Edwin L. Laing was born in 1933 in the small rural town of Algona, Iowa, during the depths of the Great Depression. The memory of the kids who wore the same clothes to school every day left a lasting impression. Ed — like his father, who was a teacher — would stand up for “the underdog” for the rest of his life.
Ed graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Iowa’s Grinnell College in 1953, majoring in philosophy and journalism. He loved poetry and became the editor of the student newspaper. Ed was a student activist a decade before the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, which began in 1964. In the student paper, he wrote an editorial criticizing the administration and faculty for not supporting a student constitution that would have given students more autonomy. He was fired as editor by the college because he wouldn’t back down.
After college, in the midst of the McCarthy era, Ed enlisted in the U.S. Navy. His enlistment was held up because of his membership in the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which had been listed as a subversive organization since the early 1950s by the Tunney Commission. After being sworn into the Navy, Ed served as a public relations liaison officer from 1954 to 1958.
