{"id":12203,"date":"2020-08-16T22:28:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T02:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=12203"},"modified":"2020-08-18T14:35:57","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T18:35:57","slug":"wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"How Wendy Snowden Impacted Ed Snowden&#8217;s Future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Who is Wendy Snowden? What <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/3-types-of-relationships\/\">kind of relationship<\/a> did Edward Snowden have with his mother? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wendy Snowden is the mother of Edward Snowden, and was a part of why he grew up with a love for books and technology. Learn more about Edward Snowden, Wendy Snowden, and the relationship between mother and son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Wendy Snowde<\/strong>n Taught Edward Reading and Math<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Edward Snowden was born on June 21, 1983, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. He came from a long line of heroes and patriots. His grandfather and father both worked for the Coast Guard and his mother was directly descended from the barrelmaker on the <em>Mayflower<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lonnie was often away for work, so Ed\u2019s mother Wendy was a large part of his childhood. She taught Ed and his sister, Jessica, how to read by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/negative-labels\/\">labeling<\/a> their dresser drawers (socks, underwear) and taking them to the library. Ed\u2019s favorite books were about machines, but he also liked King Arthur and Greco-Roman myths, especially the story of Hephaestus\/Vulcan. He liked the idea of a group of goddesses and gods who fought among themselves and interfered with and spied on humanity.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wendy also taught Ed math. She would buy him things only if he could correctly add up the prices. At first, he only had to round to the nearest dollar, then get the actual amount, then calculate tax.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Edward Snowden: Wendy Snowden Encouraged Time Away From the <strong>Nintendo<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1989, when Ed was six, his family got a Nintendo (8-bit NES). He loved it so much his mother made a rule that he had to finish a book every time he wanted to rent a new game. He was faster at beating games than reading, so he beat the system by taking out short books with lots of pictures so he could get through them more quickly.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Wendy Snowden&#8217;s Career<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>When Ed was nine, his family moved to Crofton, Maryland. Lonnie continued to work for the Coast Guard. Wendy took a new job at the NSA, the National Security Agency, making retirement arrangements for spies.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Employment at Fort Meade<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Fort Meade is the second-largest US army base and the headquarters of the National Security Agency (NSA).<\/strong> In the 90s, every fourth person in the surrounding Anne Arundel County worked for Fort Meade and the area had a civil servant monoculture. The base was part of the community and had a pool, grocery store, and post office. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who is Wendy Snowden? What kind of relationship did Edward Snowden have with his mother? Wendy Snowden is the mother of Edward Snowden, and was a part of why he grew up with a love for books and technology. Learn more about Edward Snowden, Wendy Snowden, and the relationship between mother and son.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,12],"tags":[116],"class_list":["post-12203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","category-relationships","tag-permanent-record","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How Wendy Snowden Impacted Ed Snowden&#039;s Future - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Who was Wendy Snowden? Mother of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Wendy Snowden encouraged him early on to read and learn about technology.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Wendy Snowden Impacted Ed Snowden&#039;s Future\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Who was Wendy Snowden? Mother of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Wendy Snowden encouraged him early on to read and learn about technology.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-08-17T02:28:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-08-18T18:35:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/permanent-record-wendy.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1169\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rina Shah\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rina Shah\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Rina Shah\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d07435826f13a8f422d5d333dceac287\"},\"headline\":\"How Wendy Snowden Impacted Ed Snowden&#8217;s Future\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-17T02:28:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-08-18T18:35:57+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother\/\"},\"wordCount\":412,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/permanent-record-wendy.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Permanent Record\"],\"articleSection\":[\"People\",\"Relationships\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother\/\",\"name\":\"How Wendy Snowden Impacted Ed Snowden's Future - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wendy-snowden-ed-snowden-mother\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/permanent-record-wendy.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-17T02:28:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-08-18T18:35:57+00:00\",\"description\":\"Who was Wendy Snowden? 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