I enjoyed Ed’s style and enthusiasm, in almost all of his posts, even though I often held slightly different view points. This place, C99, is a very special place on the internet. Diverging points of view cohabit this little slice of bit space with remarkable mutual tolerance for the most part. I will miss Ed’s wit and unabashed style and his sense of humor.

I am very sorry for your loss.

RIP Ed, from a fellow Cubs fan.

I enjoyed his posts immensely and am saddened to learn of his passing.

I also appreciate your brief biography of Ed. I never would have guessed.

Very sorry to hear of his death. I hope his final pain was brief.

Stunned is all. He'll be missed.

The alligator was something else and he livened up this joint with his funny essays and his way of seeing things. I am so happy to hear that he did not suffer or linger. I look at that as a gift and I hope it brings you some comfort with his sudden passing.

Thank you for including this history. It helps us see Ed better.

I think that the recent unfortunate changes in his attitude on several matters was a result of a brain tumor he was living with

I couldn't have said it any better.

He had a big heart and will be greatly missed.

Peace on you and your family and friends of Ed. Thank you for letting us know about his life and for this sad news.

I am so sorry to hear this, and I am sure he will be missed deeply by everyone in his personal realm. Thank you for sharing this sad news.
Ed was one of my favorite contributors here. Always lively and insightful, what I most loved about his writings is that he didn't pull any punches and made contact over 90% of the time. He masterfully mixed humor with the literary illustrations of salient points he made.
I also want to mention that it was obvious that he spoke with a great love for humanity.
Rest In Power! friend.

I must reiterate what everyone is saying ~ I enjoyed his essays ~ he always made me think ~ he always brought great wisdom to us.
May your family find peace in death.

to his family, friends, relatives and readers.

I knew nothing about his condition. He did have a way with words and could invoke / provoke quite a few interesting conversations, riddled with irony on many levels.

It would have been nice to meet him in person. While I'm not a "sports" fan, I do tend to root for the under dog anyway.

May the Cubs win one for Ed!

Thank you for letting us know.

Thank you for telling us, and sharing more of who he was with us. Words always fail in a time like this,and all the words in the world can never fill that space where a loved one once stood. I am sorry for your loss.

who really liked, if not loved Alligator Ed. I think his big heart and care for the people always shined through. For some reason some folks couldn't stand his swampy creature style, but I loved it. I admit I didn't like so much the tussles between CB and him and admit I took side for Alligator Ed.

I wondered what happened and why he didn't post anymore after he came back to the site. Though I often thought before that he might be sick or too busy caring for the sick to the point he became himself sick, I did not expect such a tragic medical condition and saddening end of his life. He was the only guy who saw in Tulsi Gabbard the fighting loving person she is.

I am so glad you told us about his life. It fits what I somehow assumed about him. He sometimes hinted about his work during war time, but I thought it was during the Iraq war.
I could stand his style and was often very amused about how he expressed himself, and the bio you gave us now very much fits what I thought about him.

Oh man, that makes me really sad and I think he is a loss to this ste. My sincere condolences to you and your family.

I'll make sure to become a crokodile before I meet him in heaven, so we can have our little tit for tat ... heh, Alligator Ed do you hear me? We will meet again. For sure.

So sad, I am really, really sad.

Adding to the many tributes others have paid, I too will miss Alligator Ed, his views, his grit, his spirit.

Didn't always agree with him, but never got genuinely pissed off with him.

I'm so sorry for your loss. Sorry for mine, too. Ed genuinely contributed to my life. I'm glad I was able to know him.

for letting us know, and especially the bio. I had not known his very accomplished life and sadly, only now can appreciate him even more.
Peace and love to your family in this sad time.
RIP AE.

Thank you for sharing this information with us. Really enjoyed reading about his life outside from here. His fighting for the underdog was evident in some of his posts. I am not a prolific contributor but have always enjoyed his writing if for it did make me think about what my point of view was. My husband, Divine Order, how made his transition two years ago really did enjoy his conversations/interaction with Ed on a variety of topics.

Hope those that have crossed the divide from C99 have found each other and are having a great debate about a variety of things!

Condolences to the entire family.

community know of Alligator Ed’s passing. There are holes where some names used to be and we are left to wonder “Why?” Where are they? What became of them? Thank you for telling us. And thank you for the background and especially the joyous photo of your brother Ed emerging from the sea.

Thank you for letting us know, and sharing a bit of his story.

I always enjoyed his ’gator themed posts. At times I disagreed with him, but I took those occasions as a challenge: he was obviously a smart guy, so maybe I should reconsider my stance… and sometimes, he changed my mind.

Those occasions of challenge were valuable to me, and I will miss them, and him.

My sincere condolences to you and your family.

To A. Ed's bro: Thank you so very much for letting us know what happened, and some great back story. I am sorry for your loss. As many others here I often enjoyed gators writing, and thinking, and ability to make others think. Many times I would read a sentence he wrote and think 'he hit that out of the park'. It is a loss for all of us.

My condolences to Ed's friends and family.

RIP Alligator Ed - may a beautiful swamp be with you

he wrote in Jan 2017 Healthy New Year advice: avoid the first operation. He had a flair for words and could be abrupt at times, it seems to be a pattern of surgeons I have known. His caring about people and issues was an undertone in many of his pieces. Maybe a family trait. Thank you for letting us of his passing. My condolences to you and the rest of his family.

To Alligator Ed's family and friends. Ed was a wonderful writer and he will be missed by many here, including myself.

[video:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J9j8t0n9P4Y]

I hope this song isn't inappropriate. It's actually one I want played when I'm gone.

I hadn't heard from Ed since December, so went looking for what I feared I might find, although I confess I did not expect to find it here. He had said something about writing on Community Forum which I am unaware of.

Many of you here will recall the Ides of March in 2016 with a particular itchiness and discomfort as I do. DKos had become a home for me since 2008 while I struggled with as yet undiagnosed Lyme disease which had brought my life to a place so physically and mentally dysfunctional that it surprises me I survived.

Netroots Nation came to Austin in 2008, and a friend of mine suggested I volunteer. I found a political home and way to greatly expand the world of a mostly shut in.

In 2009, my Lyme was diagnosed and treated, and I substantially got a good portion of my brain and body returned to me after some time. By then, DKos was an important part of my life. I learned to write a bit. I helped run a series support group for folks with invisible illnesses on the site. Later, I was invited to be part of the Rescue Ranger team which was a great honor and a bit beyond my capacity. It was as much a home as any part of my life.

So to be booted from the site for my political preference in 2016 smacked at my sense of identity there and felt crushing.

Two creatures got me through the 2016 primary. One was a month-old abandoned feral kitten who still required milk replacement and to have his massive infections treated. He keeps nuzzling up to me as I write in concern over the ugly crying he sees.

The other creature who claimed me and my abandoned heart was our dear, shared, Alligator Ed. I can't remember if we found each other before the Ides of March betrayal, but we became fast friends here.

To be honest, I am deeply surprised to learn it was his brain which facilitated his departure because of something I don't think he disclosed publicly here: last I knew -and it was years ago since we discussed this number- he was living with cardiac function in the mid-teens. He had a close friend in a cardiac transplant program who offered more than once to list him, and he declined. He knew what it entailed and he was enjoying his life as it was.

I was mystified by how he was doing as well as he was given his condition, but I have come to know better over time.

Ed and I were a full generation apart, but I had a really big crush on him. At an earlier stage in my own transplant consideration, he extremely generously offered to care for me post renal transplant. He offered to come stay with me in Texas for a month to care for me.

We did not know each other in California, but I am a native Californian. A medical accident took me out of the workforce in the early 2000s which necessitated my leaving my home state to find lower rent. The accident made way for my latent Lyme infection to dominate my brain and body, and it exposed to detection a congenital renal disease previously unknown in my family.

I've been turned down 2x for renal transplant because of my own cardiac function level, but when Ed was telling me of his thinking about cardiac transplant, my function was twice his. Due to an unfortunate complication with dialysis a year and a half ago, my cardiac function fell to under 20%. Initially, I could just walk a few feet before resting, but over a few months I became re-able to function about as much as I had. At any rate, am in another phase of transplant consideration now... But that's not this story.

Ed made another offer to me which I DID take him up on, and which I know ended up making his life feel more vital in an ongoing way likely until his passing is my guess.

Unbeknownst to me in 2016, and old boyfriend of mine was a victim of a hit-and-run, truck vs. pedestrian accident which left him with and open-skull injury and very serious brain damage. He was taken by ambulance to a Long Beach, CA hospital, which, unfortunately, did not follow California law and apply for MediCal (California's Medicaid) on his behalf. Instead, they put him in a wheelchair and deposited him on their curb as soon as he was conscious (having stapled his head together without doing all the imaging necessary). Paul did eventually get Medicaid, and he and I got back in touch the following year, I think. At first, while I knew he was in bad shape, I did not know about the accident because he was struggling with his thoughts still to that degree.

Being a retired neurosurgeon, as we all knew here, Ed offered to see Paul since he (Paul) had not yet had adequate medical care in follow-up to his head trauma. In order to see Paul, Ed had to re-up his medical license, which he generously did. To the best of my knowledge, Ed continued to see patients gratis at least one day a week. It clearly gave him increased sense of purpose to return to medicine.

Paul became homeless in the aftermath of his accident since he was unable to return to his work as a US Coastguard licensed captain. We are still fighting for his SSDI, and if that is finally granted, it will be due to Ed's kind generosity. My recollection is that Ed spent 6 hours with Paul in that visit, and he fully vetted his nuerological as well as his skeletal situation post impact.

The hospital where Paul was treated was very stubborn about not releasing his records, even when the statute of limitation on their legal liability had expired. Ed had to make four requests for records before he got the bulk of them. But he saw that through, champ that Ed was.

I'm pretty sure Ed was an atheist, but I'm counting on sitting on some front porch in rocking chairs somewhere in the afterlife to have a long, long discussion about the sliver of his impact I got to see and how damn grateful I am for it.

See ya later, Alligator Ed!

...and Ed's brother, thank you so very much for making sure we learned. Your words are so tender - may his memory always be for a blessing. And to my friends here... I am so sorry for your loss, as well. I know others of us also had deep friendships. Love to you all.