
CHAPTER CHATTER
The Official Newsletter of the
Shenandoah Valley Chapter #313
Korean War Veterans Association
MEMBER PROFILE
James E. (Ed) Ellis
Ed Ellis was born in Groton, Mass. in 1940 and lived there until 1954 when at the age of 14, he moved to Canada to play hockey. He played hockey there until the spring of 1958. In July of that year, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, took Basic Training at Fort Dix, NJ, advanced training at Fort Benning, GA with the 2nd Infantry Division, and then was shipped to Korea in December 1958 where he served with the 7th ID in Camp Kaiser in Unchonni.

Ed Ellis
He rotated back to the states in February 1960 and was assigned to the 69th Medium Tank Battalion, 1st ID in Fort Riley, Kansas.
Ed left the service in July 1960 and returned home to Mass. where he found a job at a printing company running presses until he
left to move to Virginia in 1994. During his time in Mass., Ed took scuba lessons with the Marine Contracting Shop where he became a Divemaster assisting the instructors with qualifying students become divers. Ed became qualified in many specialties including, deep diver, ice diver, black water diver, equipment repair, search, rescue, swift water and wreck diver. He finally received the Master Scuba Certification in 1980.
He was a member of the Lowell Civil Defense Underwater Search and Recovery Unit. He worked with the local police and fire departments, assisting with searches and rescues.
Ed continued to maintain his intense interest in hockey. He played "Old Timer's" hockey while at the same time he refereed games, was the Trainer for the local Junior "A" hockey team, assisted in hockey camps, run by different organizations: Bobby Orr, Lowell University, the New England Whalers
professional hockey team, and in many other groups too numerous to mention. In his spare time, he umpired Little League and Babe Ruth baseball games.
Upon moving to Virginia, Ed worked for the Automotive Industries Company located in Strasburg, VA until he retired in 2008.
Ed was retired for a week when he heard a knock on his front door. It turned out to be Richard Clem, who was the Captain of the VFW Honor Guard from Post #2123, and incidentally, a Charter Member of our SVC-KWVA. Richard asked Ed if he would be interested in joining his group which provides HONORS for fallen veterans. Ed's acceptance was the beginning of a new avocation for him. Shortly after Ed joined the Honor Guard, we unfortunately were asked to provide services for Richard who died very unexpectedly. Fred Grimm succeeded Richard and then he also passed away and was replaced by Owen Johnson who served as Captain for a year or two and resigned to seek other opportunities and the members of the Guard elected Ed as the new Captain and he has performed the job faithfully since then. Ed is proud of his service to the Honor Guard and is pleased to have the opportunity to be able to give something back to his community and to his fellow veterans. He has a wonderful group of guards who are very dependable when he calls. They never say no because it was raining too hard, too cold or hot. His only problem is getting people to join the Guard.
In addition to being a member of our Chapter of the Korean War Veterans Association, he is a member of the American Legion, VFW, AmVets, and Rolling Thunder Chapter #1 Virginia. Rolling Thunder is dedicated to helping all veterans and in 2005, they built the memorial in the Jim Barnett Park near our KWVA memorial to honor all POW's and MIA's.
Ed resides in Middletown with his dear wife, Charlotte, and their four dogs, Mollie, Roscoe, Princess and Jake.