Mark Curnutte

mcurnutte@enquirer.com

In Marietta, Ohio, during the Depression, Robert Sr. and Eleanor Edwards lived on Front Street within clear view of the railroad tracks. Mrs. Edwards would leave on the porch light if she had food for the men who rode the rails.

Asked a few years ago by his son, Scott Edwards, now 52, if his mother's influence led him fight hunger as director of the Freestore Foodbank's Rubber Duck Regatta, Mr. Edwards Jr. said, "I don't know."

Robert Edwards Jr., 80, of Kenwood, died Thursday. He was hit and killed by a truck on Interstate 71 near the Red Bank Road exit. He had parked his car and stumbled into traffic. The Hamilton County Coroner's Office will not release any information on Mr. Edwards' death until it receives toxicology test results in another three-plus weeks.

In the last quarter of his life, Mr. Edwards became well known locally as the man behind the regattas, which raised $8.5 million, or the equivalent of 25 million meals for the region's needy and hungry people.

As a Freestore board member for 25 years, Edwards learned of the idea of a rubber duck race, hitched it to the popular Riverfest Labor Day weekend civic party and ran all 20 of the regattas. Edwards came up with the phrase, "Buy a duck, feed a child."

"He would actually tear up talking about a child going hungry," said John Young, president and chief executive of the Freestore Foodbank from 2005-2012. "The regatta gave him a way to express his passion for the work we did."

Yet Mr. Edwards was about much more than the regatta, though in creating and running that event he used the marketing and sales skills he had developed in 28 years in the apparel industry.

He graduated with a business degree from Marietta College in 1955, after attending Miami University for his freshman and sophomore years, and then went to earn a master's in business from the University of Pittsburgh. Then he joined the U.S. Army and served from 1956-1958.

In 1987, his life took a sharp change in direction. First, in January, he fell from the roof of his Kenwood home while cleaning gutters, and sustained a broken back and two broken wrists. A month later, after he was released from the hospital, he went home and received a call from his employer in Dallas, Texas, telling him he had been laid off.

"I never met a stronger guy," said his youngest of two sons, Eric Young, 46, of Irving, Texas.

Later that year, however, Mr. Edwards found a job as a financial planner with AXA Advisors, Norwood, and would later earn national awards from the company for his performance. He still worked part-time at the time of his death.

"We were supposed to move to Dallas," said his wife of 55 years, Sylvia Edwards. "But he survived. We survived."

Scott Edwards, 52, of Portland, Oregon, said his father took the advice he often gave when a problem or challenge arose.

"His trademark phrase was, `So what are you going to do about it?'" Scott Edwards said.

Through all of his professional roles, Bob Edwards volunteered. He led the Boys Scouts as president of the Dan Beard Council for two years, serving as its general chairman for two additional years. He founded the United Food and Clothing Drive, which, in its second year, amassed 2.1 million food items and 1.1 million pounds of clothing for the homeless and hungry.

He was not an absent father.

Scott Edwards remembers him as his father, mentor and friend, "the person who taught me to take action, to get up and put one foot in front of the other."

Eric Edwards recalls his father's sense of humor. Once, on a family vacation to California, Mr. Edwards created a detailed itinerary and guide in a gray, three-ring notebook.

"Every time I asked him when we would stop for food or about an attraction, he would say, `Get the gray book.'" Eric Edwards said. "So later in life, whenever we would talk on the phone and he would ask me what I was doing tomorrow or on the weekend, I would say, `Let me check the gray book.'"

Kurt Reiber, current president and chief executive of the Freestore Foodbank, served for 14 years with Edwards on the agency's board.

"Bob was passionate about everything," he said. "He was passionate about he was raised. He was passionate about his family. He was passionate about his work. He was passionate about giving back to the community."

In 2010, he was honored with the "Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Jefferson Award," the Nobel Prize for public service, according to the Freestore.

In 2011, Edwards was recognized by his alma mater, Marietta College, in its Hall of Honor.

The most recent regatta, held Aug. 31, was the first to bring in $1 million for the Freestore.

"My greatest memory is this year, when he hit his goal of $1 million," Eric Edwards said of the 20th annual regatta. "They were at about $1,007,000."

In 2013, the regatta made $887,000 for the Freestore Foodbank.

Besides his wife and two sons, Mr. Edwards is survived by two grandsons.

Service: 11 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22, at Armstrong Chapel United Methodist Church, 5125 Drake Road, Indian Hill, 45243 Friends and family are welcome. Visitation will follow at the church. Burial will be private.

Memorials: Armstrong Chapel; Freestore Foodbank, call 513-482-3663; Dan Beard Council, Boy Scouts of America Scout Achievement Center, 10078 Reading Road, Evendale, OH 45241, 513-577-7700.