Edward Junior Malouf

Edward J. Malouf was a charter member of the Greatest Generation and the loving patriarch of a large clan. Born on December 11, 1925, in Ogden, UT, to Maggie Giles and Edward Malouf, he died on June 21, 2021, at his home in Dallas, surrounded by his family and over 500 American flags that had been placed in his front yard in recent days by family, friends and kind strangers to honor his military service in both World War II and the Korean War. In March of 1944, one year after his family moved to Dallas and following his graduation from Highland Park High School, Ed was drafted by the U.S. Army and assigned as a mortar-man to Company B in the 78th Infantry Division. Before the year was out, the 78th would be baptized by fire during the grueling Battle of the Bulge, singled out by Winston Churchill as “the greatest American battle of the war”. Of the 184 men in Company B, 102 would be killed or wounded, including Ed, who was patched up in a field hospital and sent back to his damp, log-covered foxhole under the deep snow on the front line. In March of 1945, this Purple Heart recipient was among the first troops to cross the Rhine River at the Bridge at Remagen.

Calculating that he had earned less than a nickel an hour in the Army, when the war ended Ed enrolled at Southern Methodist University (SMU) to improve his earning potential. After obtaining a degree in Business and finishing ROTC, he enlisted in the United States Air Force as a 2nd Lieutenant and became an agent for the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) with a top security clearance. Once asked why he enlisted in the Air Force instead of going back into the Army, he remarked, “because they had better food than the Army”.

The seven years of Ed’s military service had an outsized influence on his life. It culminated in his decades-long effort to get his former commander, Lieutenant John Robinson, recognized for heroism during that deadly winter of 1944 in the Heurtgen Forest. Despite being hospitalized for his injuries, Robinson never received a Purple Heart; so in 2008, after Ed’s unsuccessful campaign, he tracked down his former officer and handed over his own Purple Heart.

While a student at SMU, Ed met Marie Moossy of Shreveport, LA, and married her on July 28, 1949. Ed went into the family’s apparel business and eventually started his own company. The couple settled in the Casa View neighborhood of Dallas, quickly outgrowing their starter home as their nine children were born.

Accepting and magnanimous, Ed and Marie opened their hearts to a tenth adopted child, and their bountiful love spilled over to the neighbors in “Little Vatican”. Their children Amie, Paul, Stephen, Monica, Wayne, Rosanne, Marcellene, Louis, Peter and Toni, learned tolerance, generosity and resilience. Ed and Marie showed them how each generation assumes responsibility for the next, and how no problem is insurmountable if imagination and family resources are combined. Prioritizing education for the ten, Ed and Marie became active founding members of St. Pius X and later Bishop Lynch High School, where a scholarship was established in their name. Ed had unswerving loyalty to anyone welcomed into his ever-widening circle and took every opportunity to praise them. No one, however, received more praise than Marie, his accomplished wife of seventy years. Coming in second place was Ed’s best friend, Warren Mallard.

Ed and Marie’s generosity expanded far beyond their neighborhood. For example, after a chance meeting with a Lithuanian woman in a Moscow airport, son Stephen arranged for her husband’s heart valve surgery in Dallas. Following the heart operation, Kestutis Sauliunas and his wife Jane recuperated for three weeks at Ed and Marie’s home. Returning home, the Lithuanian couple erected a cross on The Hill of Crosses in Šiauliai in the Maloufs’ honor. So moved by the experience, Ed wrote a song about The Hill of Crosses for Voice of America.

While his wife was outgoing, Ed was more of a behind-the-scenes influencer, who embraced the many causes of his ever-expanding clan with devotion and wit. Family celebrations, of which there were many, often occasioned an original poem or a duet of “My Way”-- but sung together as “Our Way”. Ed also submitted satirical poems ,written under the pseudonym of the Phantom Poet, to friend Alex Burton, a Dallas broadcaster, to read aloud on KRLD. National or local politicians who fell from grace were awarded an “eggs-acting” Pullet Surprise. A lover of words, Ed peppered his writings with “eximious” Latin derivations and various homonyms.

Ed came to be known as PawPaw, a name awarded to him by his first-born grandson, Bobby Malouf. The title perfectly suited a man with a soft spot in his heart for children and dogs. At family parties, he filled the washing machine with sodas, perfected Orange Whammies, hired a pony to cart little ones up and down the alley, entertained everyone by riding a bicycle while facing backwards on the handlebars, and bought hot dogs so the canines had treats, too. He had a sign on his office door that read, “Dogs welcome, people tolerated”. When Molly Marrin, daughter of close family friends, started coaching, PawPaw became the Honorary Coach of the Regis University Women’s Basketball Team and the inspiration for another scholarship. He always said that one of his greatest joys was seeing his grandkids do to their parents what his kids had done to him and Mimi, and he was quick to point out, “there were ten of them and only two of us”. As he mentored new generations of 26 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren, PawPaw was a model of how investing deeply and remaining loyal to those you love was the ticket to a rich and fulfilling life.