Ted Edwards was an AMA Class C racer, motorcycle dealer and race promoter. He raced on many of the early, historic motorcycle courses in the eastern United States, and was a pioneer organizer of motorcycle racing in Georgia.
Edwards was born in Portland, Maine, in 1907. In the early 1940s he moved to Atlanta. He competed on the famed Daytona 200 beach course in Daytona Beach, Fla., that same year.
The AMA suspended racing during World War II, but Edwards raced again when competition resumed immediately following the war. Media accounts place him as an entrant in the 1946 Laconia, N.H., 100-mile National Championship road race. In 1947, Edwards finished second in the Daytona 200, and in 1948 he earned a third-place finish in the Laconia 100-mile National Championship while racing aboard an Indian machine.
Edwards operated an Indian dealership in Atlanta from 1940 to 1950. He also promoted races at Georgia’s Lakewood Speedway. Edwards was part of the 1948 race at Lakewood Speedway that remains as the only dead-heat finish in AMA motorcycle history—between racers AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famers Bobby Hill and Billy Huber. Edwards was also a founder of the Skyway Airport Dragway in Fairburn, Ga., which was one of the earliest permanent drag racing facilities in the state.
In 1983, at the age of 76, Edwards was licensed as an AMA racing mechanic and assisted a team sponsored by his son’s motorcycle shop.
Edwards died in 1987. He was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998.