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Edmund Traverso of Ipswich died on June 17, 2023.
Born in Boston on September 26, 1928, he was the son of Alexander Traverso and Anna G. Traverso (born Annie Agnes Meehan).
Ed grew up in Dorchester and attended Boston public schools, graduating from English High School in 1946. He was selected for Boy’s State as a junior.
Shortly after graduation, he enlisted in the United States Army and served in the 511th parachute infantry regiment of the 11th Airborne Division. He was stationed in Japan for 16 months.
Prior to being discharged, he served several weeks on Treasure Island in San Francisco, guarding hangars containing the remains of repatriated American war dead, a duty that allowed him to grasp the scale of the sacrifice made by his fellow citizens in that war.
Following his return to Boston, Ed enrolled in Brown University. There he met his future wife, Georgina “Jill” Bolas.
After earning an A.B. from Brown in 1952, he was hired for an executive training program at United States Rubber Company (Uniroyal).
Ed and Jill married on July 4, 1953.
Ed found his true calling in education and enrolled in a Masters of Education program at Boston University, completing his degree in 1957.
After Ed completed his studies, the couple relocated to Amherst, where they each taught in the local public school system and welcomed their two children.
In Amherst, Ed had his first involvement with the Amherst Project, an effort to reinvent how history was taught in schools.
In 1962, Ed became the head of the history department at the newly created Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School, and the family relocated to Ipswich. Ed is still remembered fondly by many of his former students.
In 1965, Ed was awarded a John Hay Fellowship, and the family relocated to Chicago for one year while Ed studied at the Newberry Library.
In 1970, Ed moved to Boston State College, a public teaching college, where he gave courses in history and education.
Following the merger of Boston State into the University of Massachusetts system, he entered into academic administration, directing the continuing education program at UMass/Boston. In this role, he helped expand educational opportunities for non-traditional students while generating revenues for the Boston campus.
After retiring in 1986, he transitioned into education consulting with a prolonged association with Tufts University Center for Science and Mathematics Teaching. During this period, he also supervised several Boston metropolitan area student teachers each year.
As Ed wound down his professional career in his 70s, he found more time to contribute to his community through committee and volunteer work, including serving as an elected member of the Ipswich School Committee from 1999 until 2011. In this role, he particularly sought to draw attention to issues pertaining to a private trust established in 1660 by William Paine for benefit the Ipswich public schools.
This prolonged and often contentious effort culminated in the replacement of the original trust and its board of trustees with a new, money-based trust and a board dedicated to the prudent and proper management of trust assets.
The resulting “Feoffees of the Grammar School in the Town of Ipswich Trust” now generates regular, substantial income for educational enrichment in the schools.
Ed also served on town committees created to reduce causes of pollution to the Ipswich River and to manage the acquisition of the Pony Express property for town athletic fields. For several years, Ed volunteered at the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Ipswich.
Inspired by William Paine’s vision, Ed worked with the Ipswich Educational Foundation to create and fund an endowment in Jill’s name to be used to enrich art education at the Ipswich High School.
A child of the Great Depression — and of the New Deal — and a young witness to our country’s unprecedented effort to beat back evil and to protect civil and democratic principles during the Second World War, Ed believed that government has an important role to play in promoting the general well-being and that good governance requires a broad-based civic involvement.
He attended town meeting religiously. A lifelong Democrat, he was an active member of the Ipswich Town Democratic Committee.
He was deeply concerned by attacks on hard-won democratic institutions, the increase in mean-spirited and counter-productive partisan politics, the growing gap in income distribution, and anti-immigrant sentiment — all of which, he believed, prevent our nation from facing up to the existential challenges posed by the 21st century.
Although he understood that history and current-day circumstances can lead people to cynicism, he believed that it is necessary to preserve faith in the workings of our democracy.
Ed was a man of many interests and pursuits. Through Francis and Agnes Meehan, his uncle and aunt, Ed was exposed to music, art, and literature throughout his childhood and youth, a formative experience that informed his adult life.
In the 1960s, he studied classical guitar, and, inspired by the folk music renaissance of that era, enjoyed leading sing-alongs with his family.
Travel was a passion. Ed and Jill first visited Mexico in 1959, and Ed spent two summers on a dig at the archaeological zone of Mitla in the state of Oacaxa.
They made extended trips to Mexico into the mid-1960s, with Maria and Tony accompanying them on later ones.
Their European travel commenced in the 1970s with two family trips, followed by many trips as a couple and with friends.
And in their retirement years, they took up car camping, with trips to the northeast U.S. and eastern Canada.
Keen observers, they always returned from trips with new ideas for food, music, art, and gardening that they incorporated into their daily life.
Ed and Jill also shared a love of entertaining friends and family in their home on East Street. Edmund loved to host parties during which he would indulge his guests with lively conversation and delicious food that he prepared.
Edmund also enjoyed gardening and outdoor work. Armed with just wheelbarrow and shovel, he transformed the slopes beside and behind the house into terraced gardens.
In the 1960s and the early 1970s, he used his summers to renovate their 18th century home.
In the late 1980s, he acquired an English-built, ketch-rigged open longboat that Jill christened “Tintagel.”
He spent many happy days sailing the Ipswich River and Plum Island Sound with his friends, children, and grandchildren. He also enjoyed fishing and clamming.
In 2013, after 50 years at East Street, Ed decided to relocate to Cable Gardens apartments in Ipswich, where he came to appreciate the companionship of — and the friendly assistance provided by — his Cable Gardens neighbors.
Jill, who had been ill for some time prior to the move, passed in 2015.
Ed is survived by his daughter, Maria Hebbel, and his son, Anthony A. Traverso, and his partner, Timothie Biggs, all of Ipswich.
He is also survived by his granddaughter, Madeline Lennox, and her husband, Andrew Lennox, of Beverly; and his grandson, Alexander Hebbel, and his fiancée, Micaela Tepler, of Brunswick, Maine.
He also leaves behind two great-grandchildren, Emma and Callum Lennox of Beverly; and three nieces and extended family members.
He was predeceased by his wife, Jill; his brother, Alexander Traverso; and his son-in-law, Blaine Hebbel.
Ed outlived most of his contemporaries — including an early childhood pal, James Curran, with whom he remained close for nearly 90 years — but maintained numerous younger friends whose companionship he valued greatly and who survive him.
Ed’s immediate family would like to thank the following individuals and institutions for their support as Ed made his way through his final months: extended family members and friends, near and wide; Anna Marini; Anne Teele; his Cable Gardens neighbors, including Jeannie Soffron and Joanne Michaels; the Ipswich Council on Aging and its volunteer drivers; Cape Ann Transportation; the North Shore Physicians Group and his primary care physician, Maggie Johnson, M.D.; the Cancer Center of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Danvers; and the Care Dimensions hospice team.
The remarkably good social support networks and world-class heath care available in Massachusetts are just two reasons why Ed was proud to be a native and lifelong inhabitant of the Bay State.
A memorial service is planned for a later date.
In lieu of flowers, please consider making a contribution to the Georgina Jill Traverso Art Education Fund held by the Ipswich Educational Foundation. The fund aims to enrich art education at the Ipswich High School (www.ipswichedfoundation.org/endowments).
Arrangements by Campbell-Porter Funeral Home, Ipswich.
