Connie Gibbon and Ethan Allen “Al” Stewart were married on August 31, 1948 in East Orange, New Jersey. Al had just completed his BA at MIT. They moved to Indiana for his job at Procter & Gamble. Within a few years Al started working for Ford Motor Company’s Saline plant and the couple moved to Ann Arbor. They had three children: Carol, Connie, and James. Connie organized a cooperative preschool with neighborhood mothers, and later in life she volunteered for Planned Parenthood, including serving as temporary director.

Gerald Edwards was born in 1950 in Cleveland, Ohio. He remembers being discriminated against as one of three African American students at his elementary school in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education. At Heidelberg College, he participated in sit-ins to help found a Black Student Union House. After beginning his career in automotive manufacturing with Ford Motor Company, Mr. Edwards started his own business, Engineered Plastic Products, in 1987. He and his wife Jada also started the Edwards Foundation, which was dedicated to philanthropy in Namibia.