Blair, Edward "Ed" McCormick

"Those of us in Maine knew something of Ed’s remarkable civic and business accomplishments in Chicago and elsewhere, but we saw them as background to what he did in Maine...and we especially knew about all that he did to help people and organizations here. Just as he loved Chicago during the work year, Mt. Desert Island, Maine, was his summer love. With the exception of the war years, Ed spent every summer of his life on Mt. Desert Island, beginning as a baby with summer visits with his grandmother, Louise de Koven Bowen, at her palatial estate, ‘Baymeath’ in Hulls Cove, where playing outdoors, sailing, fishing and riding horses with cousins was the high point of every year.... Here in Maine we learned that that sense of adventure stayed with Ed lifelong, and that he passed it on to his sons, Frank and Ed, Jr.

"I first met Ed sometime during the middle 1970s. We met at sea, 25 miles offshore from Northeast Harbor, where Ed and his wife, Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Iglehart Blair, had their summer home, ‘L’Escale’. Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic, where I was then a faculty member in biology, had gained permission from the U.S. Coast Guard to use the light station at Mt. Desert Rock to make observations on whales. Tidal currents upwell around the island, bringing nutrients and food to the surface and attracting shoals of copepods, krill and herring, and whales, porpoises, dolphins, seabirds and other marine life to eat them. The island’s 58-foot high granite light tower, the farthest offshore along the U.S. east coast, made an ideal platform for viewing all of this, as well as the comings and goings of lobster fishermen, tub trawlers, gill netters and other marine traffic. We were especially curious about one boat, a Boston whaler about 20 feet long, driven by a man in a red sweater or, if the weather was wet, a yellow slicker. Through the telescope we saw that the boat’s name was Lucy.

Each morning the boat arrived a little after 10 o’clock, shut down, drifted for an hour, then departed. One day the boat arrived when several of us were in a skiff near the island and we went over to meet the man in the red sweater. After introductions, Ed asked what we did on the island and we told him about the college and the whale research project. We asked why he came out each morning and he said, ‘Why, to watch the whales and birds.’ That shared interest was the beginning of many long friendships, both personal and institutional" (Katona, Steve. "Edward McCormick Blair: Remembrance and Celebration" at COA Advancement: Philanthropy news of College of the Atlantic [ https://coadevelop.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/edward-mccormick-blair-remembrance-and-celebration-by-steve-katona/ : accessed 09 September 2025])