Eddie Anderson Warfield – My Brother

When my mother’s sister lost her baby, mother decided to have a third child “for Frankie.”   Vicki and I had been born a year and a half apart, but there was a four-year gap until Eddie.  It always set him a bit apart from Vicki and myself.

When we were on the coast (Corpus Christi), he was barely walking.  My fondest memories of him were as a baby on the beach.  He was completely fearless of the water.  We did not realize it then, but he was always a loner. 

I think it was hard for him, growing up in my shadow, but he bravely went into music and played the cello.

Libbert Tool and Die, the company Daddy worked for, failed while Eddie was in high school, and so daddy took a job in Mineral Wells.  Eddie hated to leave Ft. Worth.  He graduated Mineral Wells High School.  He went to North Texas State for only a year, I believe, before leaving for California, under a cloud.  There, he eventually joined the Marines.  I visited him a couple of times, and I was there at the bar, that night, when he met Mary Ann.  I was not there for his wedding.

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A wife and a step daughter changed his life, drastically, as did the coming of a son, Eddie Alexander Warfield.

After Eddie lost his job at the Naval yards in San Diego, he was not able to make ends meet and moved to Texas.  Eventually he inherited, via the trust, Frankie’s old house on Fincher.  He was never again employed at his level of expertise.   To my mind, his life on Fincher was one slow grind downhill until the end.  Through it all he kept a wry sense of humor and a certain distance.  There was never any pretense.  His memorial service was held in his favorite bar.