Ed Wiley was born on January 11, 1924, in Thorpe, West Virginia. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces on June 22, 1943, and after completing basic training in Greensboro, North Carolina, was trained as a personnel clerk. Cpl Wiley deployed to the Pacific Theater and served with the Intelligence Section of 5th Bomber Command from March 1944 to September 1945, serving at Nadzab in New Guinea, Owi Island in the Dutch East Indies, in the Philippines, and on Okinawa, and after the war ended he deployed to Tachikawa Air Base, Japan, for occupation duty until returning to the U.S. in early December 1945. He was honorably discharged from the Army Air Forces on December 26, 1945. After the war, Ed completed his Bachelor's degree in accounting from Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and then worked for the Dillard Paper Company in Greensboro, North Carolina, from 1949 until retiring as Assistant Secretary-Treasurer in 1991. He married Marie Cassell in April 1946, and they had two sons, John and David.