Birth date: Jul 9, 1943 Death date: Jul 30, 2025
Edward Brent Eardley was born in St. Louis, Missouri on July 9, 1943, to Margy Anderson and Edward Pixton Eardley. He grew up in Northern Virginia and graduated from Rice University in 1964 and made his career with IBM as a syste Read Obituary
This is John Smith, I think we met at the Annandale football 50th reunion and for some reason, I think that we met once before that. In any case, I am writing to express my condolences at the loss of Brent. I lost my wife two years ago, so I know how it feels. I'm not good about sending cards....that was her job....so I thought I would share some thoughts about Brent.
I met Brent when we were in the 5th grade. That's when my family moved to Annandale. I later learned that the Eardley family had moved from Utah to Annandale when his father took a job in the Eisenhour administration. As I recall, he was an Engineer.
Brent and I went from the 5th grade through high school at exactly the same time, but we were never in the same class. I never thought about it at the time. But, now that I have grandchildren and have tutored in public schools, I know it was because Brent was always in higher classes than I was. I think they are called A.P. classes today. I'm not sure we had the same term back then, but I'm smart enough to know that they did evaluate kids and Brent was SUPER smart. My mother was a teacher at Annandale elementary school for a few years and she later told me that Brent had scored over 150 on his I.Q. test.
In those days, Annandale did not have middle school, so Brent and I went from the 7th grade in elementary school, to the 8th grade in high school. We played on the 8th grade football team and then in the 9th and 10th grade, we played on the junior varsity team. I was gone to Oklahoma for our junior year. For our senior year we played on the Annandale varsity football team and went undefeated. Doug Brown was the "star" of that team but Brent was terrific and got a football scholarship to Rice.
While he was at Rice, I joined the Army and we rarely crossed paths again.
A couple of interesting thoughts...
Not long after Brent and I went to high school, Annandale did start a middle school program. My mother was a math teacher and she moved to the middle school. She was there for many years, until she retired. Her all time favorite student was Brent's little sister.
I mentioned that we played together on the 8th grade football team. When we went out to Herndon, Virginia to play them, they had to move the cows off of the field....and clean up a bit of manure.
Bottom line, Brent was one of the smartest and nicest people I have ever known. I wish you all the best.
John
