A Master Still Carries His Sword

I was walking back to my room after a particularly bad meal in Leverett House last night when I ran into Paul Viita, a former fencer. "Paul," I said, "I need a quotable quote for the CRIMSON tomorrow. I'm writing a story on Coach Edo Marion, and I'd like a statement from one of his former players."

Paul thought for the next few moments and said nothing.

So I asked him again. This time, he finally said, "Coach has always felt that fencing can become so much a part of somebody that it begins to reflect his personality."

I remembered that Coach had described the fencers on the team, in my first meeting with him, using terms that many psychologists use to describe personality. As the season progressed. I saw that coach Marion's description did, indeed, fit closely with the personality of the fencers. Someone who can do that has to be deeply involved in and committed to his sport. As I was to find out, Coach Marion has been one with fencing since 1926.

Edo Marion started to fence when he was sixteen years old in his home town, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. At that time, Colonel Rudolf Cwetko, an Austrio-Hungarian fencing master, was associated with the club, and Edo became his student.

While attending Charles University in Prague, Edo continued to compete in fencing matches. After graduation, he earned a Ph.D. in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Rome as World War II became a full-scale conflict.

Return to Yugoslavia

In the spring of 1944, Yugoslavs that had been living in Rome formed a liberation army, and returned to their country. Edo had barely been married a year, and his wife had just given birth to their first child when he joined the liberation army. "I was a sentimentalist, and I loved my country. So I left my wife and child and became a foot soldier in the 18th Proletarian Brigade," Edo said.

After the complete collapse of Germany, he returned to Yugoslavia with his wife and child, but after being in the country for a few months, he left. "All around me people were getting killed by Communist purges. I couldn't live there. So one day, I packed my wife and son and went to the free city of Trieste," Marion said.

He took all sorts of jobs and waited in Trieste. Nothing was going his way. "I hated to leave Europe, but I had to do it. I found that I was able to come to America, and so I learned to speak English in a month," Edo said.

Edo, who knew six other languages, found English construction and pronunciation difficult. "My accent changed many words, and people had difficulty understanding me," Edo said of his first few months in Boston.

Then Harvard entered his life.

The Crimson fencing coach had just retired, and the Department of Athletics was looking for a new coach. Joe Levis, an American fencer, who had befriended Edo, recommended him for the job. By that time, Edo had sustained a severe injury in his back and was unable to walk straight. "That was the funny thing, Harvard was looking for a bargain, so they did not question my credentials or my injury, and they offered me a part-time coaching job," Edo said.

Cane in One Hand, Weapon in the Other

During his first season as coach his back continued to bother him, and he trained his team with a cane in one hand and a weapon in the other. "I think that first season actually helped my back, although I use to hobble home in pain and just fall into my bed." he said.

After being laid off from his full-time job as an engineer for a local company, he was able to get a job as a mechanical engineer with Harvard's Buildings and Grounds Department. Since the 1952-53 season, he has held a full-time job as an engineer and a full-time job as a coach, but he has been payed only time-and-a-half.

"You know. I will be sixty years old Sunday and I always had a dream of having a national championship team, but time is getting short. If I were able to coach full time, I would be able to spend more time with the inexperienced freshmen fencers, who frequently have never fenced, and with the varsity, who need help with some fine points," Edo said yesterday.

If Coach Marion had had that time this year, Harvard may very well have had three All-Americans and the best fencing team in the country.