Dr. Edward L. Whigham

Edward L. Whigham was born on the family farm near Eastman on September 11, 1921. He attended his early school years in Eastman and graduated from Eastman High School in 1936. He then earned his Bachelor’s Degree from Emory University and then his Masters Degree from the University of Georgia. He earned his PhD from New York University in New York City.

In December of his senior year at Emory, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and forced the United States to enter World War II. A month after graduating, he enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the U. S. Air Force. He was trained in radio, radar and electronic schools, commissioned at Yale University, and sent to the European theatre for combat duty in England, France, Belgium and Germany.

After the war was over, he became a teacher and school administrator and later retired from the nation’s largest school system, Miami-Dade County, Florida, in 1977. Later, he was a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham for 10 years. He personally developed the University of Alabama’s Doctoral Program in Education; and after retiring, he continued to do consulting work until the early 1980s. Probably his greatest contribution to the field of education is that he mentored so many other school superintendents across the country. Some of these trainees later became superintendents in the largest schools in the United States, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas.

He was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of School Administrators. He also had the honor of having a school in Dade County, Florida, named for him; The Doctor Edward L. Whigham Elementary School. He has been married to Betty Lester of Amsterdam, Georgia for 61 years and they currently live in Atlanta.