Early years
Edward Ward King, known later as the “King of Transportation,” was born in 1896 in Surgoinsville, Tennessee, the third of five sons born to Methodist minister John Rutledge King and his wife Margaret Collup King.
King grew up on the campus of Emory & Henry College, a Methodist college where his father was employed. He worked at the Overland automobile factory in Toledo, Ohio before volunteering for service in the U.S. Army in 1917 when the United States entered World War I. King was...