When the world came to Empire

Remembering a Cold War outpost in the middle of nowhere
By Codi Yeager
Sun contributor
The quaint village of Empire is nestled in a valley between rolling hills to the north and south, with Lake Michigan lapping gently at its western shore. To the south looms a hill a bit taller than the rest, certainly prouder. Atop its peak sits a dome that crests the rise like a crown, its white facade gleaming in the sun as it gazes over the land with superiority. Of course, some call it nothing more than a glorified golf ball. But this white dome is no oversized sports ornament. It is a radome — one of the last standing reminders of a time that has passed into history.

The United States Air Force came to Empire in November of 1950, bringing with it about 300 military personnel, nearly doubling the population of the village at the time. The base was strictly an early warning radar system. The big scare was that the Soviets would send missiles up over Canada, so a line of radar stations spread across the northern U.S. and Canada, designed to warn us of an attack. The home of the 752nd Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron was placed on one of the hills to the south of Empire, and it comprised of an Officer, NCO and Bachelor quarters, one dining hall, a recreation hall, a commissary, a BX (Base Exchange), a dispensary, operation buildings and usually two to four radomes. Many of the officers with families rented housing in Empire or in nearby Dorsey Trailer Park.
Dave Taghon, who was a local teenager at the time, remembers that the Commanding Officer of the base would always rent out the house next door to his family’s home on Front Street. “When one CO would move out, the next one would move in. I got to meet all their lovely daughters,” he remembers with a laugh. Taghon also recalls watching movies in the Rec Hall every once in a while with the kids from the base — a rare treat when trips into Traverse City were scarce. “We even had a colored fellow once. He always wore a penny tied to a string around his neck and was a really good basketball player,” says Taghon, “We had never had someone like that before, and we thought of it as a novelty.”
While hosting the base was new and exciting for the citizens of Empire, (especially for all the local girls) the small town off the beaten path must have seemed like the middle of nowhere to the GI’s, who came from all over the country. “One GI later told me that when he first came to Empire and saw a kid practicing a cornet in the gas station, he knew he must really be out in the boonies … the kid was me.” confides Taghon.
However, the hunters and fishermen soon took advantage of the benefits of living in the ‘wilderness’ and set out to enjoy South Bar Lake and the forests of Leelanau County. Water skis and boats could be rented from a recreation area on Little Glen Lake, also used as a picnic spot, while other pastimes took the forms of boxing and baseball and basketball teams.
“Sometimes we would be invited to ‘agitate the dogs’,” says Tom Ford, who was stationed at the base from 1957 to 1969. Two guard dogs were always ‘stationed’ at the base during its first few years of operation. To train the dogs to attack, volunteers would put on heavily padded suits, agitate the dogs and then run away. The handlers would let the dogs go and call them off after a quick, and hopefully harmless, attack. “One of the dogs must have had really long fangs because it would bite right through the padding,” Ford remembers. “So if you antagonized the dog too much, you would get puncture marks on your arm.” Another dog was deemed too friendly since it let the GI’s pet it, so it was put to sleep. Eventually, the dogs and their handlers were sent off the base because they were no longer needed.
Even so, security was far from lax. “When you first got to the base, you would be stopped at the gate and asked for your orders. If you didn’t have orders, you didn’t get in,” says Gene Zoyhofski, who was also stationed at the base. Newcomers were given identity badges that they wore to enter and exit the base as well as the operation buildings. Once inside the base, there was no need to leave again other than for recreational activities. The base’s exchange store sold necessities such as cigarettes, razors, uniforms and jewelry while the commissary sold dry goods. “We were really a self-contained little city,” reminisces Zoyhofski. However, many GI’s did their grocery shopping at Deering’s Market, often signing a book for credit. On payday, everyone who owed money to either Deering’s or Taghon’s gas station would go traipsing down into town to pay their debts. “I remember my dad had a whole drawer full of pocket watches for things that probably never quite got paid off,” remembers Taghon.
The radar in place at the base was of two different types: a parabolic antennae and a height finder. These antennas were enclosed inside of the radomes and picked up aircrafts from all the way inside Canada. The early radomes were metal frames with tough rubber stretched over their exterior. The air that kept them inflated was pumped in using power from the small power plant on the base. “I remember that one time the power went out and you could see the radar antennae rotating around and making a dimple in the rubber,” says Pat Hobbins, who worked as a civilian for the Federal Aviation Administration. If this happened for too long, it could puncture the rubber.
The operation buildings, where the information gathered by the antennas was sent, were low brick buildings with no windows. They were kept completely dark inside at all times. The jobs of the radar operators varied; they could rotate through as many as eight jobs during the course of a day. For example, the path of each plane would be charted on large, clear grids. Each person would be responsible for a specific area of the grid. When a plane flew into their coordinates, they would chart its progress until it left their area and entered another section.
When the Air Force left in 1987, given that Soviet missiles over Canada were no longer considered a threat, the FAA took control of the radomes, using them for air traffic control of commercial airplanes by sending the information to Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis. “There were certain checks that we had to do every month, checks for every week and checks for every day,” says Hobbins. Twelve FAA personnel were stationed in Empire, and that number gradually decreasing as technology became more advanced. “It’s pretty much all software-run now,” says Hobbins. There are currently three FAA personnel working at the lone remaining radome. The base itself has been mostly torn down, and the FAA shares the buildings that are left with the National Park Service. Lake Michigan’s waters rose during the year that the base was dismantled, and much of the rubble was taken down to the beach and spread over with dirt and sand.
Although the base is gone, many of the men who were stationed there are not. When asked why he chose to stay in Empire, Gene Zoyhofski, who was originally from upstate New York, summarized, “Hunting and fishing. Why would I leave?” Quite a few of the former airmen married local girls and stayed to raise families. That’s why, local families that have lived here for generations share the community with families with roots in Illinois, downstate Michigan and Wisconsin — all because of the Air Force base. In the words of Dave Taghon, “ It brought the world to Empire.”