Edgar Clinton Wilson was born in Knox County, Tennessee on October 29, 1914. He earned a teaching certificate from Milligan College in 1935 and a BS in Education from the University of Tennessee on June 3, 1940. Wilson began his career as a teacher and taught English to 5th through 8th grade students from 1935 to 1939 and from 1940 to 1941. He was drafted into the Army on June 7, 1941 and completed basic training and Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma before being stationed at Camp Robertson, California. He was assigned to the 80th Division in 1943 and trained with that unit until March of 1944, when they were moved to Fort Dix and dispatched to England on the Queen Mary.

The 80th Division was moved to France within a week of its arrival in England. Wilson was assigned to the 2nd battalion of the 319th Infantry (nicknamed the Wreckin' Second), which fought in in Northern France, the Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, and central Europe. He was released from service in late 1945 and returned to Tennessee. Here, he took several extension courses at the University of Tennessee and went on to work on the Board of the Farm Bureau and on the Board of the Knox County Farmers' Cooperative. He married Beatrice Jerry Jarrell (1912-1991), an anesthesia nurse from Morristown, on September 2, 1948. Although Wilson is now retired, he is still active in organizing reunions of the 80th Division.