This chapter describes the incredible series of events that led up to me becoming a navy oceanographer.

​​CHAPTER 2
 
MAJOR EVENTS WHICH INFLUENCED THE DEVELOPMENT
OF MY PROFESSIONAL CAREER
 
HOW I BECAME AN OCEANOGRAPHER.  How did I ever become an oceanographer when my intension and desire was to be a research chemist?  During my senior year at URI, I felt that I was burned out.  So, I had decided to take a year off from school and travel a bit.  Does this sound familiar?  Well during my senior year, many companies and organizations sent personnel to interview graduating seniors for possible employment.  As a lark, I would periodically look at the schedule of organizations holding interviews during the upcoming week. Also, at the time, I had no idea as to how I was going to fulfill my desire to travel.  I did not know where I would go or how I would pay for it if I did go.  One day I scanned the scheduled interviews and saw that the Naval Oceanographic Office in the Washington, D.C. area was interviewing people for potential employment as Physical Oceanographers.  I loved the oceanographic course I took, and at that time in the early 60’s, Jacque Cousteau, the famous French oceanographer, was hugely popular.  I thought that maybe I should schedule myself for an interview.  However, the University of Rhode Island was one of the best oceanographic graduate schools in the country, and I thought why would they ever hire me, a future chemist?  Well I decided to go through with an interview anyway.  Besides, in the write up of the job description, much world travel was promised as part of the job.  Since I hardly had ever ventured outside of the state of Rhode Island in my 22 years of life, I was nonetheless intrigued, and I scheduled an interview. 
        When I nervously walked into the interview room, I was courteously welcomed by a man and a woman.  They quickly put me at ease with some small talk about how beautiful the URI campus was and how friendly the people were.  They then asked me why I had an interest in oceanography.  I do not remember my answer, but I do remember what they said next.  They were not looking for an oceanographic specialist, like a biological or chemical oceanographer.  Rather they were looking for someone who had a broad interest in the sciences of physics, chemistry, biology, and geology; hence the title physical oceanographer.  They were impressed with my BSc degree in chemistry but especially so in my elective selections of the earth sciences.  They were also pleased that I was willing to travel extensively.  I was dumbstruck.  I was exactly what they were looking for!  They practically assured me that I would be offered a job.  Could all of this have been a coincidence? Hmmm.  They did explain to me that my starting job level would be probationary with a low starting salary of $100 per week (GS 5).  If after 6 months my job performance was satisfactory, I would be promoted to a higher salary level (GS 7).   They also told me that my performance would be reviewed every 12 months in the next 2 years for possible promotion to the GS 9 and GS 11 levels.  I did not pay too much attention to all this because I only intended to stay with this job for a year before I sought entry into grad school to pursue my dream of a PhD in chemistry.  One thing that did catch my attention was that I would have the opportunity to earn a great deal of additional salary in overtime hours while at sea.
        To say that I found this interview exciting is an understatement.  I had a job, I was going to travel, and I had an opportunity to earn some real money.  Do not forget, I had been poor my whole life.
In summary, I felt that it was a miracle that I got this job.  As I said, I seemed to be exactly what they were looking for.  I thought what are the odds?  I accepted their job offer, and I now had the title of physical oceanographer.  However, my life did not go as I had planned.  Thirty-seven years later, I retired from this job and the dream of being a research chemist is now a distant memory; so is my dream of attaining a PhD in research chemistry.

SIGNIFICANT EVENTS WHICH FURTHERED MY CAREER.  MY EARLY YEARS.  I was now working in a scientific world in which a career is established by your level of education, your class standing, and the number of scientific papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.  Initially, this did not concern me because I was going back to grad school.  However, as you will see, I got sucked into the job.  I was travelling to places I never dreamed of, I got promoted as promised, my income was increasing steadily, and most important of all, I was challenged with more and more responsibility.  To a 22- or 23 year-old Rhode Island boy with no worldly experience, this was pretty heavy stuff.  And in addition, I started to love my job.
In September 1963, only three months after starting the job in June, I was on a Coast Guard Icebreaker in the Norwegian Sea.  I had taken my first ever airplane ride from Washington, D.C. to
 
  ​SEE FIGURE 1 BELOW
Figure 1.  US Coast Guard Ice Breaker
 
Reykjavik, Iceland to board the icebreaker. Six weeks later, I was in Oslo, Norway and Copenhagen, Denmark.  This was my first oceanographic cruise, and I was given the responsibility of using a new scientific technology of gas chromatography to determine key ocean properties. This was right up my alley as a future chemist.  A coincidence?  Hmm.  I think not.  Two weeks after returning to my lab in Washington, I was sent to Trinidad and Barbados in the Caribbean Sea to look for an atomic bomb that was lost from a navy aircraft in a nearby missile test range.  Wow!  This was exciting. 
Things just kept getting better and better.  Soon I was in Hawaii boarding a Coast Guard weather ship that would occupy Ocean Station Victor located midway between Hawaii and Japan.  Of course, we debarked the Coast Guard ship in Yokosuka, Japan.  I was actually seeing the world. 
Soon, the thought of returning to graduate school did not seem so important.
In 1968, I was given the awesome responsibility of being the Chief Scientist of an extensive oceanographic survey of the Pacific Missile Range in the Channel Islands area off the coast of southern California.  I cannot remember how many individuals were part of the scientific survey team, but it was about 8 men all working under my direction.  Here I was, only 24 years old with barely 2 years of experience in charge of 8 oceanographers, almost all of whom were older than me.  The Pacific Missile range people needed to know the oceanography of the test range; especially water currents, bottom properties, and the water column properties of temperature, salinity, and acoustic propagation. I was responsible for planning the survey, carrying it out, analyzing the resultant data, and preparing the final technical report.  The important point here is that this mission gave me the opportunity to write my first significant scientific paper, which I did with my good friend, Harry Iredale.  Harry is mentioned several times in the chapters that follow.  By this time, there was no turning back for me.  I was hooked.
​
A SIGNIFICAN CAREER CHANGE.  Up until 1970, my job was primarily going out to sea and collecting oceanographic data for the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO).  I had some opportunities to write technical papers (see above), but I needed more.  My desire now was to do more basic research and write more papers.  I had been at the GS 11 level for several years now, and to reach the next level of GS 12, I had to get into the Research and Development (R & D) side of the Naval Oceanographic Office.  This was not an easy thing to do because a PhD degree was almost always required for these positions.  But I kept my eyes open, and I kept reading the vacancy announcements.  Well, lo and behold a vacancy in the Sea Ice Branch in the R & D side opened up.  I quickly put my resume together, and I applied for the job.  In reality, I knew that my chances of getting selected for the job were small.  I did not have the normally-required PhD, I had no experience in sea ice research, and besides, most of these vacancy announcements were prewritten for someone within the group that they wanted to promote.  Well, to my surprise, I received a phone call from the personnel department telling me that I had been selected by Dr. Walt Wittmann, head of the Sea Ice Branch.  I was now a GS 12 doing research in a scientific area that I knew nothing about.
How did I get selected for this position?  Well one day, I asked Dr. Wittmann this very question.  Here is what he told me. He really liked the paper I wrote with Harry on the Channel Islands area mentioned above, he liked the fact that I was young and trainable, and he just had a “feeling” that I was the right guy for the job.   Coincidence? Again, I don’t think so.  In my mind, it was another God-incidence.
There are several more events which occurred to me that I could include in this chapter.  However, I felt that they better fit into the miracles chapter in Chapter 4.

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