Editor's Note: The public relations staff was gratified to receive the following letter from Julius "Jake" Jennings Wade Jr. from the Class of 1946. We thank him for his allegiance to both Darlington and to his classmates. We thought his letter would be of interest to our readers as well, so we included the complete text below.
I attended Darlington two years and graduated in the class of 1946. Also members of that class were two of my life-long friends from Charlotte (N.C.) who were also life-long friends of each other. It was mentioned in the Spring & Summer 2005 edition of Darlington Magazine in the In Memoriam section under the Class of 1946 that "Heath Alexander died Dec. 22, 2004" and "Edwin Nott IV of Miami, Fla., died April 6, 2005." Nothing more.
I trust, therefore, that it is not inappropriate for me to enlarge a bit upon the lives of these two outstanding Darlington men and this is the purpose of this note. These two were not just ordinary people. These were men that Darlington should "showcase" for the reasons that follow:
Heath, for example, was an enormously popular native Charlottean who was born and died in Charlotte. His Darlington education was interrupted when he left in 1945 to serve in the Navy during World War II. Upon his completion of Navy duty, he attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., from which he graduated in 1946. However, he left his mark at Darlington by earning varsity letters in football, basketball, baseball, tennis and track.
Episcopal's gain was Darlington's loss because, as it turned out, he gained fame as a student there by earning three varsity letters in the 1946 spring semester alone in tennis, track and baseball. He is still described there as the best natural athlete to ever attend Episcopal, which, along with Darlington, enjoys a reputation as among the best preparatory schools in the country.
Heath then attended and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he continued his outstanding career in athletics on the varsity basketball team and as a member and captain of the outstanding varsity tennis team. In addition to this, he was a two-time Charlotte city tennis champion as well as a champion golfer in Charlotte among various clubs.
He was a most successful businessman in Charlotte, and upon his retirement, he assumed his passion for collection and restoring vintage automobiles. He is still remembered here as the outstanding and popular person as herein described.
As to Edwin Nott IV, whose actual name is Thomas Edwin Nott IV, he died on April 6, 2005, within several months of Heath. He was born and raised in the same neighborhood in Charlotte as Heath, but unlike Heath, who remained in Charlotte, Ed ended up a resident of Miami, Fla. In Miami, he became an officer of the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs and opened and managed its Miami office for years until his retirement some 10 years ago.
Ed graduated from Darlington with our Class of 1946 and left his mark there not only as one of the top academic students in our clas, but also as an outstanding starting end on our varsity football team. He was generally recognized as one of the toughest competitors on our team, which was at that time a member of the Mid-South Conference, competing against such schools as Baylor, McCallie, Riverside, Georgia Military Academy and similar preparatory schools.
He attended and graduated from Clemson with an engineering degree, and from there he attended Wharton School of Finance in Philadelphia and received his Master of Business Administration.
Ed graduated from Clemson at the commencement of the Korean War and received his Lieutenant's commission in the Air Force. From there, he attended flight school as a jet fighter pilot and was selected for advanced training at the prestigious Hunter School at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, training for air combat against MIG fighters.
He was then assigned duty in the Korean War Zone, where he flew the North American F-86 Saber jet and, for an extended period of time, flew daily combat flights over the Yalu River against North Korean pilots flying the MIG15. For his outstanding and heroic Air Force duty, Ed was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal and numerous other citations. He had 100 combat missions and a number of "kills." He then returned to the United States and entered graduate school at Wharton under the G.I. Bill.
It is inspirational to have known these two exceptional men through the years and to have enjoyed the privilege of their friendship as friends, classmates and teammates. They were, indeed, outstanding students, athletes and patriots, and I feel that they deserved at their deaths a bit more published information about them other than simply their "name, rank and serial number" as essentially appeared in the magazine.
I enjoy the magazine very much and look forward to its receipt periodically.
Sincerely,
J.J. Wade Jr.
