Thu, Nov 26 2009
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Finding his true calling Be it in the classroom or the bench — and now the pulpit — Ed Pickard has made his life’s work helping others KARL PEARSONStar Beacon “I always wanted to be a teacher first,” he said. “I wish I knew why.”
Perhaps it was the influence of a couple teachers he encountered before he ever got to Ashtabula High School. “I have very fond memories of my third-grade teacher, Miss Linnea Stone,” Pickard said. “Then, in seventh grade, I had Miss Eileen Watrous. I think they probably influenced me the most.” One might have thought two legendary Ashtabula High School teachers and coaches, basketball coach Bob Ball and football coach George “Chic” Guarnieri, would have influenced him, too. He had both in class, benefiting from Ball’s excellent tutelage in English and Guarnieri’s well-documented instruction in history. They did, in their own way. In fact, Guarnieri had some sound advice for Pickard just as he was about to set out on his teaching career at Jefferson. “I bumped into Mr. Guarnieri after I graduated and he found out I was starting at Jefferson,” he said. “He told me, ‘Keep your mouth closed and your eyes open.’” Ball’s influence was more profound in Pickard’s goal to become a coach. “I really wanted to become a basketball coach,” he said. “I had played junior high basketball, but I never played in high school because I had a job working at Carlisle’s (Ashtabula department store). I was always impressed by Mr. Ball.” It probably wasn’t really Pickard’s goal to become an English teacher, either. “Math had been my best subject in high school,” he said. But, Pickard’s goals were nearly scuttled before they ever really got going. “I graduated in the top 10 percent of my class at Ashtabula, and there were 221 seniors, but I had never really developed good study habits. I actually played college basketball for the first half of my freshman year at Eastern, but I got on academic probation. I almost flunked out.” With a good deal of assistance, Pickard honed his study skills and managed to work his way into good graces academically and earn his degree from Eastern in June, 1964. A week later, he and the former Jerie Leigh Whittaker, whom he had dated since they were in the ninth grade, were married June 13, 1964. “I started dating Jerie Leigh (daughter of the late Dick and Jerie Whittaker) in 1956, the year I accepted Christ as my Savior,” he said. Pickard would go on to earn his masters degree from Edinboro State Teachers College (now Edinboro University) in 1968, capped by a six-week class at Michigan State. 
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