Edward Ahern

Edward Philip Ahern In San Francisco, Sunday March 21, peacefully after a brief decline, Edward Philip Ahern, 96, native of San Francisco, the youngest of eight children of Thomas Ahern, native of Ireland, and Annie Margaret Ward of San Jose. His earliest memories were often of his grandmother, Margaret Kennedy Ward who had come to San Francisco in 1852 from Sydney, Australia after her family emigrated there in 1849 from Ireland. His childhood was full of trips to the baseball stadium at 15th and Valencia, adventures in Golden Gate Park and friendships with Albert Samuels and Edward Hewlett, both deceased. In 1926, the family moved to Sacramento where he attended Sacramento High School graduating in 1930. The family returned to San Francisco, and he attended USF graduating in Economics in 1934. While in high school, he had met Alda Clifford, and they conducted a long-distance courtship while he was in college. They married at St. Edward the Confessor Church on California Street and settled in the Sunset in Doelger City buying the new house that would be their home for the rest of their lives. The move was to a wilderness as it was then in the last block before a great expanse of dunes that stretched to the beach. Like his father, Edward was a longtime employee of the Southern Pacific Railroad. He began work there in 1935 and retired in 1992 after 56 years with the company. Starting as a clerk, he became an Assistant Train Master in 1942 working in Oregon and Nevada. Though a civilian, his wartime experience was not without hazard; it was largely spent handling ammunition trains at the Naval Weapons Depot at Hawthorne, Nevada. After the War, he went into the Personnel Department and finally to the Executive Department where he worked for Donald DJ Russel and for Benjamin Biaggini serving eventually as Executive Vice President from 1977 until 1992. In the corridor outside his office, there were photographs of all the men who had served as Chairman, and when he retired, he remarked that he had served under six of them between his service and that of his father [1881-1930], they had served under all of them. Preceded in death by his parents, by his sisters Margaret Ahern Morgan and Cecilia Bernadine Ahern, by his half-sister Mary Ahern Wheeler and by his brothers Thomas Paul, Raymond, Gerald, Francis and Edward, who died in childhood and after whom he was named. He is survived by his wife of 73 years, Alda, and their children Kathleen Christiansen, Michael, Kevin, Dennis, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Services and interment private.