Edward Martin Hunt

Edward Martin Hunt was born in Chicago Ridge on November 23, 1951, the first boy in a family of five girls. His father died five days before his fourth birthday. When he was 15, he was playing the guitar in the bathroom for its acoustics, when a tornado came through Oak Lawn and leveled the family home. He woke up in a drainage ditch across the street with just a cut on his forehead.

When he was 17, he enlisted in the Army, and was sent to Vietnam just after he turned 18. His combat experience and the deaths of squad members under his command in Vietnam left him with emotional scars that affected every part of his life. He had demons that he wouldn’t talk about with anyone.

In elementary school, Ed began guitar lessons, and he became an accomplished acoustic guitar player as an adult, even studying under the great Jethro Burns. He loved to perform and to teach new songs to other musicians, and he composed songs of his own. His son says he was the best acoustic guitar player anybody ever heard. 

He always seemed happiest while playing the guitar, something he lost the ability to do in the last several years, as strokes and other maladies affected his daily life.

He was a lifelong Chicago Bears and White Sox fan, and was thrilled when the Bears won a Super Bowl in 1986 and the White Sox swept the Houston Astros in the 2005 World Series.  

He loved his grandkids, and despite some cognitive difficulties, he never forgot their birthdays. He was pretty taken with his newest grandson, Sean, and seeing the baby’s picture always brought a big smile to his face.

Ed was the proud father of Brendan and Lea Hunt Hammond; loving grandfather of Aidan and Keegan Hammond, and Sean Theodore Nelson Hunt; beloved brother of the late Mary Kay Shohl, Dorothy Louise, Elizabeth Gibson, Margaret Hunt and Ellen Hunt. He had many nieces and nephews. And he had friends all over the country, some whom he had known since childhood. He is finally at peace.

Visitation will be held on Friday from 1:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m. with a service at 3:30 p.m. at Cooney Funeral Home located at 3918 W. Irving Park Rd. in Chicago. A livestream of the service can be viewed at http://www.facebook.com/cooneyfuneralhome Interment private. In lieu of flowers, donations to Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund at https://www.vvmf.org/give-to-vvmf/ are appreciated. For information please call 773-588-5850 or visit www.cooneyfuneralhome.com 

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Edward Martin Hunt, please visit our floral store.