Edward Cruz was born in Portugal and immigrated to this country with his family in 1950, when he was 9 years old. Settling in the Ironbound section of Newark, New Jersey, his father started a small construction company, initially doing foundation work in Levittown, Long Island and then moving on to utility construction work in northern New Jersey. Ed earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1963, and worked for a number of years for his father’s company, Cruz Construction Company. In 1984, Ed and his cousin, Evaristo G. Cruz, founded E. E. Cruz & Company, Inc., Holmdel, New Jersey. The company is active in heavy construction work in the New York Metropolitan area, including bridges and roads for the New Jersey Turnpike and the monorail tunnels at JFK Airport. Ed and his wife, Sharon, reside in New York City and are the parents of four children: Robin, Jeffrey, Kelly and Susan and are the proud grandparents of ten grandchildren.