Lewis E. Link Jr.

...consulting work for Toffler Associates, a future-studies and strategic planning think tank, in Manchester, Mass. Until Katrina, Link’s private life plans  concentrated on hiking, fishing and spending time with his wife, Anita, daughter Christy Nevel and son Todd, as well as Christy’s children, Hannah and Cameron. Christy’s twin sister, Sharon, was killed in a car accident when she was 19. “It is the only thing in my life...if I could change that...it’s the only thing that I would change,” Link says.

Tom Sawyer/ENR

Tom Sawyer/ENR As a soccer player at N.C. State (left), and today as an evangelist of risk and reliability modeling, Link is a natural team builder. Home office (below) is hub of IPET directorate.

False Impressions

Link strikes some as being the aloof professorial type, but many others say that is entirely incorrect. When he enters a room, people who know him come over to warmly shake his hand. If word gets around that he is in the building, people find excuses to cross his path, poke their heads in his office or conference room and share experiences. Link laughs easily and often and is known, among other things, for gentle joking around. His gorilla suit is a Corps legend.

Link was grumpy at having to leave his beloved position as director of the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., to take the job as the chief scientific adviser to the new commander of the Corps, Lt. Gen. Joe N. Ballard. He wore his gorilla suit to the first staff meeting with the new chief. It was Halloween, but Ballard was not amused. Link says Ballard took reports from everyone else in turn but ignored Link until the end. Finally, the general said, “Ed, take that damn head off or I am not going to talk to you!”

Link admits, “I guess I was just acting out, but I did wear a tie.”

Ed Link

Tom Sawyer/ENR Ed and Anita in Vicksburg (top); and at home in Middletown, Md.

Link’s sense of humor is only part of a persona that has helped him be successful, which is no surprise to those who know him well. “It’s always amazing to me how many people I meet, wherever I go for work, know my father and remember him fondly,” says daughter Christy, an administrative marketing director at HDR Inc.’s office in Pearl River, N.J. “Everyone always immediately lights up and says, ‘I know Ed!’  It always makes me feel great and has been a huge benefit to me in my career. I get to skip right past the small talk and proving myself, because I’m Ed Link’s daughter.”

Son Todd, a lead hydraulic designer with John Deere in Apex, N.C., echoes the sentiment about his father. “When I went to his retirement dinner, I didn’t know half the stuff he was working on,” he says. “I was sitting there in awe.”  

Todd adds, “He was always very modest about his work but always loved being involved in big things. If he got asked to do something and he agreed to it, he  gave it everything he had.”

Ed Link With Sharon, Todd and Christy in 1989.

It was not all about work, either. When newlyweds Ed and Anita, a registered nurse, began raising their children during his first job in Vicksburg, he noticed there were no soccer fields and not many athletic opportunities for local kids. Link and some Corps scientists and engineers who would one day run the IPET project hung up a few fliers for a Saturday morning soccer clinic. About 40 kids showed up. Twice as many came the next weekend. The program ultimately ballooned within six years to involve thousands of youths and 88 teams with their own complex of new soccer fields.

One of the fields is named in memory of Sharon Ann Link, out of respect for the family’s contribution to the community and as a tribute to their daughter and sister. “And it’s lighted, too,” Link says. “We lighted the field.”