We're sad to learn about the passing of frequent WHQR commentator Ede Baldridge who wrote about "memorable people and places in the Southeast."
A memorial service for Ede will be held at 2pm on Sunday April 14, 2024
St James Episcopal Church
25 South 3rd Street
Wilmington, NC 28401
Reception to follow in the Great Hall at the church.
Listen to two of her favorites below:
The Baldridge family lost its matriarch and the Fourth Estate lost one of its brighter lights on October 18, 2023, when Ede Landell Dunn Baldridge, died of natural causes in Wilmington, NC.
Ede was a devoted wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, as well as an award-winning reporter, feature writer, newspaper editor and radio commentator whose career spanned seven decades.
Ede began writing professionally as a 16 yr. old high school student for Philadelphia’s The Evening Bulletin in 1943. The following year Ede met and married a young merchant marine officer, Dickson B. Baldridge, her husband of 75 years.
Moving to Cincinnati in 1948, Ede raised their first two children while a feature writer and columnist at The Times-Star. Relocating to Fairfield, CT ten years later, Ede, now the mother of three -- with the fourth to arrive in 1963, slid into the editor’s chair at Brooks Newspapers (Westport) and Fairfield Weekly, and was an occasional contributor to The New York Times.
The lifelong Episcopalian served on two parish vestries in Connecticut: St. Paul’s in Fairfield and Trinity in Southport. Moving to Wilmington after her husband’s retirement in 1987, Ede became editor of CrossCurrent, newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Eastern North Carolina. In addition to writing features for Carolina Style Magazine and Our State magazine, Ede expanded her audience and impact as a regular commentator at Wilmington’s public radio station, WHQR-FM for more than a decade.
While in Connecticut, Ede had been president of the Connecticut Press Club, and a board member of Connecticut Children & Youth Services, Connecticut Hospice, Junior League of Greater Bridgeport, Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of Bridgeport, CT.
In Wilmington, Ede served on the board of North Carolina Press Club, Saint John’s Art Museum, Girls, Inc., Breast Cancer Coalition of North Carolina, and American Cancer Society.
Ede is survived by four adult children: D. Bouton Baldridge, Christina B. Baldridge, both of Wilmington, the Rev. Kempton D. Baldridge, of Paducah, KY, and Brooke B. Baldridge, of The Villages, FL.
She was preceded in death by her husband of 75 years, Dickson B. Baldridge, on June 11, 2019; her sister, Inez Kempton Dunn Wooley in 2019 and her brother, James Burnett Gibb in 2008.