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FOREWORD

BY MARYLAND GOVERNOR MARTIN O’MALLEY

Ed Hale’s amazing story is one I’ve followed since my earliest days on the Baltimore City Council, when he was already a force in the community, a leading entrepreneur and banker with a passion for helping his hometown.

And help it he did. The people who make this world a better place and the people who create wealth and create opportunities and reclaim abandoned areas, they’re the people who have the ability to see what it can actually be. And more than that, have the courage to risk action on the faith that they can make it so.

And that’s one of the things I’ve always loved about Ed Hale. Win or lose, he steps up to the plate. He swings at the pitches. And he hits a lot of them. And people can talk about the ones he didn’t hit, the ones he swung at and missed. But the fact of the matter is, the guy makes his own bat. He did not wait for anyone else to make it for him.

For a lot of people in Baltimore, Ed Hale represented a sort of Everyman. Folks saw that the guy could be their brother. They thought: he did build this bank for me—that was more than just another soul-less corporate slogan when Ed started and nurtured 1st Mariner.

But from the very beginning, Ed was always more than just another CEO. What people crave in these times of large failing institutions and large fumbling government is the authentic person. Somebody who actually lives the American Dream. It’s not something that we’ll take our children to see only in museums or talk about how, in another generation, people used to work hard, sweat, work three or four jobs, risk it all, fail, pick themselves up, try again, succeed, succeed more greatly, fail, succeed again.

That’s what America’s all about. I think there are a lot of people in Baltimore—and I’m certainly one of them—who admired the guts and courage and unrelenting optimism that Ed Hale threw at life every single day.

And now when I go down to Canton to see the places that Ed built, see the properties that he got rolling and onto the tax rolls, see the number of young people that think it’s hip and cool to live in the city again, it’s a pretty remarkable transformation in a short period of time. And Ed was a pioneer down there.

Now, in this engaging biography by author and former Baltimore Sun columnist Kevin Cowherd, Ed’s story comes to life. It’s all here, from his modest upbringing in Sparrow’s Point to his wildly-successful careers in trucking, shipping, banking and real estate to his ownership of the Baltimore Blast and championing of indoor soccer, his secret work for the CIA, his often-turbulent family life and the difficult business setbacks he weathered later in his life.

As you’ll see, it’s a story well worth telling.