Tipper Jr, Edward Joseph.

Tipper Jr, Edward Joseph, born 03-08-1921 in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan, USA, to Lucy, born McCormick and Edward Tipper, an Irish couple. The family moved back to Ireland when Tipper was three years old, but they returned to the United States later. Tipper graduated from a Detroit school in 1939 and worked at a department store before volunteering for military service soon after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Edward siigned up for the United States Marine Corps (USMC), but was rejected because his teeth could not bite together.  He therefore volunteered for the paratroopers. He was sent to Toccoa, Georgia, and was assigned to Easy Company 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment  ,for training under Captain Herbert Sobel.   During the training in Camp Mackall, Tipper was made Sobel’s runner; with his help, “Sobel was able to mislay his maps, compass, and other items when he most needed them.” Tipper received further training with Easy Company in Aldbourne, United Kingdom.

After his service in World War II, the not very beloved Sobel returned to Chicago, where he worked as a credit manager for a telephone equipment company. He married Rose, a former military nurse from South Dakota whose Catholicism was disapproved of by Sobel’s Jewish family. They raised three sons, who attended church weekly with Rose before their parents’ divorce.

In 1970, Sobel shot himself in the head with a small-caliber pistol in an attempted suicide. The bullet entered his left temple, severing his optic nerves and rendering him blind. Soon afterward, he began living at a Veterans Administration assisted-living facility in Waukegan, Illinois, where he died on 30-09-1987; the death certificate listed malnutrition as the cause of death. No memorial service was held

Edward Tipper made his first combat jump into Normandy on D-Day, where he met with fellow Easy Company member Frank J. “Frank” Mellet and some other paratroopers and engaged in a firefight with a German patrol.  Later, the men and other paratroopers, members, including Floyd “Tab” Talbert,  Forrest “Goody” Guth,

and Walter Schot “Smokey” GordonJr, were also involved in the attack, albeit with another group of American soldiers. attacked the Marmion Farm. The soldiers held the farm before joining their own units. Walter Schot Gordon died 19-04-1997 (age 76) in Gulfport, Harrison County, Mississippi, USA

While taking the town of Foy on 13-01-1945, Mellet, age 24, was killed instantly when he was shot through the head by a sniper. This same sniper also killed Kenneth Jay Webb

   and Carl Sawosko before being killed himself by Darrel Clay  “Shifky” Powers. Eight weeks after the death of Frank, his younger brother, John, was killed in action in Luzon, Phillipines on 12-03-1945 at the age of 22. His body was transported back to New York where it is buried at Long Island National Cemetery with his parents and his brothers.

Tipper fought in Carentan: after clearing a house, a mortar shell exploded near him when he was standing in the doorway. His right eye was destroyed and his legs were broken. Two other members of E Company dragged Tipper to a nearby aid station.  Tipper was sent to a hospital in England, where his right eye was removed.  He was then sent back to the United States.

Tipper was discharged in August 1945 after one year in army hospitals. At first Tipper needed to walk with a cane and wore an eyepatch. Tipper remembered how everybody wanted to do something to show support for the returning war veterans. For instance, someone would pay his bill for him at a restaurant or there would be no bill at all.

Tipper attended the University of Michigan and completed his master’s degree in English at the University of Northern Colorado, and became a teacher.  In 1961 he won the John Hay Fellowship from the University of California at Berkeley. When Tipper was sixty one, he met Rosy (who was then thirty four) and they were married on 12-02-1983.  Their daughter Kerry Christina Tipper was born ten months later.

Death and burial ground of Tipper Jr, Edward Joseph.

Edward Tipper died on 01-02-2017 at the age of 95 and is buried at Fort Logan National Cemetery Denver, City and County of Denver, Colorado, Section 57, Site 665.

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