It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of a great American patriot and true champion of freedom-loving peoples (especially anticommunists) everywhere, Dr. Lee Willard Edwards (December 1, 1932-December 12, 2024). The cause of his untimely death was pancreatic cancer.
As I type these words on the evening of December 19, I have just returned home from having attended Edwards’s Funeral Mass—which took place at St. Rita Catholic Church in Alexandria, Virginia—and the reception thereafter (which took place at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City at Reagan Airport in Arlington, Virginia). It is now both my solemn duty and my tremendous honor to pay tribute to Edwards via this article, though no words will be adequate to convey what an amazing human being and friend of freedom Lee truly was.
Edwards, ninety-two, of Arlington, Virginia, beloved husband, father, and grandfather, passed away peacefully at home on December 12, 2024.
Born in Chicago to Leila and Willard (a Chicago Tribune reporter) and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland. Lee graduated from Bullis School and Duke University.
After U.S. Army service in West Germany, Lee was moved by the 1956 Hungarian Revolution while living in Paris and vowed to spend his life fighting for freedom and against communism. He helped found Young Americans for Freedom in 1960, served as director of public information for Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign, and started or helped sustain key anti-communist organizations. In 1986, Lee earned a doctorate from the Catholic University of America, where he was also a longtime adjunct professor. A preeminent historian of the American conservative movement and the former distinguished fellow in conservative thought at the Heritage Foundation, he was the author, editor, or co-author of over twenty-five books.
Edwards is predeceased by his wife Anna and survived by his daughters Elizabeth Edwards Spalding (Matthew) of Arlington and Catherine Marie O’Connor (Mike) of Spotsylvania, VA, and grandchildren Joseph, Catherine, Daniel (Chrstine), Thomas, Genevieve, Stephen (Marjorie), Zachary, Magdalene, Chrstopher, Michael, and Timothy. An eternal optimist devoted to freedom, family, and faith, his spirit lives on in his children, grandchildren, many friends, and all those he mentored.
Lee and Anne conceived of an organization to memorialize all the victims of communism around the world and to educate Americans about the atrocities of communism. In 1994, Lee co-founded the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Friends and family wishing to honor his life and legacy are invited to donate to the Lee and Anne Edwards Freedom Fund at VOC.
I didn’t quite get to know Edwards well enough to be able to accurately call him a true close personal friend per se, but I met him enough times at official events to affirm that he and I definitely had a strong, mutually respectful professional acquaintanceship.
My first time meeting Lee was at the Victims of Communism (VOC) Museum on October 25, 2022, at an event titled “Remembering the Hungarian Freedom Fighters of 1956.” It was definitely an honor and pleasure to make Lee’s acquaintance then and there, but it didn’t fully dawn on me at that moment in time just what a true giant of the anticommunist cause I was meeting.
Full disclosure here: I am a proud monthly donor to VOC. So accordingly, I became a regular attendee of VOC events such as the China Forum, and thus I not only got to interact further with Edwards but also got to know his wonderful daughter Elizabeth and grandson Joe (and reconnected with his son-in-law, Matthew Spalding, who is vice president of Washington Operations for Hillsdale College, after a 27-year hiatus. (The last time I’d seen Matt was way back in 1996, when I was a precocious, wild-eyed twenty-year-old intern at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center and he was the founding director of Heritage’s B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics.)
It was yet another Heritage Foundation employee, Dr. Jim Carafano (LTC, U.S. Army, ret.), the think tank’s current vice president for foreign and defense policy studies, who recruited me for my current career path as a journalist, starting with 19FortyFive back in May 2022 and leading to my current position with The National Interest!
I like to think of my all-too-brief acquaintanceship with Lee as an embodiment of the phrase “standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Requiescat in pace, Dr. Lee Edwards, and thanks and kudos to you for all of your amazing accomplishments and contributions to the cause of peace & freedom in your lifetime. It was truly an honor to have known you, and you will be sorely missed.
Christian D. Orr is a former U.S. Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). If you’d like to pick his brain further, you can ofttimes find him at the Old Virginia Tobacco Lounge (OVTC) lounge in Manassas, Virginia, partaking of fine stogies and good quality human camaraderie.
Image courtesy of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
