Biography of Edward Wayne Kimbrough
Edward Wayne Kimbrough was born on August 18, 1942, in Little Rock, Arkansas to a single-parent household. During the early years of his life, he spent the school months in the Greenlee Community, near the small town of McCool, Mississippi, and the non-school summer months with his Uncle Alonzo and Aunt Camilla Wilborn, in Little Rock, Arkansas.
This allowed his mother, Mary Etta Kimbrough, to attend the summer program at Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi to earn her B.A. Degree in Education and continue her teaching career. After his mother obtained her college degree, Edward began spending his summers in Mississippi doing farm chores in the community to pay for some of his school clothes and supplies.
Edward attended Greenlee School from the first grade to the tenth grade. Conditions were so crowded at the school that the community church, Abraham Missionary Baptist Church, shared its facilities with the school. Edward attended geography and biology classes in the pews of the church, of which he was a member. The community built its own makeshift school bus out of an old flatbed truck with a little house on top, which was driven by one of the high school students who was Edward’s first cousin.
For the eleventh grade, Edward’s mother transferred him to the work/study program at Mary Holmes Junior College, in West Point, Mississippi, which had grade levels from high school through junior college. The work/study program allowed students to perform campus maintenance and support chores to help pay for their room and board. While at Mary Holmes, Edward was a pitcher on the varsity baseball team and a bench warmer on the varsity basketball team.
The following year the high school program at Mary Holmes was discontinued and the high school at Greenlee School was transferred to Tipton Street High School in Kosciusko, Mississippi, which is also the original hometown of Ms. Oprah Winfrey. Edward returned home to attend his senior year at Tipton Street High School. During his senior year, Edward’s mother bought him an alto saxophone and he played in the Tipton Street High School Concert Band. Edward was named valedictorian of the 1960 graduating class of Tipton Street High.
After graduating from high school, Edward received a scholarship to attend Knoxville College in Knoxville, Tennessee, which had a work/study program similar to the one at Mary Holmes Junior College. Both schools were founded by the United Presbyterian Church.
During his junior year at Knoxville College, Edward decided that he wanted to pursue a degree in industrial engineering. Dr. Robert H. Harvey, head of the Mathematics Department, set up a cooperative agreement with the University of Tennessee (UT), in Knoxville that allowed Edward to pursue an industrial engineering degree at UT while still at Knoxville College and to get degrees from both schools.
In 1966 Edward received a B.S. Degree in Mathematics from Knoxville College and in 1967 he received a B.S. Degree in Industrial Engineering from UT. While at Knoxville College, Edward was a member of the Marching Band, the Concert Band, and pledged the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Incorporated. While at UT Edward was a member of the Association of Collegiate Engineers (ACE) Board, which coordinated the activities of the engineering organizations, the American Institute of Industrial Engineers, and the Alpha Pi Mu Industrial Engineering Honor Society.
The work/study program at Knoxville College provided opportunities for students to work at various companies around the country during the summer months and Christmas holidays to earn money to help pay for their college expenses. During the summer of 1961, Edward worked for the Green Giant Canning Company in Belvidere, Illinois harvesting vegetables for their canning factory.
For the summers and Christmas holidays from 1962 through 1965, Edward worked for the Great Northern Railway as a dining car waiter. He was stationed in St. Paul, Minnesota, and worked on the passenger train route between Seattle, Washington, and Chicago, Illinois. In 1963, with help from his mother, Edward was able to purchase his first car, a brand-new 1963 Volkswagen Beetle.
In 1965 Edward applied for and was accepted to a summer internship with the IBM Corporation in Rochester, Minnesota, where he worked during the summer and Christmas holidays of 1966. When Edward graduated from UT in 1967, he interviewed about nine companies around the country through the UT student job placement center. He decided to go back to work for the IBM Corporation in Rochester, Minnesota. Edward continued working as an industrial engineer at the Rochester plant until September 1969, when a job opportunity became available at a new sister plant in Boca Raton, Florida, which he applied for and was accepted.
While working in Rochester in 1968, Edward was introduced to aviation by several friends and began taking flying lessons at the Rochester Municipal Airport. He earned his private pilot’s license in November of the same year. Rochester Aviation, Inc., the fixed base operator at the airport, formed the Olmsted County Flying Club with current and former students and three airplanes in October 1968. Edward was elected as the first treasurer of the flying club.
In late 1969 a job opportunity became available at a new sister IBM Plant in Boca Raton, Florida. Edward applied for the job and was accepted. He was part of the start-up team for the plant, and he worked there until 1972.
In early 1972 Edward received a substantial offer from the manager of the Engineering Division at the Southern Region Headquarters of the United States Postal Service in Memphis, Tennessee, which he accepted. The Southern Region of the Postal Service covered eleven states, from Texas, east to North Carolina, and south to Florida. The Engineering Division in the regional headquarters did engineering consulting work in all the major mail processing facilities in the region, which involved a significant amount of travel.
Postal Service regulations provided a way for individuals to use their personal aircraft for Postal business travel after showing a cost comparison to commercial travel and then claiming the less expensive mode of travel. So, in 1972 Edward used his IBM stock as a down payment to purchase a 1963 Mooney M20C airplane for his birthday, and in 1973 he obtained his instrument pilot rating. This enabled Edward to use his airplane for most of his Postal business travel throughout the Southern Region between 1972 and 1980, and he logged over 600 flight hours on Postal business trips during that 8-year period.
In February 2009 Edward retired from the Postal Service after 37 years of employment. Even after a bout with prostate cancer in 2008, which has been completely cured, Edward still had over 3,100 hours of unused sick leave when he retired. During his employment in the Postal Service, Edward contributed over $20,000 to the Combined Federal Campaign, with the United Negro College Fund as the primary beneficiary.
Most of the charitable activities Edward has participated in revolve around aviation. He has served as president and vice-president of the Bronze Eagles Flying Club of Texas, which is a chapter of the Black Pilots of America, Incorporated. This organization, of which he has been a member since 1981, encourages young people to get involved in aviation and every year, for many years, he conducted introductory flights for children in Houston and other cities in Texas.
He was also a member of Airlifeline when it was active in Houston, and he provided free flights to and from the Houston Medical Center for cancer patients. Edward has logged over 4,900 hours of flying time. In May 2024 Edward received the FAA Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award.
In January 1982 Edward formed Aero Resources, Incorporated (ARI) as part of a bid proposal for a fixed base operation at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas when the airport was first taken over by the City of Houston from the military. When his bid proposal was not successful, he began developing business plans to generate additional income to supplement his postal salary and to support his flying activities.
In 1977 the Mooney Aircraft Company in Kerrville, Texas introduced the Mooney 201 M20J Model, a modified version of the Mooney M20F Executive Model, which was about 20 mph faster than the M20F without an increase in engine horsepower. Several companies began marketing kits that certified the M20J modification for installation on many of the earlier model Mooneys. Edward decided he would develop a less expensive and easier-to-install version of the nose cowl portion of the M20J upgrade, using his 1963 Mooney M20C as the platform.
In May 1989 Edward obtained Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval for the nose cowl Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) for his 1963 Mooney M20C airplane. By 1994 he had obtained approval to install his nose cowl kit on all Pre-M20J Mooneys from the year 1958 to the year 1978. In 1993 he obtained FAA Parts Manufacturer Approval (PMA) to manufacture the parts for the nose cowl modifications.
Edward began marketing his nose cowl modification kits in 1995 by attending annual aviation marketing conventions around the country. In 1996 he expanded his product line to include a skin-mounted landing light lens cover for Pre-M20J Mooneys. He later developed a website at www.aeroresourcesinc.com to market his ARI products as well as the products of other aviation manufacturers. He is currently an FAA Designated Manufacturing Inspection Representative (DMIR) for his company. He also holds an Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic’s Certificate with the FAA. He has sold over 200 of his nose cowl modifications.
In October of 1997, Edward invited a young lady he met at church to hitch a plane ride to one of his marketing conventions in Orlando, Florida, which was relatively close to her hometown of Miami, Florida. The young lady, whose name was Wanda Beta Tanner, accepted the invitation and made the private plane ride to Orlando and then took the short commercial flight from Orlando to Miami.
Edward and Wanda began dating shortly after the Orlando trip. In November 1998, Edward and Wanda were married at the Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, Texas by the founding pastor, Reverend William A. Lawson. Edward considers his decision to marry Wanda one of the very best decisions he has ever made in his life.
When Edward retired from the United States Postal Service in 2009, America was experiencing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and he was deeply concerned that our leaders appeared to be abandoning basic moral and ethical standards when it came to protecting the American people from financial and social predators in the American economy.
To relieve his frustrations, Edward had planned to use some of his spare “retirement time” to write letters to Congress and members of the committees that controlled the industries involved. However, when he started to research on the internet and elsewhere for his letters, he found that there were many voices already out there that were much louder and stronger than his, and they did not appear to be having any noticeable effect on the leadership in Washington D.C.
It was then that Edward decided to write a book based on research that would pull all of those many voices on the internet and elsewhere together in one place, and instead of just complaining about the problems of humanity, try to provide historical facts and statistics about the problems and then offer some common-sense solutions. However, bringing those many voices together would not necessarily lead to solutions to the problems, because those many voices represented a very wide diversity of attitudes, opinions, and values. Those diverse attitudes, opinions, and values involved relationships between science and religion, different religious beliefs, different religious denominations, different cultures, different races of people, different lifestyles, and different genders.
To unify those many voices, it would be necessary to find Universal Principles that would promote peace, prosperity, and survival for all who follow them, no matter their race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, religious beliefs (belief in God, agnostic, or atheist), economic status, or political affiliation.
It was obvious to Edward that the only place to look for these Universal Principles was the Holy Bible. Therefore, the purposes of his book were to find Universal Principles from the Bible that promote peace, prosperity, and survival for all who follow them; use them to gather data that would inform the public about the nature and potential causes of the problems we are facing; and then offer common-sense solutions based on research and input from the many voices.
By 2018 Edward had compiled all of the research for his book. To begin applying this research to the root causes of our nation’s problems, Edward decided to run in the Democratic Primary for U.S. Senator from the State of Texas against Beto O’Rourke, for the Senate seat occupied by Senator Ted Cruz. With less than $5,000 in campaign contributions and no campaign staff, Edward received about 15% of the votes in the Democratic Primary.
On July 2, 2020, Edward’s book entitled, “FROM CHURCH HOUSE TO MAIN STREET,” involving about ten years of research, was published. The book, which turned out to be a set of five volumes, is based on a scientific analysis of the Holy Bible to develop Universal Principles that might bring unity to the American people and the world community.
These Universal Principles were then applied to the systemic problems of our nation. The result was a detailed legislative agenda to address the systemic problems of the nation and provide proposals to: Fix Our Relationships, Fix Our Democracy, Fix Our Money, Fix Our Infrastructure, Fix Our Environment, and Fix Our Foreign Policy.
During the 2020 Presidential Election, Edward used this website to present proposals concerning the above systemic problems that are negatively impacting the American people. He then conducted a letter-writing campaign to the leaders of the Democratic Party, media leaders and personalities, and religious leaders to consider the need for Congressional debate of these systemic proposals. His intent was to motivate our government leaders to begin serving the American people rather than the special interest groups that were keeping them in office.
In this 2024 Presidential Election, Edward believed that this comprehensive reform plan was desperately needed to identify the Musketeers in both political parties who were willing to work together to achieve the two-thirds majority required to pass meaningful legislation that would overcome the systemic problems that led to former President Trump’s attack on our democracy and the rule of law.
Edward refined his 2020 reform proposal and called it the Comprehensive 8-Year American Strategic Reform Plan (ASRP). The ASRP addresses the root causes of the same systemic problems as the previous plan but it places special emphasis on fixing our relationships, fixing our democracy, fixing our money, and fixing our infrastructure. To promote more unity in our relationships, he applied the Universal Principles to specific issues related to the family and the government for consideration by the people.
In December 2023, Edward applied to the Democratic Party of Texas for a place on the General Primary Ballot for the office of President of the United States. His ballot application was not accepted.
In August 2024, Edward submitted a synopsis of the proposed ASRP to the Biden-Harris Campaign and the leader of the Democratic Party for consideration at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago as part of the party platform.
Edward suggested that the common-sense proposals in the ASRP would identify the Musketeers in both political parties who would be willing to work with the Biden-Harris Administration to achieve the two-thirds majorities required to pass meaningful legislation to overcome former President Trump’s attack on our democracy. None of Edward’s proposals were included in the Democratic Party platform.
To save our democracy, Edward believes that we the people, through the power of our votes, must demand that the ASRP be debated in Congress during the next President’s first term in office, no matter which presidential candidate wins the election, because this reform plan will address the massive corruption that currently exists in our government in a very systematic manner.