Edwin R. Bates '41
Ted died Dec. 12, 2008, at the age of 89. Still a practicing lawyer, he and wife Betty had been living in a retirement community in Evansville for about a decade. Married in 1947, they had three sons—two became lawyers—and a daughter; Betty was the author of at least six published books for early teenagers.
At Amherst, Ted served on the editorial board of the Amherst Student, serving as assistant editor his junior and senior years, he was a member of the fencing team, the Christian association and senior year he was also a member of student council and the pre-law club.
The draft interrupted study at the Univ. of Chicago Law School. Ted joined the U.S. Army and was awarded the medal of a Knight of the Order of the Crown of the King of Italy. In the fall of 1945, he matriculated at the Univ. of Michigan Law School, graduating in 1948. Having decided after the army never again to work for a big impersonal employer, Ted went out on his own as an independent practitioner in Chicago.
For years he was an active member of the Chicago Bar Association. He was Republican precinct chairman for 20 years and was instrumental in helping secure a city manager form of government for Evanston. He was park commissioner of the Lighthouse Park, chairman of Troop 3 Boy Scout Committee, school trustee on the Racial Advisory Committee of the high school during the ’60s, on Evanston’s Fair Housing Commission when Johnson was president and later a trustee of Kendall College in Evanston. Church work (Congregational) was an important part of his agenda.
In later years, Ted and Betty spent January and February in St. Simons Island, Georgia, Easter weekend at Lake Lure near Asheville, N.C., including annual visits with Bill Marberger, and time in the summer at a family cottage near Turner, Maine.
—Henry Prickitt ’41