In 1973 a man passed from this Earth to whatever is afterwards. His name was Edwin Cerney.
I called him Uncle Edwin, even though he was not my uncle. He was still a relative; I was just never sure in what way we were related. I would spend my Saturdays with him and my Great Grandmother at their apartment.
Uncle Edwin was very close to my definition of a "renaissance man." His day job was musical director for radio station WMAQ, 670 AM in Chicago, but that was just his day job! This man wrote musical scores for the CSO (Chicago Symphony Orchestra) was an excellent outdoors man, and he wrote poetry.
I had always been fascinated by writing. I wrote several short stories when in grade school, I wrote articles for the grade school paper, and I wrote poetry, but no one ever knew that! After all, writing poetry was something a gradeschooler would never admit to, unless that gradeschooler wanted to be in even more fist fights.
Uncle Edwin encouraged me to write. He helped me with the ways of poetry, the pure, simple emotion that could be raised and shared via meter and the word.
Without this I would have never found my “Soul Family”, I would have been lost.
When he passed away I was entrusted with his poetry, I was asked to keep it alive. It is an awesome responsibility being entrusted with someone’s words. I hold them precious but need to share them with the world. I have published these before via the old BBS and web page. It’s time to do something more permanent. It is through this web site that I will honor his memory by sharing his words with the world.