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If Vietnam and Watergate left marks on Edwards, who is the first major-party candidate on the big ticket to have entered college in the 1970s, they cannot be seen. Instead, the most visible scars are economic. Edwards can recall how his father marched his family out of restaurants where the menu items were too expensive. When Edwards arrived at nearby Clemson University in 1971, he was thinking not about politics but about becoming a football star, and he managed to snare a walk-on spot on the squad. But he failed to win a scholarship and transferred to the more affordable North Carolina State a semester later, working odd jobs to pay his tuition bills, graduating in three years to save money and pragmatically choosing to major in textile studies. That was just a safety net. When he graduated in 1974, he had his eye on a law degree and entered the University of North Carolina that fall.
It was there, in Chapel Hill, that he spotted--and finally met--his future wife, Elizabeth Anania, the daughter of a Navy pilot, who grew up partly in Japan. Dazzled by her brains and beauty, Edwards waited a semester before asking her out. Their first date was at a Holiday Inn where the music was so loud, they couldn't talk. She was unimpressed with her suitor until Edwards bent over and sweetly kissed her good night on the forehead. The two were married 2 1/2 years later, the day after they took the bar exam. Arriving at a hotel in Virginia Beach, Va., a day later, Edwards was $2 short of the $22 room fee. Her parents had to drive over with the difference.
To this day, despite his enormous success as a lawyer, there are reminders of those penny-pinching times. Edwards combines fine suits with cheap digital watches, a champagne income with a taste for Wendy's and Applebee's.
The partners at the law firm Tharrington, Smith & Hargrove in Raleigh realized that they might have something special in Edwards when the 31-year-old attorney won a $3.7 million judgment in a medical-malpractice case in 1984. Edwards had stunned the local bar by forgoing a $20,000 settlement offer and going to trial instead. That sort of thing simply wasn't done, but then again, Edwards was doing a lot of things that had never been done before. After three years of civil litigation in Nashville, Tenn., he passed up a more lucrative offer from a Raleigh corporate firm for a job at a smaller partnership. But if he was brash, he certainly wasn't lazy. Before trial in cases of medical malpractice, he simply outhustled the lawyers for the insurance companies, mastering case details, learning obscure medical procedures and rounding up expert witnesses.
But his special talent was with the jury, his down-home voice loud and firm at times and buttery and confiding at others. In every state, there are a few lawyers known to possess a golden tongue who can explain things in simple but emotional terms. By age 40, Edwards had found that this talent was his best tool for leveling the playing field.