NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Goddard Laboratory for Atmospheric Sciences, 1977–1984

Abstract

During the summer of 1976, while I was recuperating from the NHRE fiasco, I had two visitors from NASA: first Bill Nordberg, director of the Applications Directorate of Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), and then Bob Cooper, the Goddard director. Bill was there to recruit me to head the severe storm program at GSFC. Both were dynamic personalities, friendly and enthusiastic. Nordberg made a fine pitch; both NASA and the job looked very attractive. I was later overwhelmed to find that he was suffering from an inoperable brain tumor to which he succumbed just a few months later. A couple of weeks after Nordberg’s visit Cooper came by to make an even more enticing offer—to establish a broad-based atmospheric and oceanic science laboratory. He also made the unprecedented commitment to permit us to hire without limit—a promise that he made on the bold assumption that he could sell the idea to NASA headquarters. To my amazement, he did. At the time, I was also entertaining an offer to head the Atmospheric Science Division at NSF. After considerable thought and confidential discussions with my colleagues, I accepted the NASA offer and arrived at Greenbelt, Maryland in January 1977, simultaneous with the start of the Carter administration. Lucille was anxious for the move back to the East Coast because she wanted to be close to her mother. Our move was also a stroke of good fortune because Lucille had a malignancy that had been misdiagnosed in Boulder but was surgically cured in Maryland. Here is a life-and-death case of serendipity.