Edward Jay Ferraro, January 3, 2019

Update: Ed’s widow, Jennifer Jenkins, sent in the following:

When my husband Edward passed away at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, one of the hardest things to do was pack up the books that were piled on every available surface in the room. Never one for small talk, Edward loved to engage the hospital staff in discussions about his books on philosophy and religion.

A roommate that Edward had after college wrote “I never tired of our long daily talks that raged well into the nights. They were the kind of talks you have to be in your twenties to have.” I don’t think Edward ever stopped having those kinds of talks, and he made new friends of all ages throughout his life. A 20-something friend of his would take notes every time they had dinner and write essay-length emails as he reflected on their discussions.

After Edward’s passing, I invited some of his friends (including the one who took notes at dinner) over to look at his extensive library. I wanted them to see our favorite books and talk about how incredibly smart and thoughtful Edward was. Each bookcase represented a different phase in his life.

I’ll start with the shelf from Charles Scribner’s Sons, because this is where I met him in back in 1992. Edward literally had encyclopedic knowledge about history, having worked as an associate editor on very big books, including the thirteen-volume Dictionary of the Middle Ages (published in 1982). At that time, Edward lived in a tiny fifth-floor walkup apartment with a bathtub in the kitchen. We loved editing encyclopedias, but I wanted to be able to afford a place with a kitchen that actually had a stove and countertops instead of bookcases and a bathtub. Edward wanted to buy more books and travel. Eventually we both decided to pursue more practical careers. He went to NYU Law School while I studied Information Systems.

He also had bookcases full of dictionaries and lexicons. Languages included Greek and Latin, Italian, German and Japanese. For years he carried a box of hand-written Japanese flash cards around. Although I seldom heard him actually speak Japanese, he had many close friends in the Japanese artist community in New York. He had a beautiful collection of their paintings, photographs and books.

Philosophy books naturally occupied most of the real estate. There were also several shelves of books on World War II, an era he studied closely because his father served as a Ranger and was in combat against the Nazis.

What I know less about is Olympia Press, the publishing house where Edward worked from 1972 to 1975. As Edward stated on his resume, Olympia Press had made its reputation by publishing authors such as Samuel Beckett. I know that he edited some lesser-known titles and wrote advertising, flap and jacket copy, but I don’t know exactly which books he worked on. To make a long story short, his friends found the hidden Olympia Press stack of books before I did and were quite shocked. According to an article by Angus Carroll in Fine Books and Collections Magazine (July 2010) the Olympia Press publisher Maurice Girodias “published a bizarre mix of the good, the bad and the obscene.” Apparently, my husband may have had to edit some books in the latter two categories.

Getting back to Edward’s more dignified achievements, he did pro-bono work for individuals with houses in foreclosure and in 2013 he won the Jeremy G. Epstein Award for Pro Bono Service from the New York City Bar Justice Center.

In 2012 he won the Emerald Literati Outstanding Paper Award for his article Competitive forces and cost-based analysis in SEC review of SRO market data fee filings: NetCoalition v. Securities and Exchange Commission in the Journal of Investment Compliance, Volume 12 number 1.

He practiced securities regulatory law at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, in New York, and at Sidley Austin LLP, also in New York, where he served as counsel to the firm’s Securities Regulatory Practice Group. At Willkie, he closely monitored the development and deliberations, within CESR, the European Parliament and the European Commission, that culminated in the adoption of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive in 2004, the approval of implementing measures in 2006 and the subsequent implementation of the Directive. During that same period, he also worked closely on the U.S. SEC’s major market structure initiatives, including Regulation ATS and Regulation NMS, and provided advice regarding related market structure developments in multiple jurisdictions including Canada, the UK, South and Central America and Asia.

He was a member of the New York City Bar’s Committee on Foreign and Comparative Law where he headed the Working Group on Cross-Border Regulation of Securities Markets.

Although Edward had an amazing intellect, he was far from humorless. As one of his friends put it, “his Mensa mind was combined with and softened by a large heart and a spirit most generous and an impish, wonderfully subversive, sense of humor.”

Terence Lenehan, who was on the debate team with Edward at Fordham Prep, stated “I have listened to many speeches but have never known anyone who could approach Ed’s mixture of Demosthenes, Cicero, Mark Antony, Yale, and a bit of Bronx, with unique perspective and insight.”

I’ll conclude this tribute with a quote from another friend: “Never in my life have I met anyone else remotely like Ed. He was truly one of a kind. His passing means there’s no one like him left on earth.”

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In the guestbook for the funeral home managing his final wishes, his friends commented:

https://www.papaverotributelink.com/guestbook/edward-ferraro

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