Up-Close with Steve Edwards
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Steve Edwards
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UP CLOSE ⭐️ Steve Edwards ⭐️
New Jersey Hall of Fame
Steve Edwards is a filmmaker, philanthropist, ex-rock band singer and president/co-founder of the Business & Governmental Insurance Agency. This lifelong New Jerseyan also happens to be the President of the New Jersey Hall of Fame (NJHOF) whose stunning new museum at the American Dream complex in East Rutherford will blow your mind, for it is here where you can get onstage and sing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” with Frankie Valli or “Mony Mony” with Tommy James or “If I Were President” with Wyclef Jean (all NJHOF inductees). Or sit behind the host desk and interview Jon Bon Jovi. Of course, the aforementioned legends are holograms. Maybe you’d rather find out what it’s like to take off into outer space and land on the moon, an experience narrated by astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly (2018 NJHOF inductees). Edwards will be launching a very Jersey-centric podcast called “Legends Of America” later this year. Watch this space for updates.
The Jersey Sound: In that first year of 2008, the only musicians to make the NJHOF were Sinatra and Springsteen.
Steve Edwards: When we started, a decision was made, and I think it’s a good one, that it shouldn’t just be sports and entertainment, but rather people from all walks of life. We knew we could only nominate a few each year or dilute its significance. So, of course, that first year it was Edison, Einstein, General Schwarzkopf, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, novelist Toni Morrison, people like that. And every year we do it the same way. It’s a good balance and I think we maintain a good system.
Sing with Tommy James, Frankie Valli and Wyclef Jean.
TJS: How are inductees nominated?
SE: Anyone who wants to nominate someone can go to www.njhalloffame.org to fill out the nomination form. We vet it if the name makes sense—and usually it does—before adding it to the master list. Every year in January, expert panelists in each field of interest decide who the top 120 names should be.
TJS: And the fields of interest are 1) Arts & Letters, 2) Education & Science, 3) Enterprise, 4) Performing Arts & Entertainment, 5) Public Service, 6) Sports.
SE: Correct. What we then do once we select the top 120 names is send it to an academy made up of 350 organizations throughout the state including former Governors. They narrow it down to the top 60, 10 nominees in each category. The public then weighs in with its input before the Board of Trustees makes the final decision. So it’s very grass-roots, very democratic. It’s tough, actually, there’s no question about it, because, at the end of the day, whether it’s the Baseball Hall of Fame or the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, it’s extremely subjective, right? There’s no way to get everyone on the same page, but, I think the bottom line is, every year we induct very deserving people.
Sinatra once sang "Fly Me To The Moon." Now, at the NJHOF, you can too.
TJS: We’ve always said “musicians who call New Jersey home” for our website and documentary film. Do you have the same criteria?
SE: In our case, you have to have lived in New Jersey for five years. Interestingly enough, there are only two other states—California and South Dakota—who have a Hall of Fame. We have the strictest criteria. You can be inducted into the CA or SD HOF if you lived any portion of your life there. We went one step beyond that to make the criteria five years. Therefore, Paul Simon, for example, might’ve been born in Newark, but his family moved to New York City months later. On the other hand, Tony Bennett, who we inducted in 2011, was born on Long Island, lived most of his life there, but moved his family to Englewood and lived here for 30 years. Sure, the Board can make an exception, but we try to adhere to that five-year rule.
You can be the host of your own talk show.
TJS: We covered the movie you made, Lucky Jack, in June.
SE: It’s about my dad. He grew up in the Seth Boyden Housing Projects of Newark. His dad was an alcoholic who died from cirrhosis of the liver when he was 17. His mom was bi-polar with a congenital heart condition. His dream was always to become a doctor but he flunked every high school course including gym. One morning, he sat in the gutter in front of Weequahic High on Chancellor Avenue in Newark and thought, “what am I going to do now?” He was a real lost soul in the 1950s. In 1966, though, a high-school drop-out with a wife and two children, he smoked a joint and listened to “The Impossible Dream” from the musical Man Of La Mancha. He donned the surgeon’s smock he wore when he used to draw blood at a local hospital years earlier. Looked in the mirror. Saw a doctor staring back at him. A brain surgeon, no less. He knew it was an impossible dream. Nine years later he was operating on brains at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. It’s an uplifting inspirational story. We need more of these kinds of stories to lift people up right now in these chaotic times.
To see every year’s inductees into the New Jersey Hall Of Fame, you can visit https://njhalloffame.org/.