic responsibility, and ate very well. Five days before he died of cancer, John Edge relished a dinner of steamed lobsters and corn on the cob, followed by a fat slice of pineapple upside down cake and a tumbler of bourbon.
His first wife, Mary Beverly Evans Edge, died in 2001. His only sibling, Burton Edge of Greenville, South Carolina, died in 2010. His second wife, Mary Anne Clinton, died in 2016. John Edge is survived by his son John Thomas Edge, Jr. and his wife Vivian Blair Hobbs and their son Jesse Clifton Evans Edge, all of Oxford, Mississippi. Step son Gary Clinton and his wife Debra Clinton live in Montgomery, Alabama. Step grandson Matthew Clinton lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
John Edge will be interred in a columbarium at First Presbyterian Church in Oxford. The family will host a private memorial service at a future date. In lieu of flowers, they encourage donations to the American Civil Liberties Union (aclu.org), which John Edge supported as a member from 1991 until his death. The direct link for memorial donations is https://action.aclu.org/give/make-gift-aclu-someones-memory.
