“I think I’m a simple person in a complex world,” said Ed Rothstein, the recently appointed secretary of the Maryland Department of Veterans and Military Families.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore tapped him to serve in that role in August. Rothstein, a 30-year veteran in the U.S. Army, said that he grew up in a “traditional Reform” Jewish household in New Jersey. That meant attending a Reform synagogue but keeping traditional Jewish practices.
He added that his mother was a nurse and his father was a high school teacher, and they were a lower-middle-class family.
“I was the youngest of four and was the typical Jersey kid who played sports and would go to Hebrew school with football pads on underneath my clothes,” Rothstein said.
Rothstein initially wanted to be a special education teacher after graduating college. That plan changed when Rothstein and a friend enlisted in the Army in 1983.
Rothstein completed basic training during the summer in between his freshman and sophomore years of college and was put on active duty after he graduated in 1986.
“What I thought was going to happen was I was going to be a teacher, and stay in the reserves, the weekend duty. [But] the Army put me on active duty when I graduated college in 1986 and, honestly, I never really turned back. I stayed in until I retired [from service] in 2014,” Rothstein said.
Rothstein’s military career took him from the infantry to deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the Pentagon and the National Security Agency.
His final assignment brought him to Maryland, where he was the garrison commander at Fort Meade, overseeing 227,000 personnel across five states.
Rothstein said that, during his career, it was important to maintain his Jewish identity, even as it was sometimes difficult because of missions he was assigned.
“It’s easy for the entire community to be off for Christmas or Easter. It’s not as easy for everything to stop during Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur,” the veteran explained.
He shared that, sometimes, he would have to adjust his schedule because of mission-critical demands on his time, and that the military has a saying, “Mission first, people always.”
“Sometimes, you had to adhere to the mission, but many other times, there was an opportunity to focus on people and take the break I needed,” Rothstein said.
He added that he was able to share his identity with his peers, and that he started a tradition where he would bring people together at his house for a Passover Seder.
Some of the guests had never experienced a Seder before. He said that mentality goes back to when he was a kid and the way he was raised.
Rothstein is a member of Jewish War Veterans Post 167, and he speaks at the post’s events when he’s able. After retiring from the Army, he became Anne Arundel County’s economic developer and founded ERA Advisory LLC, a consulting firm.
“What I wanted to do [with the business] was share some of the traits that I had learned and experienced over that 30-year career. A large part of the focus was to work with other small businesses and develop their leadership skills and their focus on a decision-making process for them to grow. I had a lot of experiences in that over a long period of time, during my tenure in uniform,” Rothstein said.
Rothstein also served two terms on the Carrol County Board of Commissioners, winning his first election in 2018 and reelection in 2022. He stayed in that role until Gov. Moore tapped him to serve as the next secretary of the Department of Veterans and Military Families.
Rothstein credited his upbringing for his willingness to serve in the role when called upon. He said that, in the transition to civilian life, he’s worked hard to learn from all the different people in his professional life.
“I really try to focus on that, listening to the community, learning from them and then leading in a together approach with them. I also try not to take myself so seriously, but do everything I do very seriously, and that’s important. Embracing the folks around me has been just wonderful and gave me lots of opportunities. So, when the governor asked me to consider this role as his secretary, I jumped up and said, ‘Absolutely,’” Rothstein said.
