Date Died: Living

Place Buried: TBD

Occupation: Ship's Officer in US Maritime Service, Lt. Commander in US Naval Reserves, Dentist and Oral Surgeon, President of the Medical University of South Carolina (1982)

College of Charleston - B.S. 1950
University of Louisville, School of Dentistry - Louisville, KY, D.M.D. 1955
University of Pennsylvania, post-graduate studies - 1957-1958

1958-1960 – Edwards completed his two year residency in oral surgery at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, MI

South Carolina Senate, 1972-1975
Secretary of the US Department of Energy, 1981-1982

1974 General Election - Edwards defeated W.J. Bryan Dorn for the office of governor

November 5, 1974 – Governor Edwards was the first Republican to be elected governor of South Carolina since the end of Reconstruction

May 1977 – The 1st annual Spoleto Festival was held in Charleston

June 8, 1977 – Governor Edwards signed legislation reinstating the death penalty

In between, he worked as a deck officer with Alcoc Steamship Co. (1950-1951). Edwards was recalled as a dental officer in the U.S. Navy (1955-1957) and continued to serve as a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve (1957-1967). He studied for a year at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate Medical School (1957-1958) and did his oral surgery residency at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan (1958-1960).

From 1968 to 1972, he served as a dental representative on the South Carolina Governor's Statewide Committee for Comprehensive Health Care Planning and on the Federal Hospital Council from 1969 to 1973. Edwards ran for and won a seat in the South Carolina State Senate, serving from 1972 to 1974 and as governor of the state from 1975 to 1978.

During the Reagan administration, he also as secretary of energy from 1981 to 1982, returning to medicine thereafter as a professor of dentistry at the College of Dental Medicine of the Medical University of South Carolina.

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