Oliver H. Eggers

Lt.

Oliver Henry Eggers was born in Uniontown, Missouri on August 21, 1913. He grew up in Ft. Wayne, Indiana and was valedictorian at South Side High School. He earned an LLB degree from Valparaiso University School of Law in 1936 and was an Associate City Attorney in Ft. Wayne. Not long after the War broke out he applied for a Navy commission and, following OCS -- he was a so-called "90-Day Wonder" -- was commissioned as an Ensign. He received radar training at a then-secret Navy school at St. Simon's Island, Georgia and was thereafter ordered to USS Nassau days after the ship's participation in the Aleutian campaign. He served as one of the ship's "Fighter Directors", an early form of radar air controller, who vectored the carrier's fighters to intercept incoming Japanese attack planes. Eggers later seved in a Pacific "Argus Unit", a land-based advance radar base. Following honorable discharge in 1946, Eggers resumed his Ft. Wayne legal career in private practice. He and his wife, Dorothea Hyre Eggers, had five children. He was active in Lutheran Church affairs and local Democratic Party politics; and he served a number of years as a Scoutmaster. He was a member of the Board of Visitors of Valparaiso Law School. An endowed scholarship at that school bears his name. Felled at his office desk by a fatal stroke, Eggers died on June 15, 1975. His remains are buried in Ft. Wayne.