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The family of Edwin C. Townsend, WVU Professor Emeritus of Statistics, shares that he passed away on Friday, September 11, 2026, of pulmonary fibrosis. He was 90. He spent almost a century in community with people, his family and friends, shaping and being shaped by them in ways they are still telling stories about.
Edwin Cecil Townsend was born in 1936 in Wood County, West Virginia, to Eva and Cecil Townsend, and grew up on the family dairy farm in Belleville. At 18, he moved to Morgantown to attend West Virginia University, working his way through school on the college farm for 40 cents an hour.
Ed became WVU's first full-time computer employee, operating an IBM 610 in the 1950s while he was still a student. He went on to earn a PhD in biostatistics at Cornell, then returned to WVU as a professor. In the College of Agriculture, Ed spent 30 years training scientists to be as scrupulous with data as they were generous as colleagues and thinkers.
In 1957 he married Carol Cochran, and for 64 years they built a life together that always kept its doors open. He loved and cared for people: he baked bread, cookies, pie, and pepperoni rolls for whoever happened to be around. The house on Village Drive was rarely empty.
He and Carol were longtime members of Madigan Avenue Church of Christ, where he took a particular interest in the college students who passed through Morgantown far from their own parents. Ed and Carol had students over for homemade meals, hosted them at tailgate parties, and were, for a great many young people, something very near a second set of parents. Many still call him that. Every year, the students took over the Townsends' garage and turned it into an elaborate haunted house of their own design.
Around Morgantown, Ed could be found on Stanley Farr's tennis courts, at the WVU racquetball courts or track, or at his children's tennis matches and cross country meets. Whatever interested his children, interested him. He showed up for all of it: their faith, their studies, their sports, their music. He was just as often spotted behind the wheel of his VW van, riding the PRT, browsing at the Bargain Bookshelf, or teaching a class at church.
Ed and Carol left West Virginia 25 years ago for Atlanta, to be near their children and grandchildren, though West Virginia stayed with him always. In retirement, they traveled extensively: Europe, Nova Scotia, St. Petersburg, cities throughout the Mediterranean, Croatia, Prince Edward Island, Copenhagen, and across the United States. Friendships that had carried them for decades stayed close, and Atlanta simply widened the circle. Then when Carol was diagnosed with cancer, he stayed at her side through three years of treatment.
In the early summer of 2026, all his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren gathered to celebrate his 90th birthday. In the months that followed, cared for at home by his children, he had a steady stream of visitors--family and friends who came by for coffee and stayed to talk, which was how he most liked to spend an afternoon.
He is missed, every day, by all of us who loved him. "The memory of the righteous is a blessing" Proverbs 10:7.
A memorial service will be held Saturday, October 10, at 11 a.m. at North Atlanta Church of Christ. If you would like to honor Ed, thank you for considering supporting a program near to his heart and started by his daughter: Common Good Atlanta (https://commongoodatlanta.org/).