NORTHAMPTON — When Edwin “Ted” Warner was young he worked on his family’s Bridge Road dairy farm.
“He was a milkman, house to house,” said Patrick M. Goggins of Northampton, president of Goggins Real Estate. “My wife (Denise) always tells the story about how he would come right in the back door, put the milk into the refrigerator, and start shooting the breeze with whoever was there.”
Warner passed away peacefully last Thursday at the age of 101. He was Williamsburg’s oldest resident, according to an obituary published in Friday’s Daily Hampshire Gazette newspaper.
Decades after his years as a milkman, Goggins recalls how Warner, in old age, was the same person.
“He would, in recent years, come to my office in the early morning and just shoot the breeze. That was when he was well into his 90s,” Goggins said. “He was with it right to the end. It’s a credit to the man he was. He was a person who paid attention to what was going on around him.”
Fifty-five years ago, Goggins said he met Warner as a Little League baseball player. At the time, Warner was president of the Babe Ruth league. Over the next several decades Goggins interacted with Warner in a number of different capacities professionally and personally.
After graduating from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Goggins became director of Northampton’s Parks and Recreation Department. Warner was chairman of the School Committee. Years later, when Goggins became Hampshire County Commissioner, Warner was executive director of Hampshire County Long Term Care Facility in Leeds.
“We forged a strong relationship and really became great friends as a result of all those different crossroads over the years,” Warner said. “We shared a lot of interests in all things politics, local, statewide and national.”
Based on the obituary, Warner was born in Northampton in 1917, graduated from Northampton High School in 1935, and served in the United States Navy for four years afterward.
Over decades, in addition to Northampton’s City County and the local School Committee, Warner served on the Board of Public Works and the Hampshire County Retire ment Board. He was a trustee of the Florence Savings Bank, a lifelong member of Elks Lodge 997 in Florence, longtime director of the Three County Fair Association, and ran the Williamsburg Snack bar and Community Bowling Lanes in Westfield.
At one point, Warner was chairman of both the School Committee and the BPW, Goggins said.
“That speaks volumes to the kind of respect he demanded and the job he did in positions of responsibility,” he continued.
Notably, Goggins remembers Warner as a man who held fiscal responsibility and attention to detail in high esteem, especially when it came to tax money.
When Goggins was Hampshire County Commissioner he worked with Warner to help create the Leeds facility’s budget. One year, in order to save money, Warner said he wouldn’t need dumpsters at the facility.
“The reason was because he (said he’d) load his station wagon up with all the materials that would normally go into the dumpster and take it down to the yard on Locust Street and dump it himself,” Warner said. “There are some people who have a reputation for not paying attention to the tax dollar. That was not him. He was caring about his responsibility over the money that was being spent.”
The last time Goggins saw him at Linda Manor last month, Warner was sharp as a tack.
“As he always was,” Goggins said.
Warner was predeceased by his wife, Irene Karnawitz, and their son, Mark; by four sisters, Ruth Toy, Louise Bordeau, Alice Whalen and Margeret Clark; and son-in-law Daniel Connor, according to the obituary.
He is survived by his wife Lillian (Dick inson) Warner; a daughter, Diane Connor and her sons, David and Joseph, a daughter, Lynn Warner and her husband, David Rousseau and their children, Nate and Ellie; and other relatives.
Memorial gifts can be made to the Mark Warner Scholarship Fund care of the Principal, Northampton High School, 380 Elm St., Northampton, Massachusetts 01060. A memorial registry for Warner can be found at www.douglassfuneral.com.