Elizabeth Edwards biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Attorney. Born Mary Elizabeth Anania on July 3, 1949, in Jacksonville, Florida, the daughter of Elizabeth and Vincent Anania. Her father served as a United States Navy pilot, and the family moved frequently due to her father's job. For part of her childhood she lived in Japan, where her father was stationed with a reconnaissance squadron, flying missions over China and North Korea.

Elizabeth attended Mary Washington College and then transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she majored in English. She received her bachelor's degree from UNC, and also performed three years of graduate work in American literature there. She then switched to law at UNC, where she met John Edwards. The couple began dating soon after. Elizabeth graduated from UNC Law School in May 1977, and passed the bar shortly after. She and John married on July 30, 1977.

Following law school, Elizabeth Edwards clerked with U.S. District Court Judge Calvitt Clarke, Jr. in Norfolk, Virginia. In 1978, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to become an associate at the law firm of Harwell Barr Martin & Sloan. In 1981, she and her husband moved their family to Raleigh, North Carolina, where she worked for the Attorney General's office and then at the law firm Merriman, Nicholls, and Crampton as a bankruptcy lawyer.

Family Tragedy

Elizabeth and John Edwards had five children together: Wade, Catharine, Emma Claire, and Jack. But the family was rocked by tragedy in April 1996, when Wade was in a fatal car accident. After Wade's death, Elizabeth retired from her legal practice, adopted her married name, and devoted herself to the full-time administration of the Wade Edwards Foundation. The nonprofit was designed to reward, encourage, and inspire young people in their educational pursuits. The organization helped build a free computer lab for high school students in Raleigh, and later built a similar lab in Goldsboro, North Carolina.

The following year, she began focusing on the importance of education. She taught legal writing as an adjunct instructor at the law school of the University of North Carolina. That same year she became a member of the first group of Public Fellows at the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC, and began work as a substitute teacher in the Wake County Public Schools.

John's Political Career

Around this time, Edwards and her husband also made the decision to have two more children. In 1998, Elizabeth gave birth to Emma Claire. That same year, her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate, and the family relocated to Washington. Two years later, she and John welcomed their son Jack.