Memorial rites for
Dr. Edward P. Childs, retired educator who has made his home in Hugo since
1937, were conducted at 3 p.m. Monday at First Presbyterian church, of which
he was a member of the board of elders.
The Rev. E. Frank Camp, pastor, and
the Rev. J.J. Stowe Jr., pastor of the First Methodist church, officiated.
Interment was in Mt. Olivet cemetery. Bingham-Cooper Funeral home was in
charge of arrangements.
Doctor Childs passed away at his
home on East Bluff street at 4:05 Sunday afternoon after a critical illness of
about a week. He had been in declining health for some time.
Edward P. Childs was born April 15,
1870, in Jonesville, Mich., a son of the Rev. Edwin W. Childs, a Presbyterian
minister, and Mrs. Helen Force Childs.
He attended public schools at
Jonesville through the second year in high school, completing his high school
education in Ann Arbor, Mich. He entered Denison University in Granville, O.,
in 1887. At the end of three years college work, the young student left school
to become city ticket agent for the Pennsylvania railroad in Eanesville, O.
Also, that same year he enrolled in the University of Michigan as a student of
engineering. At the end of the first semester he was named professor of
mathematics of Fargo college, Fargo, N.D.
When he returned to Denison
University in 1893 to get his bachelor of science degree, he was named
instructor of mathematics of the college, and on graduation became professor
of physics and chemistry while the regular professor did a year of special
study in Germany.
So good was his record as temporary
instructor at the college that Southside High school in Pueblo, Colo., offered
him the position of head of its science department at the completion of the
Denison instruction.
Three years later, in 1898, Dr
Childs was named dean of the University of New Mexico at Albuqerque and
professor of mathematics and physics. In June 1903, he was principal of the
Newark, O. High school and instructor of mathematics, a position he held for
six years, until he accepted the presidency of a teacher training school for
mountain girls in Asheville, N.C., known as Normal and Collegiate Institution.
This school was under the control of the Woman's Board of Home Missions of the
Presbyterian Church U.S.A.
Continuning as president of the
school, Doctor Childs later also served as superintendent of the board's
mountain school in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.
The desire for a master's degree led
him to resign the two posts in 1916 when he enrolled for study in the
University of Wisconsin. A year later he had the degree and shortly thereafter
accepted the presidency of Cumberland University at Lebanon, Tenn.
This post the educator held through
the World War I years, resigning in 1920 to become dean of Trinity University,
Waxcahachia, Tex., where he also was professor of education and
psychology.
Ill health forced his retirement 14 years later. He resigned in the [remaining
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