Edwin W. Semans Jr. ’55

Born April 26, 1932, in Philadelphia to Edwin Semans 1924, Ed beat polio and became a high school athlete at Lawrenceville. He majored in sociology and joined Cap and Gown at Princeton, graduating magna cum laude.

Ed passed the Pennsylvania bar and joined the Social Security Administration in 1958. He was cited three times for extraordinary public service and won the Equal Opportunity Achievement Award and several Sustained Superior Service awards.

His lively intellect and dry sense of humor were well known to family, friends, and countless checkout clerks throughout the Bethesda, Md., metropolitan area. After retiring in 1987, Ed focused his considerable management skills on his vegetable garden, issuing meticulous crop reports; his golf game, which required notes on swing and grip; and his piscatorial accomplishments, with weather reports, lures, types of fish landed, and travel to locations such as the Thousand Islands, where he and wife Mary Lou took the family on annual fishing trips. Proudly displayed were Ed’s trophies from competitions sponsored by Labatt’s Beer.

On March 6, 2015, Ed lost his beloved Mary Lou, and on April 13, 2015, he died of pneumonia. He is survived by his daughter, Linda; son Edwin; and three grandchildren. The class sends sympathy to them all.