Ed Andress W6KUT

Edwin A. Andress; backyard party will celebrate the life of a great, great patriot.

By Jeff Ristine - Union-Tribune Staff Writer - July 5, 2009, Page B5 If Edwin A. Andress were alive today, he would be throwing his traditional backyard Fourth of July party with his family and friends: a huge gathering with a barbecue, horseshoes, marching with flags to music by John Philip Sousa and an inflatable jumper for the kids. Mr. Andress developed his patriotism as an electronics wiz sent to England during World War II to help it develop the emerging technology of radar as a defense against German air attacks. One of his decorations for service is from the Royal Air Force. The expertise nearly cost him his life one night over Germany but he survived to participate in the invasion at Omaha Beach, returned to active duty in the Korean War and was a merchant marine in Operation Desert Storm.

"He loved this country; he was a great, great patriot", said his daughter Anna Catherine Brennan.

This year, the Fourth of July party at Mr. Andress' Poway home instead will be a celebration of his life, which ended June 9 at age 90. An honor guard was scheduled to join a group of about 140 people in recognition of his military service.

Mr. Andress was a lifelong amateur radio enthusiast. His call sign was W6KUT and he spent time on the radio up until the last few weeks of his life.

Mr. Andress was born in the Kern County town Isabella (now called Lake Isabella) and graduated from Fresno State University in 1941 with a bachelor's in physics.

But it was in high school in the 1930s that he first got hooked on ham radio after spotting a friend in Spanish class who already had his radio license. Mr. Andress got his own license in May 1934.

He was just one of these guys who was attracted by the magic of radio, and in those days it was magic, said Glenn Rattmann, a friend who met Mr. Andress in the 1970s.

Amateur radio guys back then tended to be real hands-on tinkerers, said Rattmann, a retired radar engineer. They enjoyed building the stuff and tinkering with the stuff as much as they did actually talking to people.

Mr. Andress was in the Army Signal Corps before the United States entered World War II and was being sent to Fort Monmouth, NJ, when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941. Mr. Andress heard of the assault during a stop in Chicago when a friend was talking to a ham operator in Hawaii.

He was part of a group later sent to Scotland to help engineers from MIT further develop radar. Closer to the end of the war, he was among a crew deployed in the Allied invasion of Normandy, using radar to detect enemy movements and identify locations for air strikes. We knew everything about the invasion because we had to coordinate with all the service branches about where to store ammo, food, etc., on the beachhead, Mr. Andress wrote in letter to a family member a few years ago, recounting highlights of his life. Some of us would wake up from sleep screaming, having dreamed that we leaked information. I never want to know that much classified information again.

Just prior to the invasion we received a shipment of prototype radar equipment shipped in from MIT. We mounted everything into vehicles, waterproofed them to get through the surf on arrival and drove the entire station onto landing crafts for our June trip to the coasts of France. I was in command of this company through the Battle of the Bulge.

He received the Legion of Merit from the Department of Defense and Great Britain's Order of the British Empire.

He was recalled to the Air Force for two years during the Korean War and was discharged as a major. He was a partner in a radio station in Bakersfield, KERO, and later helped build a television station and transmitter there.

Mr. Andress moved to San Diego County in 1971 for a job with Spectral Dynamics, where he was involved with its work on vibration testing. After leaving the company in 1986, he became a merchant marine radio officer for Chevron Oil, and in Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm, the 1990 response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait he was a civilian contractor on a US Navy cargo transport.

Until later in life, family and friends say Mr. Andress was modest about his military service and only rarely went into detail.

His son, Kurt, said it was not until about 20 years ago that his father told him about being with a bomber crew over Germany that was shot up on its way back to England. Only the pilot and Mr. Andress made it back to base. It came up during a conversation about God, Kurt Andress said, and struck him as one of the reasons his father felt he had a purpose in life.

Survivors include two daughters, Anna Catherine Brennan, of Poway, and Kim Winfrey, of Escondido; a son, Kurt Andress, of Nevada; seven grandchildren; and five great-grandsons. He was preceded in death by his wife of 55 years, Betty Jean.

Photos courtesy of K6KT