Edward B. Maxwell II ’59 died on April 25, 2020 in Naples, Florida.       

(The following was published by The News Journal on July 16, 2020)

Edward B. Maxwell, II died on April 25, 2020 in Naples, Florida, after a brief illness. He was 82 and the son of Emma G. and Edward Maxwell, who predeceased him. He was born in Wilmington, Delaware, and in 1955 graduated from Mt. Pleasant High School. In 1959, he graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, where he was a member of the Zeta Psi fraternity.

Following college, he completed the U.S. Army Infantry Officers’ course at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and then the Army Intelligence School at Ft. Holibird, Maryland. He was assigned in 1960 to the 308th Counterintelligence Corps in Seoul, Korea, where he was officer in charge of Special Operations Section. Upon his return to the U.S. as a lieutenant, he taught military intelligence at Ft. George G. Meade, Maryland.

In 1964, he graduated from Dickinson School of Law, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was the articles editor of the Dickinson Law Review.

Following graduation from law school, he was a law clerk for the attorney general of Delaware after which time he became an associate, and later a partner, at the firm of Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP, Wilmington, Delaware, where he served for several years as its hiring partner. He practiced law there for thirty-five years mostly in the areas of corporate and commercial litigation, with some emphasis on drafting corporate and commercial transactional documents. He served at one time as secretary of the Corporation Law Committee of the Delaware Bar Association.

In addition to the Delaware Supreme Court and all other Delaware state courts, including the Chancery Court and the Superior Court, he practiced in the U.S. District Courts for Delaware, New Jersey (Newark and Trenton), and New York, the U.S. Tax Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the 3rd and 2nd Circuits and was admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court. While he was active in the practice of law, he was appointed to serve as a member of the Delaware Board of Bar Examiners and as an associate of the Delaware Supreme Court Censor Committee, the latter committee being the then-disciplinary arm of the Delaware Supreme Court. He also was appointed by Delaware’s governor in the late 1970s for a two-year term to the Delaware Governor’s Advisory Committee on Mental Health.

He retired from active practice of law in 1999 and relocated from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, to Naples, Florida. He became an attorney emeritus of the Delaware Bar in 2011.

While in Delaware, he was a member of the Greenville Country Club, the Wilmington Club, the Lincoln Club and was president (1979-1981) of the University & Whist Club of Wilmington and served on its board for 10 years and as chairman of its Wine Committee for several years. In Florida in 2007, he was recognized by the Collier County Sheriff with a special service award for his support of the Florida Sheriffs Association Youth Ranches located in several areas of Florida, and in 2019 he received an award for his fifteen-year support of the Ranches. His other interests were travel, collecting period antiques, art, and sculpture, some of which has been donated to the Brandywine River Museum, Delaware Art Museum, James Michener Museum and The Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

He is survived by his sister and brother-in-law, Beverly and Chief Warrant Officer Werner Schweikert USCG, (Ret.) of Harrington, Delaware, and Cape May, New Jersey, and a niece, Susan (Capt. H. Jay) Smeltzer and a nephew.