J. Edmund “Ed” Sheridan ’56 is a Teller of Tales.  We are not talking about telling whoppers to his parents about why he missed a class or got a B- on a report card.  We are talking about someone who brings history, imagination and learning to life in the spoken word.  He is a storyteller and a resuscitator of cultures and tradition.

Born in California during the Depression to Rhode Island-born parents, they and he came back to Providence and Ed grew up there.

“I went to Holy Name School for nine years and entered La Salle my sophomore year,” said Ed during a several-day visit to the school and former classmate Brother Robert Hazard during a trip east from his home in Bainbridge Island, Washington.  “I remember Brother Kevin Hartigan, a very caring person, who died last year.  I also remember Mr. Lowery taking some of us to see a high school rendition of Macbeth.  We were awed by the performance.”

“Speaking of high school theatre, it is remarkable how far forward that Brother Michael has moved the arts here in the years he has been president.  It is a true tribute to the vitality of and education at La Salle today,” continued Ed, who learned Latin as an alter boy and later taught the subject at a boys school in Claremont, California.  “From La Salle I went to Brown University and found a home there in the Classics.   I also earned a Masters degree in the Classics at Trinity University in Hartford and later another Master’s Degree at Seattle University.”

Ed spoke about marrying New Yorker Diane Brown and how two Easterners were drawn to the West Coast and have lived there since 1964 and raised two sons and a daughter, all of whom live in the West.

“Each of our children, Elissa, Matthew and Richard have given us two grandchildren – each have had a boy and a girl,” said Ed proudly. “Two live in California and one, Richard, lives in Juneau, Alaska.”

Asked about his second career as a storyteller, Ed said that in his view life is a career and careers and lifetimes are circular in nature.

“We learn and we add to that life with everything we do.  We learn not only from books but from traditions and from imagination,” continued the member of the 1956 State Champion Tennis Team (that included Robert Hazard) that barnstormed New England taking on all comers.  “In my late 50s, I had a vision of what I wanted to be doing in 10 years and it was working with children.  For all that I had accomplished, there was something unsatisfied in me looking for what was missing.  Ultimately, I came to rediscover the magical world of children – they who are the future.”

“I did not want a full-time job and I was trying to envision what I could do that would involve children.  I began to remember my mother reading me German and Norwegian folk tales,” said Ed.  “I thought about how I had read stories to my kids as a young father and how engaged they were in those tales.  That made me think that I could do the same for school children.”

“Then I had to ask myself if I had the courage to tell stories to young kids in a public school – it was going to be very different than telling my kids stories in our home,” he continued.  “It was also going to be very different than reading a story from a book.  It took a while but I finally broke through that barrier.”

“Now, a story comes from my head – mostly based on stories I have heard or things that I have read.  I tell stories about animals to younger kids,” said Ed.  “With older kids, for instance, I might tell a story about a raven who is also human or a story of rebirth.  I have encouraged a first grade teacher to get her students to write about why elephants have tusks – to cause them to think and imagine.”

“Stories can endure for hundreds of years.  They may change a bit through the decades but the foundation, the basis remains,” he said.  “The importance of stories to a culture cannot be overstated.  They inform of ‘right behavior’ and how to solve conflict.  I tell stories that deal very matter-of-factly with death.  There is a story from Liberia about a father who disappears on a hunting trip.  His four-year-old sons wants to know where his father is and he seeks and finds his bones and, to make a very long story very short, his father comes alive.”

“It is very interesting to witness kids opening their minds when they hear stories.  Stories can take you places that are not in the curriculum,” concluded the Teller of Tales.

Ed can be reached at sheridan.ed@gmail.comor 206-842-4562 or 9702 Sands Avenue, N.E. Bainbridge Island, WA  98110.