Music as an Indestructible Fortress

By Caroline Su

In the quiet dimness of his basement room, Ed Cody toys around with a modern electric piano. The musical contraption boasts an array of different, multicolored buttons, with each one revealing a different musical function. As he discovers new modes like “guitar” and “choir”, Cody feels his heart pound with excitement. 

Settling on the “classic rock” mode, Cody rests his fingers on the keyboard and begins to play his favorite tune by the Beatles -- a radio classic when he was younger. 

Cody’s journey with music goes far back, notably surfacing when he served in the Vietnam War. A longtime public servant and the Board Chairman for PenFed Credit Union, music symbolized a sense of normalcy when the surrounding world felt deeply fractured. 

“I always think of Superman’s fortress,” he told me during a conversation in January. “For me, that’s what music is. I can come down here, put my headphones on, and just entertain myself. It’s how I keep focused.”

Cody entered college in 1964, at the height of escalating U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. His university required two years of mandatory ROTC participation. Encouraged by his father, a Guadalcanal Marine, he completed the program and was commissioned as a second lieutenant upon graduation in 1968.

After training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he deployed to Vietnam for a year with an artillery unit.

Artillery life meant long periods in one place under constant threats. Yet music found its way in.

“One of my artillerymen was a drummer,” Cody recalled. “I wrote home, and my mother sent drumsticks. We practiced on C-ration containers. Just cardboard boxes. You’re in the middle of nowhere, but rhythm connects you.”

Cody’s career after Vietnam kept him close to military service. He worked as an Army auditor, later with what became the Defense Inspector General, conducting audits across military installations. In 1982, he joined what is now PenFed Credit Union as a supervisory committee member and later became the Board Chairman.

The most devastating moment of his post-war life came decades later. On September 11, 2001, he watched American Airlines Flight 77 fly past his window before crashing into the Pentagon.

“The pilot in the front left seat had a white shirt on,” he said. “I saw people huddled in the back of the plane. And I knew they were going into the Pentagon.”

Despite the division and chaos he witnessed around him, possibly the most tumultuous state of society he had ever lived through, music was there. Like a friend whose loyalty never dies, music comforted him through it all. 

“When you see that kind of stress, what happens when people can’t get along culturally, music becomes a way to get away from all of that. You want to get to your inner peace so you can do your job.”

More than that, Cody has seen music reshape trauma beyond his own.

He recalled Scott Hastings, a veteran shot ten times in combat who lost his finger dexterity as a result. Surprisingly, he turned to playing the guitar during recovery, painstakingly moving his fingers to pluck the delicate strings. He would do anything for that tune, that token of relief. Long after the war, Hastings now performs publicly, including at the Grand Ole Opry, and has collaborated with Gary Sinise’s Lieutenant Dan Band.

“For him,” Cody said, “music turned his life around.”

Music in Technology

As Cody and I discussed how AI has changed the world, including the impact of music, he leaned forward.

“AI will let individuals create their own music,” he said. “They can find refuge at a computer and say, ‘I want this type of music.’ That’s powerful.”

He described generational differences in musical preference and how scalable tools could tailor therapeutic listening experiences. AI, he believes, can free humans to focus on creativity. 

His son, for example, writes lyrics and uses AI music-generation tools to produce German heavy metal tracks. Within just months, he built a small international following.

“That’s what you young people will exploit,” Cody said. “Taking knowledge and sharing it globally. Especially for people who don’t have the same resources.”

To him, democratizing music creation is like democratizing financial services -- it benefits those who need it but didn’t have the resources to do so before. 

All throughout his career, Cody has carried out his belief of benefiting the needy. He spent 43 years volunteering with PenFed and helping found the PenFed Foundation in 2001. This foundation supports military families, individuals with disabilities, and those in crisis.

He also once wrote a $500 check to help a young girl with cancer afford a real hair wig after her mother couldn’t pay for one.

“Why do people donate?” he asked. “Only two reasons: to save a life or to change a life.”

Music fits within that philosophy. It may not always save a life in the physical sense, but it truly changes life’s trajectory in other regards. No matter what the circumstances, music will always exist -- like a fortress, it is unbreakable.