Ed Slevin grew up in Oakland, the son of Irish immigrants John Slevin and Bridget McHugh who came from circumstances difficult to imagine in modern times. He was no stranger to hardship and struggle and started working as a golf caddy when his was nine, a job which gave him his lifelong love of the game. A natural athlete, his other favorite sport, basketball, sent him to play at the University of San Francisco during its storied championship era.
Although a city boy by birth, work in the farm equipment business moved the family eventually to the small San Joaquin Valley town of Dos Palos, where he participated in every aspect of the tight-knit community, coaching sports, sitting on the school board, and attending every activity that his kids and everyone else’s participated in. His neighbors were his extended family. Finally, they retired to Lake County. A master storyteller, his collection was so deep and wide that he amazed his family when he occasionally told a story that no one had yet heard. To Ed it was the quality of the story that mattered and when accused, he would say that he hadn’t exaggerated in a thousand years (WestsideExpress).
