Can anyone really replace Ed Gwartney?

For The Madera Tribune

Ed Gwartney, founder and director of the James Monroe Children’s Museum.

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Ed Gwartney would have been 83-years-old in a few days, and we think it would be appropriate to remember him.    

Ed was a self-described product of the “Okie” migration who never earned a high school diploma but became a pathfinder of new trails in the teaching of history.  He was the founder of the James Monroe Children’s Museum and he has left it to others to build on his passion that created the unique educational laboratory for teaching California history on the campus of James Monroe Elementary School. 

Gwartney and his family were part of the great Dust Bowl migration in the 1930s and 1940s. When he was nine months old, his mother, father, three brothers and two aunts left Oklahoma searching for survival.