Cecilia Nasmith/Today’s Northumberland
A creative man who enjoyed rising to a challenge, Edwin William Lorenz created an enduringly successful business while helping to fulfill his community’s greatest needs.
A solid legacy remains on his passing July 5 at the age of 91.
Though most of those years were spent in the Cobourg community, Ed Lorenz was born in Saskatchewan Dec. 21, 1929. He and his wife of 68 years Diane moved to Cobourg in 1965.
Scott MacCoubrey – who grew up around the Lorenz family, as his parents Bob and Sandra were very close friends of the couple – characterizes Ed Lorenz as a genuine success story. A millwright by training, he got a job at the old General Foods plant when he came to Cobourg.
“Then he starts manufacturing things in his garage that could improve the performance at General Foods. Next thing you know, he realizes he could get into his own business,” MacCoubrey recalled.
“He goes from, basically, working out of his garage to a very successful company.”
That was 1979 and – with the support of his wife and his son Peter – Lorenz & Son Mfg. got its start.
Another friend, Ed’s House Director of Hospice Services Sherry Gibson, has heard the story from his wife’s perspective about how he came home from General Foods one day with his big idea.
“She was mashing potatoes, and he said to her, ‘Diane, I think I am onto something. I think I can make something that’s going to be terrific and make us a lot of money.’
“She said, ‘Ed, if you want to do it, go for it.’”
They had some really great years after that, along with a few not-so-great ones, but Diane always wondered what would have happened if she’d just kept mashing the potatoes and said, “But dinner’s ready, dear.”
Instead, Gibson said, she supported him as he built something special and important that continues to benefit the community.
“The essence of what needs to come out about Ed is, he was a man who built for good,” she stated.
Peter had his own perspective to offer, memories of boyhood years when he helped his dad in the garage by cutting up pieces with a hacksaw.
“He taught us all lots of different things. He was a tinkerer, always building stuff. He taught us how to build things – with steel especially because he liked steel,” he recalled.
“That’s how I ended up in the business. He taught me everything he knew.”
Lorenz & Son supported the Northumberland Hills Hospital and other local charities, sponsored numerous sports teams, and just kept growing. It is now an international company, having bought a small company in the US a couple of years ago.
And its founder worked hard but still found time for pursuits he loved. Fishing was one of them, from deep-sea outings to just dropping a line at his cottage on Buckshot Lake. Knowing he never caught anything, Peter loved to tease him by running down to the dock with a frying pan.
Peter recalled his parents working in the Dominican Republic to build houses and schools, but there was also the legacy to his family of that cottage that he built from the ground up, floating construction materials to the site to make it happen – old scraps and skids that became cupboard doors, along with the more conventional supplies.
The Lorenzes travelled all around the world (so often in the company of the MacCoubreys), but Maui had a special place in their hearts. Ed and Diane would eventually establish a routine that would find them on that beloved Hawaiian island three months of every year. Ed even became a member of the Maui Rotary Club in addition to his Cobourg membership. Peter said that’s the place from which they beat a hasty retreat home when COVID-19 hit.
That Rotary membership is something else that held a high priority for Ed. He was a past president, holder of a 30-year perfect-attendance record and, as a Paul Harris Fellow, the recipient of Rotary’s highest honour.
And their Service Above Self motto was a perfect fit for him – another avenue of service, MacCoubrey said.
“What a neat guy, as far as being a businessman, but everybody loved him as a person,” he stated.
“He literally would give you the shirt off his own back. Even though he became very successful in life you would never know it. He was that kind of guy who wanted to help you if he could.”
MacCoubrey recalled the splash Ed made with the device he invented especially for one of the annual Rotary Club corn roasts, a portable gas boiler. He arrived early, filled the pot with water, turned on the propane connection and watched the smiles.
If they said something was impossible, MacCoubrey said, he would be all over it.
And when the initial provincial funding was okayed for a Northumberland Hospice Care Centre, the Lorenzes were unstinting in their support with a landmark $1.5-million donation – larger by far than the most generous of community donations and even bigger than any government grant.
Gibson said it was inspired by the palliative care Diane’s sister in Western Ontario received.
“They felt so comforted by the support she got where she was that they wanted to pass that along. She was fortunate enough to get such great care, they just wanted to bring that into our community,” she said.
The news was announced at a progress-report event in Baltimore and, as Gibson recalled, it kickstarted the fundraising campaign.
“We just knew from then on it was going to be a success.”
And that’s how the facility got its name, she said. The Community Care Northumberland board of directors gave Ed and Diane the opportunity to name the facility, and Ed’s House it became.
A perfect name, as far as she is concerned.
“It’s lovely, it’s friendly, it’s welcoming, it’s homey.”
The Lorenzes were honoured guests at its opening in September, though they didn’t take the opportunity to speak.
“He was such a quiet unassuming man. He never wanted any recognition, never wanted to be made a big deal out of.”
His fabrication business was in some ways a reflection of his life, Gibson said.
“As a businessman, he was always trying to make things perfect, trying to make things better. He also took that philosophy and knew that he could make palliative end-of-life care better – and he did it. He had the capacity, and he built it with us.”
Ed is survived by his wife and son, by his daughter-in-law Denise, as well as grandchildren Nicholas (Trisha) and Alexandria and great-grandchildren Lukas and Aurora.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. July 15 at the Best Western Plus Cobourg Inn and Convention Centre – by invitation only, due to the pandemic, though there will be a live link to the service on the MacCoubrey website (click on Ed Lorenz’s link).
Those wishing to do so may make in memoriam donations to the Northumberland Hills Hospital Foundation or the Ed’s House Northumberland Hospice Care Centre.
