Edward Pawley - Retirement

Retirement

Edward Pawley left Big Town in 1951 and retired near the small village of Amissville in rural Rappahannock County, Virginia. He had fallen in love with the State early during his theatrical career. In retirement, Pawley raised and sold championship goats, wrote poetry, and worked part-time as a radio announcer at local radio station WCVA in Culpeper, Virginia. Edward and Helen later moved to Rock Mills, Virginia in the mid-1950s where they lived on the original site of the Rock Mill at the confluence of the Thornton and Rush Rivers. To Edward, living at Rock Mills was the fruition of his dream to live close to nature. He and Helen maintained an organic vegetable farm and goat farm, where they produced pesticide-free vegetables, goat milk and cheese. For a while, they also ran a local grocery store, the "Cash and Totem Store", where they sold, among other staples, some of their own produce. Helen marketed her "Virginia Honey Girl" line of fruits preserved in honey and offered it for sale in their store.

Edward and Helen were proponents of "back-to-the-earth living with nature" before it became popular. They had no children together, but became spiritual parents of many children in the area. In his will, Edward named the Rottier family children as his spiritual children - Jane, Ross, Kathyrn, Juia, Richard, and Robin. Kathryn Rottier is a mural painter in Northern Virginia.

Edward fell in love with Virginia while touring with the play East Is West in 1920. He played the role of a Chinaman in that stage production, and it was his first professional acting role. After retirement, Pawley would become the quintessential "Virginia Gentleman" and was loved for his integrity, patriotism, and charm. He was admired for his vocabulary and speaking voice, as well as his status as an entertainer in three different media forms (theater, film, and radio).

Edward died just two months shy of his 87th birthday as the result of a heart condition while a patient at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, Virginia. His residence at the time of his death was in the village of Rock Mills, Rappahannock County, Virginia. Pawley and his second wife, Helen Shipman, were cremated, and their ashes were scattered at their favorite spot alongside the Rush River which partially flows through their former estate in the village of Rock Mills. A raised bronze plaque at that site is a memorial to their lives and careers in the entertainment medium.

Pawley had two younger brothers who were also actors: William M. Pawley (b. ca. 1903) and J. Anthony Pawley (b. ca. 1910). Both brothers acted in Broadway plays, as well as films, but neither achieved the success and acclaim which their older brother received.

NOTE: The bulk of the information mentioned in this biography is contained in the book titled.. EDWARD J. PAWLEY: BROADWAY'S ELMER GANTRY, RADIO'S STEVE WILSON, AND HOLLYWOOD'S PERENNIAL BAD GUY (pub. Outskirts Press, 2006) by Robert Gibson Corder, Ph.D.