I was born in Miami, FL in 1944. After BS and MS degrees in meteorology at Florida State Univ. I moved to Ft Worth at the beginning of 1970 to work for what at that time was still the US Weather Bureau. (I had begun work with the USWB as a high school volunteer at the National Hurricane Center [NHC] in Miami.) The Southern Region Headquarters of what's now the National Weather Service is here in FTW. We are responsible for operations at forecast offices in 10 southern states from FL &GA west to include NM. Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are also part of the SR.

I retired in 2005 after 40 years of service, almost all of that here in FTW. I logged a couple of years working summers at the NHC as a student trainee while in college, then in the late '70s I spent a couple of years at the NWS forecast office in Birmingham AL. (The first significant snow I ever saw (two-feet) occurred while I was a forecaster in Birmingham, and it was my job to forecast that on mid-shift. I recall I did pretty well, but I was snow-bound at the office and worked one or two additional shifts!)

All of my years here in Fort Worth were with the Scientific Services Division (SSD) of the HQ. I returned from AL to take over as chief of that division, and held that job until I retired. I was responsible for overseeing "science" at all our field offices -- as opposed to dealing with personnel matters, operations, equipment or facilities. By that I mean my division dealt with training for our meteorologists, techniques development, research, forecast and warning applications of new technology such as satellites, wind-profiling radar, and so on. Also to ensure that field forecasters knew and understood how to best use new developments coming out of the computer operations, numerical weather prediction models, and so on in Washington.

When I began work here in 1970 there were no computers in use at the field forecast offices anywhere in the country. I utilized what seems now to be an incredibly crude old (then new!) computer here to develop what became the first field applications of the computers that would arrive a decade later in the field. Much of that work involved developing and applying the first operational digital radar data. What we could have done back then if we had the equipment that is routine today!

I am a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, and former editor of the National Weather Association's quarterly journal. I've published in the Monthly Weather Review, the NWA Digest, and other professional journals.

Since retirement I've devoted considerable time to historic research. I've published articles dealing with steamboats in Florida and I am coordinating with marine archaeologists in Florida to investigate a wreck site in a lake near St. Augustine. I have also made a number of presentations on related subjects at meetings of the Florida Historical Society and other local
historical groups. (Last year I was named "Historian of the Year" by the Lake County [FL] Historical Society.) Other on-going projects include (in Florida) the Historic American Merchant Marine Survey, a WPA-era effort, and closer to home here in Texas, researching the Bankhead Highway - the nation's first all-weather, cross-country highway, which dates to around 1920.

My wife of 44 years is Carol and we have three daughters and six grandchildren, all of whom live in Texas. We are members of University Christian Church in Ft. Worth.