Edwin Donald Sterner

Edwin Donald Sterner (January 3, 1894 – September 30, 1983) was an American lumberman and Republican Party politician who served in both houses of the New Jersey Legislature and as chairman of the New Jersey Republican State Committee. He was also the first New Jersey Highway Commissioner.

After the war he returned to Belmar and managed the Sterner Coal and Lumber Company, founded by his father in 1919.

He married Dorothy and had as their children: two sons, George W. Sterner, of Wall Township, New Jersey; and John N. Sterner of Spring Lake Heights; a daughter, Dorothy Sterner Braly of Baltimore, Maryland. He served for seven years, continuing under Hoffman's Democratic successors, A. Harry Moore and Charles Edison. Edison launched an investigation of corruption in the Highway Department, and Sterner resigned in 1942. When the full report of the investigation was released the following year, it found malfeasance in some cases of land acquisition for right-of-way purposes, where property owners represented by influential politicians were given sweetheart deals.

Sterner continued to serve as president of the Sterner Coal and Lumber Company in Belmar. He later served as president of the New Jersey Lumbermen's Association and in 1950 was appointed to the National Lumber and Allied Products Retailers Industry Advisory Committee to the United States Department of Commerce.

A resident of Avon-by-the-Sea, he died on September 30, 1983, at the Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune City at the age of 89.