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Edwin J. Foltz, 93, headed Campbell Soup

Edwin J. Foltz, 93, a former FBI agent who became president of Campbell Soup International, died of pneumonia Thursday at Waverly Heights, a retirement community in Gladwyne.

Edwin J. Foltz, 93, a former FBI agent who became president of Campbell Soup International, died of pneumonia Thursday at Waverly Heights, a retirement community in Gladwyne.

Mr. Foltz joined Campbell Soup Co. in Camden in 1953. He was named vice president of personnel in 1958 and two years later became head of the company's operations in Australia, Europe, and Mexico.

His daughter, Dorothy Foltz-Gray, said that when she and her siblings were growing up, they would ask him what he did at Campbell's. "He would tell us he stirred the soup," Foltz-Gray said, "and we wondered why he wore a suit and tie to work." Even in his final illness he was quipping, "M'mm, m'mm good," when he sipped soup, she said.

The Foltz children were delighted, she said, when their father negotiated Campbell's purchase of Godiva, a Belgian chocolate company. After retiring in 1981, Mr. Foltz practiced law for a short time with Hepburn, Willcox, Hamilton & Putnam in Philadelphia.

Mr. Foltz was born on New Year's Eve in Fort Smith, Ark. He earned a bachelor's degree and a law degree from Washington and Lee University and was later president of the board of the university's alumni association.

For a year, Mr. Foltz practiced law before joining the FBI. The agency was situated on the floor below his law office in Little Rock, his daughter said. He was an agent in Little Rock, Atlanta, and San Francisco.

In December 1941, days after Pearl Harbor, he married Deane Mitchell in San Francisco. They had planned to be married in Fort Smith, their hometown, but he couldn't leave his FBI office because his superiors worried about a possible Japanese attack on the West Coast. During the World War II, he was the agent in charge of the San Francisco Bay Area office and later told his family he was embarrassed by the dirty looks from people who wondered why an able-bodied young man wasn't in uniform.

After leaving the FBI in 1951, Mr. Foltz was director of industrial public relations for Borg-Warner Corp. in Cleveland before joining Campbell Soup.

Mr. Foltz, who had lived in Gladwyne for more than 50 years, was a past president of the Philadelphia Crime Commission; served on the board of the Gladwyne Free Library; and was vice chairman of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.

He was an avid walker and reader. "He taught me how to read the newspaper," his daughter said.

Mr. Foltz's first wife died in 1987. In 1989, he married Barbara Thompson Eisenhower.

In addition to his wife and daughter; Mr. Foltz is survived by a son, Jeff; stepchildren David, Anne, Susan, and Mary Eisenhower; 13 grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren. A daughter, Deane, died in 1981.

The funeral was Monday at St. Christopher's Episcopal Church in Gladwyne. Mr. Foltz was a member of the vestry and a greeter at the church.