Transmissions through time: a granddaughter connects with her veteran grandfather through a State Parks visit

Learn about the story of a WWII vet who manned the Fort Ebey Radar Station in the 1940s and his granddaughter who came 80 years later to connect with her grandfather’s memories.

By Stella Tippin, in honor of Elden Tippin

1942: A farm boy leaves home for the Army

The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a lanky, bespectacled farm boy from central Michigan made his way to the Army recruitment center in Midland to enlist to defend his country.

Raised amongst the flat, flat, flat fields of sugar beets and navy beans a few dozen miles west of Saginaw Bay, he had never been outside his state.

Soon, however, he would be across the country at a newly-constructed Washington state radar station, defending the US Pacific Coast—Puget Sound, specifically—from aerial and marine bombardment by the Japanese.

A black and white aerial image of a fort — Courtesy of Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, 38.0-2016.1.H171” Image of: Aerial view of Fort Casey – what it looked like after WWII.

2025: Arriving in Washington

Now, 80 years later, I carefully steered my rental car up and over Canoe Pass Bridge, which was shrouded in low-hanging rain clouds like a misty mantle. I was on a quest to retrace my grandpa’s steps, to rediscover this little piece of family wartime history so dear to me.

I briefly stopped to survey the craggy, conifer-covered cliffs on either side of Deception Pass. The angry, steel-gray water, licking the rocks in foamy swirls, could have easily hidden U-boats back in the 1940s. Seeing firsthand the many deep water inlets, coves, bays, and sounds—a veritable maze of waterways—gave me a new appreciation for the necessity of radar to defend this region, especially the naval shipyard at Bremerton, one of the most important for the Pacific fleet. I got back in my car and finished crossing over to Whidbey Island.

A sepia-toned photo of young men around a table. — Courtesy of Ray A. Bailey Jr. Collection, 38.1963.9.26” Image of: year 1910, Fort Casey, Upper observing room, called Battery Command, at the Fire Command for both mortar batteries located near Admiralty Head Light House.

1942-1945: Forts Ebey and Casey

My grandpa, retired Staff Sergeant Elden K. Tippin, did not start off as a radar operator. His first assignment had been as a mess hall cook, but once his superiors learned that he had worked for a while in a radio repair shop, they earmarked him for the new Coastal Radar Service. He would be more useful operating the newest technology than he would be peeling potatoes.

My grandpa’s superiors sent him first to Coyne Electrical School in Chicago for basic electrical training and then to the (literally) top-secret Camp Murphy in Florida to specialize in radar.

By the end of 1942, he’d been sent to Port Angeles and then on to Fort Ebey, two of ultimately 65 radar stations dotting the Pacific Coast of the United States.

At first, the main equipment he operated was the anti-aircraft surveillance radar, the SCR-268, and then later the sea cost or “fire control” radar, which was meant to help the defensive gun batteries along the coast target threats from both land and sea.

My grandpa was a calm, gentle man who loved working with his hands. So, the station, located a ways from the actual camp (to better shield it from enemy detection), was ideal for him. He didn’t mind being on call 24 hours a day, with just a handful of other radar operators.

There, isolated and peaceful, he and the other two or three men played cards, read books, and enjoyed the sounds of nature all around them.

A sepia toned photo of soldiers doing drills outside a row of houses. — Courtesy of Ray A. Bailey Jr. Collection, 38.1963.9.21” Image of: year 1908, 85th Company, Fort Casey Barracks. Image was used in a physical education book by Major Butts.

1990s: Stories, photos and memories

The slides and the small, mid-century square photographs my grandpa had shown me when I was growing up showed him with other smiling privates and NCOs, all of them posing with their caps set at rakish angles. A boardwalk, presumably at Port Angeles. Army camp beds in neat rows and files. Mount Rainier, where they had traveled once on the few days off they were given.

All in 1940s sepia tone, a tangible piece of the intangible past.

2025: A Memorial Day pilgrimage

The drizzly rain on northern Whidbey Island decided to let up as I drove south on Highway 20 to Fort Casey State Park, where I was greeted by cheerful Washington State Parks staff, whom I had coordinated with ahead of time to meet.

They had done their research to help me find my grandpa’s radar station and had generously prepared for my arrival.

“It’s a busy holiday weekend, but we can show you the spot in Fort Ebey where the radar tower was, where your grandpa served,” said Park Ranger Morgan with a big smile.

But first, we made a quick tour of Fort Casey, a Spanish-American War-era fort, complete with some of the last retractable heavy-artillery batteries built in the US, since rapidly changing military technology rendered this type of defensive fortress obsolete just about as soon as it was built.

A private tour of Fort Casey with Park Ranger Morgan was a dream come true: she narrated the history of this place and pointed out the various peaks of the distant Olympic Range to the south as we hiked up and down the gun batteries, to the top of Admiralty Head Lighthouse, and into the underground communication center, where the WWI- and WWII-era switchboard was held.

A black and white image of a power plan apparatus — Courtesy of Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, 38.0-1972.1.63-2” Image of: early 1900s Power Plant, image shows the dynamo (a large generator) powered by steam from the two boilers in the next room.

2025: Imagining the past

This WWII-era switchboard had undoubtedly contacted my grandpa’s unit at nearby Fort Ebey, a smaller operation built in 1942.

Fort Ebey didn’t even have proper barracks for a good chunk of the war; its men simply slept in Fort Casey’s barracks as Fort Ebey was being constructed.

Fort Ebey, Ranger Morgan explained, was much more modern than Fort Casey, built 45 years later. Its gun battery, known simply as “Battery 248,” was built into the preexisting southern bluff of Whidbey Island so that it blended into the natural, forested landscape. That way, enemy surveillance wouldn’t be able to detect it as easily.

Strategically placed, it guarded the western approach to Admiralty Inlet and, beyond, the Bremerton Shipyards, while also directly protecting one of the only flat areas on the coast of Whidbey Island: an ideal spot for enemy aircraft to (hypothetically) land and take control of the island. Ranger Morgan clicked on her flashlight and led me into the cold, concrete bunker of Battery 248.

“This,” she said, gesturing with her light, “is the generator room, and, across the corridor, you can see the mess hall.”

The mess hall where my grandpa shared breakfast, lunch, and dinner with his buddies while not on duty at the radar tower. Her circle of light danced around the now-barren room.

Stepping gingerly down the hallway, over ruined concrete blocks with the ends of raw metal pipes sticking out of them, we surveyed the rest of the small bunker before emerging back into the blinding late-May daylight.

Songbirds called back and forth to one another, and Admiralty Inlet glittered in the distance.

The concrete entrance to a 1942 bunker overgrown with vines and trees. — This battery at Fort Ebey was in use when Elden Tippin served there from 1942 to 1945.

2025: Talking history with a park ranger

After visiting the fort itself, it was time to see the site of the radar tower, where my grandpa had served. I followed Ranger Morgan up the windy, curvy, tree-covered roads of Fort Ebey State Park, well beyond the point of no cell phone signal, into the public campground. She walked me to campsite 10, maybe a thousand feet as the crow flies from Battery 248.

There, behind the pine-shaded tent campsite, was a neat wooden fence painted brown, blocking off a flat concrete slab just beyond. Around the slab were four concrete blocks with metal rods coming out of them: the remains of the Fort Ebey radar tower, which had been made mostly of wood so that it could be disguised as the fort’s “water tower.”

During WWII, Ranger Morgan explained, radar stations, which were the highest of high tech, were camouflaged in various ways so that any potential aerial enemy attack would not target them and destroy them. After all, an unassuming water tower would not seem like the most tempting target when there were gun batteries to be destroyed.

A woman with dark hair in jeans and a blue jacket stands in the middle of a clearing with concrete in the foreground — The author, Stella Tippin, stands on the foundation of the small living quarters behind the Fort Ebey radar tower. Operators who were off duty but on call would spend their time in this place. Courtesy of Stella Tippin.

The real Fort Ebey water tower was a good quarter mile away, at least, hidden in the woods, sadly rotting due to its many years. Soon it, like the radar tower before it, would be torn down before it could have a chance to fall down in decay, said Ranger Morgan.

I went and stood directly in the center of the radar station foundation, straining my eyes heavenward, imagining the multiple flights of wooden stairs leading up to the equipment itself. Although the West Coast radar operators of WWII never detected active Japanese bombers bound for the United States, they were always at the ready, listening to soft static for countless hours, straining for the slightest hypothetical blip.

Behind the concrete floor of the radar tower was a small, rectangular foundation of a little house, its outline covered in bright green moss. The floor tiles were littered with pine needles and, underneath, small fragments of broken glass and rusted nails.

The forest floor was rapidly swallowing this once neat and tidy little building that had at one time been the house my grandpa slept in when he was assigned to the radar tower but wasn’t currently on duty.

How many hours did he sleep right here, shave right here, sit to eat meals here, all in this exact spot?

I could imagine him, an Army staff sergeant, humming softly to himself as he gazed, eyes unfocused, out the window, enjoying the peace of the woods but always, in the back of his mind, on alert to protect his homeland from enemy attack.

By now, Ranger Morgan had bid me a hasty farewell. She had to rush off to Fort Casey to help with an emergency. There is no rest for the weary, at least not for park rangers!

A clearing in the woods with a wood fence in the foreground and concrete foundation remains. — The remaining foundation of the Fort Ebey radar tower, where Staff Sergeant Tippin and his colleagues served during WWII. By Stella Tippin.

2025: A moving legacy

As I lingered at campsite 10, I imagined the radar tower in its heyday: wide-eyed young men brought from the far-flung corners of our country to this little patch of Pacific Northwest rainforest, spending years watching the small radar screen, waiting to send the alarm up and down the verdant crags and conifer-covered cliffs of Washington state.

They were not tested in the heat of battle, but they had been ready and willing to use high-tech solutions to help our country face the very worst. Truly, these radar operators were the fearless defenders of this beautifully wild corner of the United States of America, and I was blessed to finally be able to come and see for myself this place that had lived in my imagination ever since I was a wide-eyed child sitting in my grandpa’s lap.

And it was even more gorgeous and moving than I had imagined it would be.