Edmund Traverso, from Ipswich, died at home in his sleep receiving hospice care on 17 June 2023. He was born on September 26, 1928 in Boston, Massachusetts to Alexander Traverso, a plumber, and Anna G. Traverso (born Annie Agnes Meehan), a housewife. As a young boy, his father had immigrated with his family from the Piedmont region of Italy. His mother was born in Cambridge to Irish immigrants and was orphaned by her teens.
Ed grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Codman Square in a busy household with extended family members whose contributions helped augment the resources of a hard-working Depression-era family. He attended Boston Public Schools and graduated from English High School in 1946. As a junior, he was selected for Boy’s State. Shortly after graduation, he enlisted in the US Army and served as a parachute and glider infantry soldier in the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 11th Airborne Division. He was stationed in Japan, first near Sendai and later on the island of Hokkaido. Before his discharge, he served on Treasure Island in San Francisco for several weeks guarding hangers containing the remains of repatriated American war dead. This task enabled him to understand the extent of the sacrifices made by his fellow citizens in this war.
After returning to Boston, Ed enrolled at Brown University. It was in Providence that he met his future wife, Georgina “Jill” Bolas, who was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. After earning an AB in Classics from Brown University in 1952, he was hired for an executive training program with the 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, graduating in 1957. After Ed graduated, the couple moved to Amherst, where they both taught in the local public school system. Their first child, Maria, was born in 1957 and the family remained in Amherst until 1962, when their other child, Anthony, was born. It was in Amherst that Ed first became involved with the Amherst Project, an attempt to reinvent the way history is taught in schools with an emphasis on original sources, inquiry-based learning, and developing critical thinking versus using textbooks and memorizing. He remained involved in this project into the early 1970s.
In 1962 Ed became Head of History at the newly established Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School and the family moved to Ipswich. During his tenure, Ed was admired for his Socratic teaching methods and hailed as an innovative thinker by his peers. In 1965 Ed received a John Hay Scholarship and the family moved to Chicago for a year while Ed studied at the Newberry Library. In 1970 Ed transferred to Boston State College, a public teaching college, where he taught courses in history and education. After the merger of Boston State University with the University of Massachusetts system, he moved into academic administration and managed the continuing education program at UMass/Boston. In this role, he helped expand educational opportunities for non-traditional students while generating revenue for the Boston campus.
After retiring in 1986, he moved into educational counseling and worked longer with Tufts University Center for Science and Mathematics Teaching. At Tufts, he helped a team develop and implement a high school physics curriculum based on the Microcomputer Based Laboratory Tools developed by TERC, the purpose of which was to reinvent the way students collect and analyze data in school physics experiments invent. During this time he also mentored several student teachers in the greater Boston area each year.
As Ed ended his professional career in his 70s, he found more time to contribute to his community through committee and volunteer work, including as an elected member of the Ipswich School Committee from 1999 to 2011. In this role he was particularly anxious to make drew your attention to issues relating to a private foundation established by William Paine in 1660 for the benefit of Ipswich Public Schools. This protracted and often controversial effort culminated in the replacement of the original trust and its board of trustees with a new, money-based trust and board dedicated to the prudent and proper stewardship of the trust’s assets. The resulting ‘Feoffees of the Grammar School in the Town of Ipswich Trust’ now generates regular, significant income to enrich the schools’ education. Ed has also served on town committees formed to reduce sources of pollution in the Ipswich River and to manage the acquisition of the Pony Express property for the town’s athletic field. Ed volunteered with the Sisters of Our Lady of Namur in Ipswich for several years, leading a discussion group on current events.
Inspired by William Paine’s vision, Ed worked with the Ipswich Educational Foundation to create and fund an endowment on Jill’s behalf to be used to enrich arts education at Ipswich High School.
As a child of the Great Depression – and the New Deal – and a young witness of our country’s unprecedented effort to repel evil and protect civic and democratic principles during World War II, Ed believed that government had an important role to play in promoting the common good and that Good governance requires broad civic engagement. He religiously attended the town assembly. A lifelong Democrat, he was an active member and past Chair of the Ipswich Town Democratic Committee.
He was deeply concerned about attacks on hard-won democratic institutions, the rise of malicious and counterproductive partisan politics, the widening gap in income distribution, and anti-immigrant sentiment, all of which we felt would result in our nation failing to confront the existential challenges of the grown in the 21st century. Although he understood that history and contemporary circumstances can lead people to be cynical, he believed that it was necessary to maintain faith in the workings of our democracy.
Ed was a man of many interests and pursuits. Through his uncle Francis Meehan and aunt Agnes Meehan, Ed was exposed to music, art and literature throughout his childhood and adolescence, a formative experience that shaped his adult life. In the 1960s he studied classical guitar and, inspired by the folk music renaissance of the time, enjoyed leading singalongs with his family.
Traveling was a passion. Ed and Jill first visited Mexico in 1959 and Ed spent two summers excavating at the Mitla Archaeological Zone in the state of Oacaxa. Until the mid-1960s they made extensive trips to Mexico, on later trips they were accompanied by Maria and Tony. Her European travels began in the 1970s with family trips, which were followed by many trips as a couple and with friends. And in their retirement years, they took up car camping and went on a handful of road trips in the Northeastern United States and eastern Canada. As keen observers, they always returned from their travels with new ideas for food, music, art and gardening to incorporate into their daily lives.
Ed and Jill also loved entertaining friends and family at their East Street home. Edmund loved throwing parties where he would indulge his guests with lively conversation and delicious food he prepared. Edmund also enjoyed gardening and working outdoors. Armed only with a wheelbarrow and shovel, he transformed the slopes next to and behind the house into terraced gardens. In the 1960s and early 1970s, while still on the calendar as a teacher, he used the summers to renovate their colonial-era home.
In the late 1980’s he acquired an English-built ketch-rigged open longtail boat which Jill christened the Tintagel. He spent many happy days with his friends, children and grandchildren on the Ipswich River and Plum Island Sound. He also enjoyed fishing and clam fishing.
In 2013, after 50 years
To plant a beautiful memorial tree in Edmund’s memory, please visit our tree shop.
Published by Campbell-Porter Funeral Home – Ipswich from 5th July to 6th July 2023.
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