Edward Myles Coe Jr.  (1944 - 2026)

Ed Coe died peacefully at the home of his daughter, Daniela, in Reston, Virginia, on July 31, 2026. The cause was throat cancer.

After graduation, Ed earned a master’s degree in architecture from Washington University. He then joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Tunisia to serve with a local bank.

The Class extends its condolences to Daniela; Ed’s stepson, Fred; and the rest of Ed’s family.

Ed (first row, second from left) and extended family

More About Ed

Miscelaneous

• He was a fencer as a freshman.
• He very rarely missed a Tiger Talk, typically having to find a public setting (most often a bar) because the wireless signal in his apartment wasn't strong enough.
• And in Brazil he had a dog named Blackie to whom he was devoted and of whom he sent many photos. There are several Blackie photos on this page. Blackie predeceased Ed, before Ed left for the 60th.

Ed's Story and Princeton as He Wrote it in the Class Directory

My first memory of Princeton goes back to when I was maybe 6 years old. Our family was dining at an upscale Manhattan restaurant. My father returned from the men’s room and announced, to my mother’s horror, that the “gentleman” in the urinal next to him, upon completing his business, had raised his hands in the air and proclaimed, “Princeton, no hands!” and exited without washing them. This greatly amused me and my younger brothers, ages 3 and 4. We thought any bathroom joke, especially coming from our dad, was hilarious, although I doubt that I fully understood his tribute to Princeton at the time.

Hopefully I can maintain this degree of levity as I try to summarize the important role that Princeton has played in my life. My transition from an undergraduate architecture student at Princeton to graduate student at Washington University through a simple dean-to-dean conversation is probably so common as not to warrant comment.

As a Princeton freshman I decided I would join the newly established Peace Corps once I completed my graduate degree. A few days after receiving my master’s in architecture, I flew to Washington, D.C., on a Sunday and spent the night at the home of my former roommate Mike Burrill and his wife, Marilyn. (I had been best man at their wedding following our Princeton graduation.) The next morning I arrived at Peace Corps headquarters. A young female receptionist told me she doubted there were any Peace Corps programs specifically for architects. I informed her that in the past there had been such a program for Tunisia and Morocco. She said she would check it out and excused herself. A half hour later she returned to tell me that a program still existed for Tunisia. Problem was, its annual training program had started that morning in Colorado — but since I had “gone to Princeton,” I could join the group if I left for Colorado immediately.

I arrived in Colorado two days later, on Wednesday morning. Our group of 20 recently graduated architects included one volunteer with an M.B.A. from Harvard. His mentor there had been the chairman of American Express and was a board member of the tourism development bank of Tunisia, recently established by the World Bank. In short, Peace Corps Tunisia created a special position so the Harvard mentee could do his Peace Corps service with this Tunisian bank. Once there, he realized the bank needed an architect and he recommended me, his Ivy League colleague. I spent two years there enjoying exceptional responsibility for someone my age and interacted regularly with World Bank staff. They pretty much guaranteed me a job with Bank upon my return to the United States.

As it turned out, the bank never hired anyone under 30 years old for staff positions and I was only 27. They essentially said come back in 3 years. No additional experience necessary. I discovered another Peace Corps job as a tourism advisor to a state government agency in São Paulo, Brazil. After several months I attempted to transfer to a position in Salvador, the capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia and an emerging tourism destination. Initially I was told that transfers were contrary to policy in Brazil. Fortunately I was able to get a meeting with the newly appointed acting Peace Corps director for Brazil. Having just arrived, he was unfamiliar with the local policy and had a family connection with Princeton, so he approved my transfer to Bahia. I served there as a Peace Corps volunteer for about a year and a half and then another year in the same position as a local government employee.

At the age of 31 I returned to Washington with a wife and stepson and immediately got a World Bank job as a temporary consultant. This led to a permanent post with the Organization of American States (O.A.S.) in its tourism program, directed by a Cornell graduate.

I’m sure that the Princeton brand attached to my name continued to facilitate my career, often in ways unapparent to me. However, it played an undeniable role in my earlier career providing exceptional opportunities to gain experience.

That said, I’ve never been able to confirm the manual dexterity of Princetonians proclaimed by my father in that Manhattan restaurant so many years ago.

How I Got to Brazil, Written before Leaving for the 60th