Ernest Edward Esgate Jr.

Ernest Edward “Ed” Esgate, Jr., 79, of Munster, Indiana, passed away on April 15, 2026.

Born on November 6, 1946, in Washington, D.C., to Ernie and Millie Esgate, Ed lived a life that took him across the country — from New Jersey and Ohio to California, Michigan, and finally Indiana — carrying with him the warmth and steadiness that defined him wherever he landed.

Ed was a graduate of Redford High School in Detroit, Michigan, and served his country in the United States Army. He went on to build a distinguished career in Systems Analysis with Ciba-Vision / Alcon, spanning more than thirty years.

Those who knew Ed knew a man of many quiet passions. He was an avid golfer who embodied everything the game asks of a person — resilience, integrity, and the pursuit of excellence alongside the grace to accept imperfection. He was a talented guitarist with a voice to match, and he found the kind of peace that only water and a fishing line can provide. He played a wicked game of poker and rummy, and he was, by every account, an excellent choice as a friend.

Ed is survived by his beloved wife, Margo; his sisters Patricia (Pat) and Margaret (Peg); his brothers Thomas (Tom) and John; his daughter Sara Orem; and his son Ed Esgate; his grandchildren Derek and Emma, his great-grandson Leo; his beloved nieces and nephews, Alison, Gina, Jack, and Max; and his great-nieces, Kayce Mae and Marlowe Alexis. He is also survived by his brothers and sisters in laws Larry ( Kay) Odegard, Bonnie Wheatman, Katheryn (Robert) Pulley, and Eric (Joyce) Odegard, and several nieces and nephews. Ed was preceded in death by his father, Ernest Edward Esgate, and his mother, Mildred Esgate Sullivan, his in-laws Lawrence (Mildred) Odegard, Scott Odegard & Jack Wheatman and by his nephew Shawn Odegard.

A loving man who wanted peace for his loved ones and for the world, Ed also felt deeply for the rescue animals he and Margo shared their lives with. Ed was a truly good guy who will be deeply missed by all whose lives he touched, lovingly remembered, and will be forever in our hearts. A remembrance written by his sister Pat accompanies this notice.

Arrangements are being handled by White Funeral Home, Griffith, Indiana. In respect for Ed’s wishes, no formal services will be held.

In lieu of flowers, the family welcomes donations in Ed's memory to Humane Indiana Shelter and Adoption Center, Munster, IN (humaneindiana.org) or Hospice of the Calumet Area (hospicecalumet.org).

A Tribute

Ed Esgate, 1946 – 2026: In Memoriam

There is a photograph I keep in my office. My brother Ed, four months from his eighteenth birthday, standing in a backyard somewhere in the middle of an American decade that still believed in itself. Prom night. White dinner jacket. Bow tie. Arms crossed with the particular ease of a young man who has, at least for this one evening, worked out exactly where he stands in the world, filled with the dreams of his certain-to-be-great future.

He had no idea what was coming.

None of us did, really — but Ed least of all, because Ed was the one our father had chosen. The firstborn son. The one who would be told, in the way fathers told sons in those years, that the family was his to look after. Ernest Esgate came home from the war — from SHAEF headquarters and the planning of the Normandy Invasion, from the Battle of the Bulge, from the liberation of Buchenwald — carrying a belief in duty so deep it had become the air the family breathed. And he breathed it straight into Ed.

The boy in the white jacket would honor that. He always did. He just didn’t know yet what it would cost him.

What I know now, looking at that photograph, is that the man Ed became was already fully present in that posture. That ease. That quiet confidence. He was, from his earliest years to his last, the most genuinely Zen person I ever knew — someone who believed, in his bones, that people needed to work their own lives out, and that his job was to be steady, not to interfere. He pulled it off better than most of us manage. Never in your face but always had your back.

Ed was my big brother, five years older than me, so my early childhood memories are remnants: the slash of an arm in the roiling water of a water polo match; the click of his cleats and the clack of his shoulder pads as he made his way into football practice. Buddy Holly crooning from the car radio. The sight of him slipping into the passenger seat as he headed out on a business trip with Dad, a rite that the three oldest would remember as much for its intimacy as its adventure.

And him, at 12, standing quietly in the garage, the wool of Dad’s Army jacket tight between his fingers, lost in his own experience of the man.

Ed was the one I could turn to for a talk, for advice, for figuring out how the family worked — not a simple thing when there are five children, separated by eleven years, and even more convoluted when a father dies with no warning.

Ed was only two years older than the young man in that picture when the family landed on his shoulders. Our father forbade our mother from working outside the home so there was no immediate breadwinner. To make things more difficult, he’d left us with far less than anyone could have expected. We were a family of six with $5,000 to our names.

My big brother, who dreamed of a teaching degree, buried his hopes and our father and went to work in the gray-green haze and red-hot heat of the steel mills, while our mother sharpened old skills and looked for a secretarial job. He shouldered that duty without complaint. For him, there was never a doubt that role was his.

But in short order, he faced a bigger challenge: the US was in the middle of a war in Vietnam, a conflict that nearly tore our country apart, and the government needed soldiers — young soldiers, boys who were barely out of high school, many with fathers who were vets, who still believed: duty calls.

Those fathers — those same men who faithfully served in Europe and the Pacific, the good war — could not understand why many of their sons thought of this as a bad war. But even if Ed may have thought that, it didn’t stop him. He heard and followed his departed dad’s voice once again — Go. Serve your country — even though he, like many in his generation, had deep, dark doubts when the draft notice arrived.

Though he wound up in Germany instead of the jungle, for those of us at home the worry that he might be sent never left, until the day he came home, handsome—and safe—in his uniform. And, when he returned, his dream shifted. He had shifted. He wasn’t just a veteran; he was now a husband and father. He’d married Julie Summers just before he left for Germany, and they had a child, Sara. Pride radiated from him, as did his excitement for the future. He had made it through the hard parts, he told me. His life was now fully his. He could not wait!

And that future met him and held on: his systems analysis work with Ciba Vision carried him through four company rebrands and more than thirty years. That kind of tenure doesn’t happen by accident. It happened because Ed listened — really listened — understood what people needed, and found ways to deliver. Reliable. Counted on. The same man at work as he was at home.

But life brought Ed its complications, as it does for many of us. Divorce; another marriage, another child. Another divorce. A son, Ed, whom he never stopped wanting to know. That door, in his heart, was always open.

Finally, that winding path took him home. To Margo Odegard, his great love, the woman he adored and built a life with for 33 years. The woman who deeply loved him, loved his Buddha-beliefs and his laugh and his hazel eyes, and at the end, took care of him to his last breath.

I am forever grateful to Margo for every bit of that. She made my beloved big brother happy, and in the end, saw him through his final moments. There is so much relief in knowing that someone you love had such a loving partner by their side when it all came to a stop.

There was far more to my brother than what he did for work, who he married and who he fathered. The songs he sang, the guitar he played beautifully; the search for our family’s roots that filled his quiet time on business trips. The camping and Irish-wake worthy times he shared with his brothers, Tom and John. The quiet comfort he offered his sisters, Peg and myself.

This list would not be complete without his devotion to golf, often playing five times a week. Golf is a pastime that masquerades as a game, but it teaches us everything we need to know in life: resilience, integrity; pursuing excellence while accepting imperfection. It does not escape me: that description could be Ed’s autobiography.

Our family has knots and dangling connections and many unspoken conversations. It is hard to think of Ed as gone. It is difficult to think of the things I will miss, the chats and meals and the glory of a late afternoon march up the fairway, the sun dipping behind the trees. And the conversations: about the world but more about family, about what was and is expected of us. The simple nod we’d share, acknowledging the deep current of things unsaid.

Ed. The steady one. The guy who listened. The brother I could count on. The man I respected.

Today, I remember him at our mother’s funeral, shouldering his guitar, sharing that grief in the lyrics: to everything there is a season. Turn, turn, turn… Now his season has passed. Now his voice has stilled. But he will be with me, forever.

I love you, Ed. And thank you, for everything.

Your sister, Pat

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