Edward M. Moran, the retired CEO of Sanitas Service Corporation and a senior executive of some of America's most storied corporations, died on January 7 of a heart attack at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona. He was 84 years old. A resident for decades of Fairfield County, Moran was a frequent presence on the playing fields of the towns where his children grew up, including Weston, Westport and Fairfield, as a coach of coach of little league baseball and supporter of the Fairfield Prep, Roger Ludlowe and Staples teams his children played on, as well as the Yale baseball team captained in 1986 by his son, Kevin. In business, he helped lead several major companies, including Benrus in Ridgefield and Sanitas located just north of New Haven in Bethany, though his lasting impact was as an innovative financier and early proponent of corporate turnarounds under the Chapter 11 bankruptcy code. His success in turnarounds was the subject of a widely respected BusinessWeek article published in 1976 which detailed his unique financial surgical approach turnarounds.  He also co-owned, with his late wife Marie, two travel agencies in the area, Brookfield Travel and Turnpike Travel in Fairfield.
Immigrant, scholar, athlete, Marine
Born into the desperate poverty of western Ireland during the Great Depression, Moran came to America as a young boy and soon displayed a talent for scholarship and hard work that would see him achieve high academic honors and All City athletic status at New York City's Cathedral High School. He also amassed a 12-1 record as an amateur boxer in Harlem's Police Athletic League. In 1950, with his cousin and a neighborhood friend, Moran volunteered for the U.S. Marine Corps and served with distinction during the Korean War, winning a Good Conduct medal and rising to the rank of sergeant in the US 1st Marine Division. Upon returning to New York in 1953, Moran enrolled in Fordham University but transferred his sophomore year to New York University, where he attended classes at night on the GI Bill, graduating with honors with a bachelor's degree in 1957, then earning a magna cum laude Master's in Finance, again in night school, at NYU's Graduate School of Business. Upon graduation he was accepted to the prestigious General Electric executive training program in 1959, a distinction that would forever alter his life. Not only did the GE program vault him into his first executive position at a very early age, but it proved to be the place where in 1960 he would meet his future wife, a typist nine years his junior at the FBI's New York field office, which rented a floor in the same art deco tower on Lexington Avenue. Eddie Moran and Carmela Marie Cerabone – Marie to those who knew her – married one year later in Kearny, New Jersey, where they made their first home together. The marriage would last the rest of Marie's life and produce four children, all born in New Jersey: Michael, in 1962, in Kearny; Kevin, in 1964, in Passaic; Christopher, in 1966, in Clifton: and Heather, a girl at last, born in Summit in 1970. Besides his four children, Edward Moran is survived by nine grandchildren, Caitlin, Skyler, Devin, Griffin, George, Nicholas, Kelly, Connor and Hannah; by two siblings, Margaret "Peggy" Donovan of Plainview, Long Island, and Gerald "Jerry" Moran of Crestwood, NY; and by more than two dozen nieces, nephews and cousins in the New York metropolitan area and in Canada. Marie Moran, his wife of 45 years, died of cancer in 2005 and was buried at Gate of Heaven cemetery in Trumbull, where her husband Edward will be laid to rest beside her with full military honors. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at Saint Lawrence Catholic Church, 505 Shelton Avenue, Huntington, at 10:00a.m., on Saturday January 23. To leave an online condolence, please visit www.redgatehennessy.com