Edward T. Pickard ’37

Witty bomber navigator and electronics expert, Ed Pickard died Apr. 20, 1998. He is survived by a sister, Betty Sleighter, nieces, a nephew, and his foster son Jim Ostach. His marriage to Rita Houlberg in 1945 ended in divorce.

Ed went to Western H.S. in Washington, D.C., and was a member of the Honor Society, on the school paper board, and into swimming. At Princeton he majored in economics and belonged to Dial Lodge.

After Princeton he tried selling in the department store business and appraising real estate; he was inducted into the Army in 1941. He was a meteorologist in an antiaircraft coast artillery outfit in Hawaii, then graduated as a navigator in 1943. He flew thousands of miles from Italy on a B24 liberator named The Whiskey Kid, participating in attacks on Steyr, Regensburg, Bucharest, and Ploesti. He came out as a captain. He won the Air Medal with seven Oak Leaf Cluster and a Distinguished Flying Cross with one Oak Leaf Cluster. Next came being a flight commander in the Navigation Instructor School.

He spent several years in the Philippines as a representative of an export subsidiary of Western Electric and then moved to Los Angeles with a management position with Hughes Electronics before going into business for himself with Jaguar Cleaners' two stores.

The Class of 1937