April 23, 2021
By Tina Hilding, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture
When Philip Whitener first began dreaming of a high-speed, fuel efficient ferry for the Puget Sound region, the first moon landing was a few years away.
After his retirement as a Boeing engineer decades later, he designed his dream, the Dragonfly, and then built and tested a plywood prototype in the 1990s and early 2000s.
At that time, the current seniors in WSU’s mechanical engineering program at Olympic College at Bremerton were still in grade school.
Whitener died last year at 99 years old, but a few days before he died, he handed the Dragonfly and several of his other projects and patents to students, hoping they will improve on his ideas while learning to look even further into the future. WSU students are getting the chance to finish his dreams.