Edwin Henry Amidon Jr., age 89, of
Charlotte died peacefully after a short hospital stay on December 26,
2023.
Ed grew up in central New York, graduating from
Central Square High School in Oswego County in 1951. He worked for a
year as a junior draftsman at New Process Gear in Syracuse before
entering Williams College, from which he graduated in 1956. Ed was an
active Williams alumnus, including serving recently as his class
president.
Following college, Ed was admitted to the U.S.
Air Force Officer Candidate School and was commissioned as a second
lieutenant in May 1957. He initially served at a radar station in
Montana before being transferred to Washington, D.C., and assigned to
the Central Intelligence Agency. Following his active duty, Ed
entered the CIA training program and was employed as a case officer
for several years. He subsequently remained in the U.S. Air Force
Reserve for many years, assigned primarily to the U.S. Air Force
Intelligence Center, retiring as a major in 1980.
In the
early ’60s, Ed attended Harvard Law School, graduating cum laude.
He went to work for the Boston firm of Foley, Hoag & Eliot, where
he was involved primarily in public utility, securities and banking
areas, as well as state and federal regulatory matters. In late 1968,
a call came from Jim Jeffords, a law school acquaintance and the
newly elected Vermont attorney general. Ed wasted little time in
accepting an offer to become an assistant attorney general in a
then-small office. This gave him the opportunity to argue the “nearby
differential” federal milk price regulation case in the U.S.
Supreme Court on behalf of the State of Vermont, as well as to
explore many hiking trails on the weekends.
After his
service in Montpelier, Ed was fortunate in the early ’70s to be
hired by the Burlington firm headed by judge Albert Coffrin. Ed
quickly acquired a banking and utility practice and also assisted
with the firm’s insurance defense practice. The firm became
Coffrin, Pierson, Affolter & Amidon, and then Pierson, Affolter &
Amidon after Coffrin’s appointment to the U.S. District Court
bench.
In 1976 Ed was appointed to the Superior Court
bench by governor Thomas Salmon. This was under the old system in
which eight general trial jurisdiction judges “rode circuit” to
the far corners of the state. Ed was proud of his trial court
decisions involving the application of the Vermont Constitution,
including the constitutional challenge to Act 250, the Sunday closing
“blue law” and electoral cases. The Act 250 decision was the
subject of an article in the Vermont
Law Review.
Ed left
the bench in 1983 to return to private practice in Burlington and
ultimately joined in a long-lasting law partnership with Robert
Roesler, Richard Whittlesey and Marsha Meekins. He was proud to be a
lawyer’s lawyer, representing other lawyers in the Professional
Conduct Board and providing ethics opinions. As mediation and
arbitration came into common use, these became a major part of his
practice, as well as acting as a hearing officer and adviser for
state agencies, municipalities and nonprofit organizations. Ed was on
the Vermont Bar Association Board of Managers for many years and was
president from 1990 to 1991.
In the late ’80s, Ed was
appointed by governor Madeleine Kunin to the board of the Vermont
Student Assistance Corporation, serving for 12 years, including as
chair of the governance committee. He was a member of the Champlain
Valley Union High School board from 1992 to 1996, including serving
as vice chair.
Ed
represented Charlotte in the Vermont House from 2001 to 2004, where
he sat on the Ways & Means Committee. He completed his years of
public service as a trustee of the University of Vermont from 2003 to
2009, where he was chair of the audit committee and vice chair of the
governance committee, and as chair of the state Act 60 town valuation
board from 2011 to 2015.
Many happy hours were spent
paddling one of his fleet of canoes on Lake Champlain and in his
favorite sport of “hiking with canoes” between small ponds and
lakes in the Adirondacks. Ed was an early and active member of the
Northern Vermont Canoe Cruisers, now the Vermont Paddlers Club.
Whitewater runs were explored and made in aluminum canoes with no
flotation or spray covers, including the Hudson River Gorge prior to
the era of water releases and commercial raft trips. Many family
paddling trips to Algonquin Park in Ontario and with family and
friends into the tundra rivers of northern Canada were prized parts
of Ed’s life. In the early years of backcountry skiing, he was
privileged to have the location of the now well-established
Bolton-Trout Club Road train marked for him on a topographical map by
one of its builders.
Ed was a longtime member of the First
Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, where he taught Sunday
school in the ’70s and ’80s and later served on the board of
trustees. Additionally, for over 35 years he enjoyed the lively
discussions of his book club, the Greater Westford Literary
Society.
Ed was a very active and greatly loved husband,
father and grandfather, survived by Louise McCarren, his wife of over
45 years; his daughter Martha Ware and her husband, Andrew Ware, of
Chalfont St. Giles, England; his daughter Jane Amidon of Beverly,
Mass.; his son, William Amidon, and his wife, Susan Parsons, of
Cornwall, Vt.; and his stepson, Patrick McCarren, of South
Burlington, Vt. Survivors also include his grandchildren, Georgia
Ware, Mattie Ware, Eliza Ware, Nora Hopkins, Pippa Amidon and Marley
Amidon; his sister Marion Amidon of Gardner, Mass.; as well as
nieces, nephews and cousins. He was predeceased by his parents, Edwin
Henry Amidon Sr. and Elaine Wilson Amidon, and his sister Ann
David.
There will be a service on April 6, 2024, at the
Congregational Church in Charlotte, Vt.; details to be announced by
the family. In lieu of flowers, those who wish to make a donation in
Ed’s honor are invited to contribute to the Adirondack Land Trust.
This article appears in Wellness Issue 2024.