Knowing that Fran and I would be leaving on Sunday for long-planned vacation, I went to see Ed Cotter at Griffin Hospital last Friday, realizing that it might be for the last time. (And it was.) When I turned the corner toward his room and told the duty nurse that I was there to see Ed Cotter, she said, with a smile, “So is all of Derby!”
There have been only a very few people whose selfless dedication toward Derby and the Valley matched Ed’s.
When I returned from school in 1971 to join my father’s law practice, he took me aside and told me that there were three people to whom I could never say “No,” without regard to whatever they asked me for. While the other two were Ed Strang and Harry Bassett, two wonderful men, the first among them in my father’s mind was Ed Cotter.
I took his advice, and always did whatever Eddy asked of me. And it was always for others that Ed asked, never for himself.
At a banquet many years ago, Chris Dodd said, “There in no one I have ever known who loves his city more than Ed Cotter loves Derby.”
This was the remarkable man who, right after WWII, along with Dick Kieley and Joe Riordan, started a volunteer ambulance service through which any Derby resident who needed medical transportation anywhere in the USA would be picked up, delivered, and brought back home, all of it completely without charge.
And that was just one of the many remarkable and selfless things that he did during his lifetime. We will not see his like again.
I am glad that I got to know him as a friend, and proud that I never said “No” to Ed Cotter.
The author is the president of the Valley Community Foundation.
More on the life of Edward J. Cotter, Jr:
A Derby Legend Passes
The Valley Remembers Edward J. Cotter, Jr.
Some of Ed Cotter’s Flood of 1955 photos
Ed Cotter’s indirect influence on the Valley Independent Sentinel
