WUNDRAM: Life with Ed -- A wife's view of Bix 7 guru

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By Bill Wundram | Saturday, July 19, 2008 11:00 PM CDT | () comments

IT’S not a problem for Sandy Froehlich to be married to the most nervous man in the Quad-Cities. She’s used to it. She is an anchor for Ed Froehlich, who has been nervous for lots of the 29 years of their 42 years of wedded life. It’s not just nerves, it’s whim-wham worries. He paces. He never walks. It’s always a nervous lope, as if he is in a hurry to get somewhere.

Ed Froehlich is the guru, the patriarch of the Quad-City Times Bix 7, one of America’s major road races. It’s a passion, his wife says, that drives him to worry about the race every minute he is awake —or even sleeping. Sleep does not spare him from stewing about Saturday’s race.

“He has had recurrent nightmares that he slept through the race and didn’t get up in time to be there,” Sandy says.

Sandy has not been one to talk before; it was always Ed’s show. But last week she relented.

We sit at a table in the couple’s big house across from Vander Veer Botanical Park. There is a glass pitcher of iced tea and oatmeal cookies. On the table, a shiny cornet rests atop a book, “Remembering Bix,” the bible of our native son who played a little better than most mortals were meant to play.

Ed is a constant worrier about the 10 million details of the Bix 7. “Last night he tossed and turned all night long. I don’t think he ever really slept,” Sandy says.

He got up the next morning, bouncing energy, and had his usual breakfast. It was an orange and a can of Diet Coke, the first of many Cokes he will knock off during the day. Then, he began worrying some more about the race he hopes will have 15,000 pairs of feet tromping through Davenport.

“He’ll head for work (a State Farm insurance agent), pulling on his billed cap,” says Sandy. Some people think that cap is permanently attached to his head.

“He’ll wear it to church, Trinity Lutheran. I have to give him a nudge to take it off before we go inside,” she says.

Sandy is a petite woman with short-cropped hair. She quietly slips into the background, but I’ve always suspected she is the one who makes Ed Froehlich tick.

She calms Ed’s grouches and nerves, brings him cold cans of Coke and pats his hand. But there is no use assuring him that the world doesn’t begin and end with the Bix 7.

“Ed tells me that he’s going to quit the Bix. He says that every year. Next year will be his 30th year,” she says. Others could do it, but not with the charisma of this banty rooster.

She smiles a lot, admiring her husband. “He’s not really the stubborn man some may think. I’d call him determined. But once he has his mind set, that’s that!” She folds her hands and gets a little dreamy-eyed. “He’s a grand guy who would give anyone the shirt off his back. We talk a lot together, about our children, Jeff and Jacquii, and then it’s always Bix.”

Ed and Sandy were high school sweethearts and are each other’s best friend, which is the way a marriage should be. He shares his day’s experiences, the facts and foibles, and his homilies.

“He is a shrewd man,” she says. “He is everyone’s pal, but always repeats, ‘Never trust anyone who calls you buddy. That means they want something.”

Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com.