Edward J. Kuriansky

Known affectionately to his friends as "Big Ed," he had a distinguished career as an anti-corruption prosecutor in New York State. In more than 30 years of public service he brought dozens of prosecutions that saved taxpayers many millions and put many corrupt people behind bars.

Edward was not a particularly large man, but he had a big personality. He came to Dartmouth from Stamford, Ct., where his father, Julius, a second-generation immigrant from Eastern Europe, had become a prosperous lawyer, and his mother, Isabel, came from a family of artists and intellectuals.

I met Edward in the fall of 1962. He was 18 and I was 17, and we both began working as assistant student managers for Bob Blackman's excellent football team. We spent our first meeting passing a football back and forth on a golden September afternoon, and that was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

Even though he was famous among his friends for the prodigious amount of time he spent sleeping, Edward excelled at Dartmouth, graduating as a Rufus Choate Scholar and Phi Beta Kappa. He was also the manager of the Dartmouth Lacrosse Team and a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon.

Edward was possessed of boundless curiosity and a warm, engaging personality. While you were speaking to him, he made you feel that, at that moment, you were the most important person in the world. This led to many deep and lasting friendships across two continents and a wide range of personalities.

A conversation with Edward was really an interview: He wanted to know where you were from, what you liked, what you disliked, and what really mattered to you. He wanted to know who your parents were, what they did, and how many brothers and sisters you had, and where they were living. And then he would ask about your grandparents, and where they came from, and what they were about. And so on: When you made friends with Edward, you made friends for life.

One of the defining moments of his life was the term he spent in Lyon, France, in 1964 during his junior year, where he stayed with the Limouzis family. That began his lifelong connection to France, and Edward expanded that friendship to include many of his American friends. That's how two young soldiers from France came to stay with Ann and me in our home in Washington for a weekend in the 1990s; we had a blizzard and so we all shoveled our steep driveway together.

After Dartmouth, Edward graduated from Harvard Law School in 1969, and then was a clerk for U.S. District Judge Morris Lasker, who also became his friend and mentor. He then joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, where he worked on one corruption case involving the Model Cities program with another young Assistant U.S. Attorney, Rudy Giuliani Years later, Mayor Giuliani invited Edward to join his cabinet as Commissioner of Investigations for New York City. At Edward's funeral in Stamford on Friday, July 13, Giuliani took time away from his presidential campaign to speak, praising Edward as a tough prosecutor who had a warm heart. Giuliani added that he had learned something about compassion from Edward.

From 1980 until 1995, Edward was the state deputy attorney general in charge of investigating fraud in Medicaid, which provides health benefits to the poor. He succeeded Charles J. Hynes, now the Brooklyn District Attorney. In 1982, a House of Representatives Select Committee on Aging issued a report that said under the leadership of Hynes and Kuriansky, New York state had changed "from the least effective state to the most effective state in terms of Medicaid fraud detection and prosecution."

Perhaps because he had worked summers for the Stamford Advocate, Edward developed a flair for publicity when it came to announcing arrests. In 2001, he announced the arrests of five people for stealing $250,000 from city parking meters.

"This is one of the biggest parking meter scams in City history, and certainly the largest ever by a gang of bandits operating outside city employ," said Kuriansky. "These 'con artists' picked the lock on hundreds of municipal meters and pocketed over a million stolen quarters. Several nights a week for two years, they played the City's parking meters like their own personal slot machines, but, unlike Las Vegas or Atlantic City, they always hit the jackpot!"

For this and many other successful prosecutions, Edward was named Prosecutor of the Year by the New York State Bar Association.

Edward underwent his first surgery for intestinal cancer in 1963. He recovered, but the cancer recurred in 1973, 1990, and finally in 2002. Over the years he endured many surgeries, radiation treatments and multiple courses of chemotherapy; after June, 2003, his chemo treatments were nearly continuous. His last treatment was an experimental therapy that involved implanting genetically altered cancer cells from mice in his body.

He bore the surgeries and the injections of the various poisons with uncommon dignity and grace, and he never lost his sense of humor. He rarely complained and continued to accentuate the positive, right to the end.

At his funeral, several speakers mentioned Edward's distaste for Mayor Giuliani's daily 8 a.m. staff meetings --- he was never a morning person. He was well-liked as a manager: Several of his former secretaries and administrative assistants made the trip to Stamford for the funeral.

In 1969, Edward married Judith Brodsky, a Smith graduate who grew up in Queens. Judy later got a doctorate in psychology and made a name for herself as a relationship therapist, author and media figure. They separated in the 1970s but remained close friends. His companion for nearly two decades, Kim Master, was his principal caretaker, and he is also survived by his sister, Joan Kuriansky of Washington.

Edward was a remarkable human being who left the world a better place, and his many friends in America and in France will miss him dearly.

 –  Peter S. Prichard '66