By JOE JARES Special to the Palisadian-Post Edmund Lindop, longtime teacher at Palms Junior High and then University High, and author of more than 40 books, died Thursday, December 3. He was 84. His wife, Esther, also a teacher and writer, was at his bedside when he died after battling Parkinson’s disease, low blood sugar and difficulty in swallowing. A 37-year resident of Pacific Palisades, Lindop inspired generations of students with his passion for history, politics and good writing. Prominent among those he mentored is his daughter Laurie, an author who teaches English and creative writing at Boston College. He was also passionate about the Dodgers and Trojan football. He graduated summa cum laude from USC, where his fraternity brother and best friend was Carl Gebhart, later to become the Palisadian-Post’s ace rain-measurer. Lindop managed to convert his UCLA-graduate wife and his Occidental-graduate daughter to the SC cause. “If USC lost, utter devastation,” said Laurie. “If they won, Dad would whoop around the house like a maniac. I truly thought all families behaved this way.” Despite having a full load of classes to teach and student papers to read, Lindop managed to be prolific at the typewriter ‘ he never became friendly with computers. It started with a nicely illustrated children’s book, “Jumbo, King of Elephants,” in 1960 and continued with other true stories about animals and textbooks (the first of these was “Understanding Latin America,” also in 1960). In the 1970s came “An Album of the Fifties,” “The First Book of Elections” and more. In the 1980s came “All About Republicans,” “The Bill of Rights and Landmark Cases” and more. On and on he produced volumes mostly for young adults, right up to “America in the 1930s,” copyrighted next year. I had the good fortune to take a number of classes from Ed at Palms Junior High in the early 1950s. He took an awkward, uncertain 13-year-old and imbued me with the conviction that I had what it took to be a writer. He did this with many kids. Not only was he brilliant in the classroom, he was kind and generous outside it. My dad was a professional wrestler who frequently campaigned far from home. Ed spent private time going over my stories and taking me to sporting events ‘ in the days before Pauley Pavilion,we loved watching UCLA play basketball in the old men’s gym, nicknamed the BO Barn because of its overheating. Before each college football season, Ed would buy a stack of preview magazines. We would sit in his study perusing them, as if who would start at left tackle for Auburn was of earth-shaking importance. When I was just out of college, Ed came up with the idea for a book on the sports of the Presidents. It required a huge amount of library research, so he enlisted my help ‘ if I would do half the digging, I could write half the book. “White House Sportsmen” was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1964. I went on to write seven more books. Ed Lindop went on to write more than 30. Despite all his books and all his grateful students, Ed wasn’t pompous or self-important; he could laugh at himself. For instance, he came up with the idea for a class in sports history at University. “The unruly boys would bring all kinds of balls to class and then toss them across the class to each other,” he recalled. “So every day when they came into my room I stood at the door with two large boxes into which I deposited their baseballs, footballs, soccer balls and volleyballs. “I wasn’t able to invite guest speakers because the students’ behavior was so bad it would have been embarrassing if outsiders had seen them in action. “When the semester finally ended, I felt a sense of blissful relief. And then I did something I learned from the Watergate conspirators. I shredded all of my material on sports history, so that I’d never be able to teach that course again!” Much better was his creative writing class at Palms. I remember when Frank Shiell’s father, a dentist, convinced a patient, famous author William Saroyan, to come and speak to us. Shiell is now living in New York, and is an expert on travel in Mexico. He remembers Ed as “a major, precious element in my life.” When he heard the news of Lindop’s death, author, publisher and former U.S. diplomat Jeff Harris spoke for many of Ed’s former students: “One of the pillars of everything I think about and do is gone. I will continue to think about him often ‘ and most of all from the one particular angle. He really did want to make the world a better place through us.” There will be a memorial service for Lindop on Saturday, December 19, 11 a.m., at Westwood Methodist Church, 10497 Wilshire Blvd. A reception will be held afterward in the church.
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