Edward L. Pinney ’47

Ed was born in Gauley Bridge, a small town embedded in Appalachian West Virginia.

In 1943 the Navy dispatched him to Princeton for V-12 premed training. He went on to earn his medical degree and then to Korean War service as medical officer in a destroyer division. He next trained in psychiatry and for 30 years he practiced, taught, and wrote in New York and later in Texas. In 1989 he married Frances (his second wife) and moved to a busy practice in West Virginia with sojourns in Puerto Rico.

For our 40th Ed wrote: "I have done what I always wanted to do, practice psychiatry and pursue knowledge of it." Indeed, he published many articles and two books in his chosen field.

Reared in a strict and authoritarian tradition, Ed found liberating "intellectual stimulation" at Princeton. He questioned some of his earlier assumptions, notably the value of strict retribution for wrongs — suggesting that "demanding an eye for an eye can create a lot of blindness in the world."

Ed died Sept. 27, 2004. He was a loving person, especially remembered by all of us who knew him. To Frances and to Ed's three children by his first marriage, we send this tribute with affection and sympathy.

The Class of 1947