He finished his tour of duty as chaplain stateside and was honorably discharged. He renewed his relationship with his alma mater, Georgetown University, and for the next several years taught as an assistant professor of theology and poly sci to the undergraduates.
One evening I was waiting for Father Ed, at the Tombs, a restaurant at the edge of the Georgetown campus, for one of our usual “blethers” as he called our chats. The Tombs, built in a Federal-style townhouse circa 1800s, was known for good food and as a great gathering place for students. While waiting I ran into one of Father Ed’s former students. We shared a brewski together as he raved that it was the best two courses he had ever taken.
“Had I taken just theology or poly sci, the impact on me would not have been the same,” as he waved and gave a thumbs up to one of the basketball players—probably regarding the big win Georgetown had the night before against Syracuse. The Hoyas were on a winning streak.
The kid said that about 60 percent of Father Ed’s lecture notes were essentially the same for both classes. Very animated, he expressed, “I never realized how much theology and political science overlapped and dovetailed with each other.”
I knew from reading Father Ed’s books exactly what that kid was talking about: the fact that metaphysics and government are so intertwined. They are literally two halves of the same coin, which is why I had been “relieved,” at least partially, of my professorial teaching duties.
By the late 1980s, the Reagan administration had the county’s economy booming again. The media was still controlled by ABC, CBS, and NBC almost exclusively. They tagged it the “decade of greed.” Perhaps they should have called years of the prior administration of Jimmy Carter the “decade of want”? Mortgage rates under Carter had skyrocketed to the high double digits, and inflation was rampant.
Father Ed perceived President Carter to be wishy-washy and inept. The 1979 takeover of our embassy in Iran by the Muslim extremists and the Ayatollah Khomeini was a travesty; and the disastrous failed rescue attempt in April of 1980 of our hostages by Carter humiliated the USA even more. The scenes of the twisted wreckage in the desert of a Delta Force helicopter and transport plane from Operation Eagle Claw, along with the deaths of eight servicemen, were splashed across the evening news. Carter’s fate was sealed.
Father Ed said that we should have listened to our military leaders and squashed them like bugs immediately after the embassy takedown, instead of Carter’s dilly-dallying for more than a year afterward.
At another blether, late one afternoon, after Father Ed had finished teaching for the day, we were having some java at the coffee shop across from the Georgetown University bookstore in the Leavey Center. The coffee shop had a checkered past, but was trying to really help the students. He educated me as to the time President Teddy Roosevelt went head to head with the Moroccan government in the early 1900s. A brigand Muslim terrorist had captured an American businessman, and Roosevelt was going to invade a sovereign country by sending in the Marines to rescue the American. Just the threat from Roosevelt made Morocco back down.
Hollywood made it into a movie called the Wind and the Lion with two attractive stars: Sean Connery and Candace Bergen. “The theatre-going public would rather pay to see Sean Connery as a debonair sheikh and the beautiful Candace Bergen as a damsel in distress than someone playing the role of a fat, pudgy businessman, and another as a fanatical wild-eyed crazed Islamic kidnapper,” Ed declared as he downed the second cup of strong black coffee.
Then came the Clinton era. Father Ed had no use for either of the Clintons. Still maintaining his friendships with some close friends of the alphabet agencies, he and his buddies would occasionally bowl at Potomac Lanes at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling (JBAB), just across the Potomac from Reagan International, and have some pizza with beer to wash it down.
Sometimes they would bowl against the team from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) who were on the same base. “Those guys at DIA were smart as whips, but a little stiff, which may have affected their bowling skills, or lack thereof,” he commented to me between sips of his third java brew.
The group that he seemed to have the most fun with was the guys of the Secret Service. Serious dudes when they were guarding the President and First Family, but they really knew how to cut up in their off time. Their fleet of black Suburbans was also parked at JBAB. The array of antennas that splayed from the roofs of the SUVs gave it away that someone of importance was being transported on “the train,” as he said they called it, when they were all driving bumper to bumper at high rates of speed.
“Bill Clinton’s code name was ‘jumper’ because any time he saw an attractive woman, he would want to ‘jump her’. Clinton knew the code name the Secret Service had given him and he liked it. Hillary was another matter. Hers was ‘broomstick,’ for obvious reasons,” Ed explained.
“A real life ‘cailleach’,” Father added. “She cussed like a trucker and could drink like a sailor. One never, but never addressed her. You didn’t speak unless she directly asked something of you. And the shorter the answer, the better. If you could respond with a “yes ma’am” or “no ma’am,” so much the better.”
“Cailleach?” I asked, wondering what that Gaelic term meant.
“A hag or witch - the code name ‘broomstick’ must have been someone’s stroke of genius,” as he struck a pose of the Wicked Witch of the West.