Edwards work ethic grew in mill town

[Abigale Applewhite]

Posted on Mon, Aug. 18, 2003

PART 2 | MAKING OF A CANDIDATE
Edwards' work ethic grew in mill town
ANNA GRIFFIN
Staff Writer




Sen. John Edwards


EDITOR'S NOTE: John Edwards is mounting the most serious presidential campaign by a North Carolinian since Terry Sanford in 1976. This series, which runs through Wednesday, examines his life and career and is based on interviews with more than 100 friends, family members, colleagues, clients and political and courtroom opponents.

ROBBINS -- The path to this unlikely presidential campaign started in as unassuming a place as the Carolinas can boast.

John Edwards grew up in a string of small towns across the Carolinas and Georgia. His parents were children of the textile mills that dotted the South and drove its economy during most of the 20th century.

They met at a summer square dance in 1950: Wallace Edwards was 18, too poor to afford college. Bobbie Wade was 16 and still in high school. When she graduated, they married.

Johnny Reid Edwards -- that's the name on his birth certificate -- arrived on June 10, 1953. His father needed a $50 bank loan to cover the hospital bill, and six months to pay it off.

The family moved often during Edwards' earliest years, as the executives at Milliken & Co. shuffled his father through company towns such as Seneca, S.C., and Rutherfordton. Each migration carried Wallace Edwards closer to management and his young brood closer to the middle class.

Johnny Edwards was 12 when his parents left Thomson, Ga., for Robbins.
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/special_packages/john_edwards/6557876.htm

[chimpymustgo]

1. Check him out.

Edwards is the AntiBush.

[renie408]

2. I completely agree...

That is what I keep saying. He is that absolute perfect contrast for Bush.

[AP]

3. Edwards is, in his essense, a contrast to Bush.

He doesn't have to attack Bush to point out that he's the opposite of Bush.

He has that line, "Bush is phoney. You know how you can tell a phoney from the real thing? You put the real thing next to the phoney."

Some of the other candidates have to do a little more than that to point out they're differences. That's ain't good.