Elmer E. Kirkpatrick

Colonel Elmer Ellsworth Kirkpatrick Jr. (1905–1990) was a United States Army Quartermaster Corps and Army Corps of Engineers officer who worked on the Alaska Highway, the Canol project, and the Manhattan Project during World War II.

A 1929 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Kirkpatrick was involved in numerous construction projects in the United States and Panama. He went to Washington, D.C., in October 1940 to work in the office of the Quartermaster General, where he worked to prepare the necessary accommodation and training facilities for the vast army that would be created to fight World War II. After duty in Alaska, he joined the Manhattan Project, and was responsible for the development of the base facilities used for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After the war he was chief of staff of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, and the head of the Construction Division of the Far East Command in Japan.

Early life Elmer Ellsworth Kirkpatrick Jr. was born in Yukon, Oklahoma, on 17 August 1905, the second of four sons of Elmer Ellsworth Kirkpatrick Sr., a dentist, and his wife Helene Claudia née Spencer. Kirkpatrick and his brothers had a younger sister, Mary Elizabeth.

Kirkpatrick was educated at McKinley Elementary and Central High School in Oklahoma City. He joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps in his freshman year, and rose to the rank of corporal in the 189th Field Artillery Battery of the Oklahoma National Guard. After graduation he spent a year at the Marion Military Institute. and the Commendation Ribbon.

Later life After the war, Kirkpatrick was posted to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as deputy district engineer of the Manhattan District. He was reduced to his permanent rank of major on 13 June 1946. After the Manhattan District was dissolved he was posted back to West Point in March 1947 as assistant chief of staff, Logistics (G-4). There he was promoted to lieutenant colonel again on 1 July 1948. He returned to Washington, D.C., in July 1949 as chief of staff of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project.

Kirkpatrick subsequently served in Japan as head of the Construction Division of the Far East Command and United States Army Forces in the Far East, and as Chief of the Japan Construction Agency. He then became district engineer in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was responsible for the construction of the initial facilities at Cape Canaveral for the space program. This was followed by duty as district engineer of the Southern District of the Mediterranean Division, with its headquarters in Livorno, Italy. He retired from the Army on 1 November 1958 with the rank of colonel.

Kirkpatrick moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he became an assistant professor in the College of Architecture and the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. He retired from this in 1965. His son Terry graduated from West Point with the class of 1961 and served with the engineers in the Vietnam War. His wife died in 1982 and he married Virginia Wright in 1986. After he died in Jacksonville on 26 March 1990, he was cremated and half of his ashes were scattered into the waters of Melrose Bay, Florida, while the other half were interred with his first wife's in West Point Cemetery.