PROJECT DIANA: RADAR REACHES THE MOON - To the Moon and Back - The Human and Scientific Legacy of Project Diana (blog)

now that the book's out, WHAT ABOUT THis BLOG?

7/9/2021

As most of those who have followed this blog know, I recently published a book entitled To the Moon and Back: Essays on the Life and Times of Project Diana, based on many of the posts to this blog. In the book, the “chapters”—essays, posts—have been arranged by topic and more or less by chronology. In the course of compiling it, I revised and updated all the original essays. Some are no longer recognizable as versions of the original blog posts. Several new essays have been added.

So now that the book is out there, what about this blog? When I first started writing it, my husband expected me to exhaust my material after five or six entries. Although he is right about most things, he was pretty far off on that one. Five years and several dozen posts later, I still find myself with a file folder full of fascinating topics waiting to be addressed—Fitkin Hospital, for example, where all four of my parents’ children were born, now part of a regional medical center that reflects the evolution of health care and health care delivery throughout the country; or Ocean Grove, a Methodist Camp Meeting resort with strict blue laws, housing stock rented by residents via 99-year leases, and streets closed to traffic on Sundays; or the fascinating history of the Army Signal Corps. Just to name a few.

I also have another file folder full of other writing projects that have nothing to do with Project Diana, projects I hope to work on while I still can.

I have reluctantly decided that the time has come to shelve this blog at least for the moment, and to devote my time and attention to those other projects. This is my last post to this blog; as of now, “To the Moon and Back” is officially archived.

Meanwhile, I have completely revamped the parent website, rechristened Project Diana: Radar Reaches the Moon, as befits the only website devoted entirely to Project Diana. Comments, suggestions, and corrections welcome.

I am currently devoting my blogging energies to my new blog LOL, which can be accessed via my author website. It will feature my current work, previews of work-in-progress, what I'm reading, what I'm thinking about, and what's going on around me—likely including more than an occasional nod in the direction of Project Diana and my Jersey Shore childhood. I invite you to join me there.

TO THE MOON AND BACK: THE BOOK!

4/10/2021

What was your pandemic project? Some people learned to bake sourdough bread or took dancing classes online. A lot of unfinished sewing and woodworking projects came tumbling out of a lot of closets. My husband created a Great Books course for himself and figured out how to be his own barber.

I wrote a book.

* * * * *

It all started with the bright idea of pulling together into a single volume the posts I've made to this blog about Project Diana and my experiences growing in its shadow. The 75th anniversary of that historic event (and not coincidentally the 5th anniversary of this blog) took place on January 10, 2021. Such a book, I thought, was a unique contribution I could make to the celebration.

And what could be easier? I mean, the book was already written, right? All I had to do was rearrange my entries a little and write an intro.

How wrong I was!

Although many (though not all) of the essays started life as blog posts, they have been extensively revised and updated, and in some instances completely rethought. Organizing them by topic (something I actively resisted while blogging), and more or less chronologically within topic, has exposed a through-line that surprised even me.

Nearly half the book is devoted to the history of radar at Camp Evans, starting with its fumbling beginnings at Pearl Harbor and culminating in its stunning success in Project Diana - followed shortly by jobbing out much of its military research (in effect bowing out of the Cold War) in favor of another important application of radar, weather-tracking.

The second section is devoted to my father and his forebears, in an effort to hone in on what made him the right man for the job of scientific director for the project.

The last section dips into Jersey Shore life (the boardwalk, the Neptune Music Circus), contemporary American life (Sears, nylon stockings), and my own little-girl activities (my Toni doll, my parakeet Archie, my Islander ukulele).

I think even my most devoted blog followers will find this book a very different reading experience.

Interested? Here's how to order a copy:
Kindle (e-book) edition
Black and white edition
Full color edition
If you like what you read, please leave it a review on amazon.com - thanks!

HAM RADIO - WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS

7/31/2020

My father's ham shack adjoined the bedroom I shared with my sister Leslie when we were very young, so the soft beepity-beep of Morse code was as cozy and familiar to us as the sound of the furnace turning itself on and off or the hum of the vacuum cleaner. I've seen walk-in closets larger than that tiny room, but it had a window, and it was big enough for his rig, his telegraph key, and his QSL cards. It was also big enough for a crib, which had to be squeezed in when Sherry arrived in 1948, and the beeping became her lullaby.

Perhaps this is why I've never minded machines that beep at me.

* * * * *

Amateur radio had many progenitors - pioneers without whose inventions and discoveries it could not exist - not only iconic names like Maxwell, Hertz, Marconi, but also mavericks like Samuel Morse, an American portrait painter who in a moment of inspiration brilliantly stumbled into the concept of telegraphy - the original digital code.

But in the distinctive form we know today, ham radio dates back to the first decade of the twentieth century. It was then that the relevant equipment and components became commercially available (1904), the first magazine aimed at encouraging amateur radio and “home-brew” equipment, Modern Electrics, was launched (1908), the first amateur radio club, The Junior Wireless Club, Limited, of New York City, was formed (1909), and call letters or call signs came into use (1909). It was also then that the curious term “ham” entered the vocabulary - probably as a pejorative. as in "ham-fisted amateur", but it was eventually embraced by skilled operators who knew that the correct opposite of “amateur” was not “professional” but “commercial”; hams were doing it for love, not money.

Note that although in those early days (and even in my own childhood) Morse code was almost synonymous with ham radio, voice communication was also possible almost from the beginning.

In 1910 a bill introduced in the Senate to prohibit “amateur experimenting” was roundly defeated thanks to the lobbying efforts of the Junior Wireless Club. (A similar effort in 1919 to limit wireless communication to the Navy and exclude amateurs altogether was also quashed.) The succeeding decade saw the introduction of licensing (1912), frequency restrictions and operating instructions (driven in part by the shocking sinking of the Titanic in 1912), the regularization of call signs (1913), and the proliferation of ham jargon (boatanchor, ragchew), as well as CQ (“seek you” - an early version of texting shorthand) and the Q signs (QRZ [who are you?], QSO [did you hear me?], and dozens of other abbreviations that facilitated rapid coding). QSL cards confirming a contact, often quite creative and artistic, were first used in 1916 and became more standardized in content (sending and receiving call signs, date, time, frequency, mode of transmission, and signal report) in 1919.

All amateur radio activity was forbidden during World War I but sprang back when the War ended. By 1920 there were around 6,000 licensed hams including a handful of women (officially dubbed "YL" - Young Ladies - by the American Radio Relay League in 1920; yes, really). In 1923, following assignment to the "useless" higher (short-wave) frequencies by the government, amateur radio operators accomplished the “impossible” - dependable wireless communication between the US and Europe using relatively low power. DX - hamspeak for sending messages over long distances - had truly been achieved.

* * * * *

My father was licensed as an Amateur Class radio operator in 1929, when he was fourteen years old. His call sign was W2AXO, in accordance with an elaborate lettering and numbering system indicating that he resided in New York. My mother always insisted, though I cannot prove it, that he was the youngest person to be licensed at the time. Of course, records are made to be broken, and many younger hams have been licensed since then, including some as young as five years old.

Radio Club, Brooklyn Technical High School. King Stodola, front row left

To earn a license in those days, a candidate had to complete an essay-type question and demonstrate his or her (mostly his) ability to tap out at least ten words per minute before a Radio Inspector at a field office of the Department of Commerce. Radio clubs like the one my father belonged to at Brooklyn Tech (see photo) were formed in high schools not only to provide members with the opportunity to practice their Morse code skills and prepare for the licensing exam but also to learn to build and repair the equipment they used. These clubs with their obvious geek appeal were a natural nursery for engineers, and it's hardly surprising that three of the five members of the core Project Diana team - DeWitt, Stodola, and Kauffman - were hams.

Any opportunities my father and his colleagues might have had for pursuing or sharing this interest during their years with the Signal Corps, however, were cut off a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when as in World War I, all ham radio licenses were suspended to prevent spying. (An exception was made for VHF operations on 112 MHz by around 250 hams who were part of the War Emergency Radio Service.) Because of a clash over postwar frequency allocations - mainly between radio titans Armstrong (FM Broadcasting) and Sarnoff (RCA/NBC TV), but also threatening access by amateur radio (represented by ARRL) - US hams were not allowed back on the air until November of 1945.

The success of Project Diana two months later captured the imaginations of hams everywhere. Project Diana is still revered in ham radio circles as the locus classicus of a popular form of amateur radio communication known as Earth-Moon-Earth. EME involves the use of the moon to relay radio signals from one station on earth to another - the main difference, conceptually trivial, being that the object of Project Diana was to return the outgoing signal to its point of origin. By the end of the 1950s, military use of the moon, a direct outgrowth of Project Diana, was discontinued in favor of the newly-developed artificial satellite technology, and EME became available for use by amateurs.

The amateur radio community has participated in and benefited from satellite technology as well, in the form of satellites built by and for the amateur radio community, starting with OSCAR I (Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) in 1961 and continued by AMSAT, an umbrella designation for amateur radio satellite organizations all over the world. AMSAT launched its first satellite in 1970; its most recent satellite was put into orbit in 2018.

* * * * *

When the Stodolas moved from New Jersey to Long Island in 1956, my father set up his ham equipment in his den and erected an elaborate wooden structure that my brother Bob dubbed the "Eiffel tower," somewhat to the detriment of Bob's backyard ballgames. I was too preoccupied with navigating my own adolescence during those years to pay close attention to what went on in the den, though I remember occasional boring (to me) conversations with other hams comparing their respective Memorial Day parades or Fourth of July fireworks displays. My father also added mobile capability during that period, and Bob recalls endless hours of riding in the car listening to his CQ calls. And although he seldom used Morse code anymore, he always kept a telegraph key with his gear "just in case."

In the 1970s, CB started to fill the niche that had been occupied by ham radio in my father's life, and call sign "W2AXO mobile" was joined if not replaced by his CB handle "Road King." By then he was living in Florida, and CB was in its heyday. Because CB had no licensing requirements, it offered a larger if less selective field of prospective contacts and a built-in conversation topic of mutual interest to nearby drivers (though as Bob remarked, it's impossible to imagine our dad saying, "Hey, good buddy, there’s a smoky near exit 5...”). He had also started using a computer by this time, and I don't think he ever again set up a station in his home.

* * * * *

Because of the trend in amateur communications to use voice or digital technologies, but perhaps also with a nudge from the popularity of CB, the Morse code requirement was dropped for technician (entry level) licenses in 1991 and for all classes of licensure in 2007. Although purists lamented the loss of what had once been the hallmark of ham radio, the source (to many of them) of its cachet, the removal of this hurdle gave the hobby a much-needed boost, and applications for new or upgraded licenses increased substantially.

Nevertheless, among the questions that pop up upon googling relate to the relevance of ham radio in an age of digital technology, whether it can survive, and even does it still exist? That last one is easy - yes, it definitely still exists. ARRL still registers over 3/4 million licensed hams in the US, with over two million more worldwide. Facebook groups on ham and amateur radio have many tens of thousands of members who contribute hundreds of posts per day.

Questions about the future and relevance of ham radio are more problematical. After all, many of the things that today’s older hams could do when they were young that seemed so magical at the time - phone calls around the world! free! - can now be done using cell phones, no training or license required.

Does ham radio have a future? Despite the healthy census of licensed hams, many are admittedly getting long of tooth, and efforts to recruit younger members via field days, Scout merit badges, or connecting them with “Elmers” (mentors) typically yield only a few new enthusiasts, and even those often fall away after the initial excitement fades.

Is this really a legitimate worry? One ham, after browsing through amateur radio magazines of the 1940's and 1950's, commented on complaints about the lack of youngsters taking up the hobby: "It seems to have been a 'new' problem for a long time." To be sure, it is the kind of activity that will always have a specialized and limited audience - STEM types who also like activities with a hands-on component - but isn't that also part of its appeal?

If the goal of recruitment is to enable the hobby to continue unchanged, frozen in amber, it is almost certainly doomed. If on the other hand the activity is encouraged to evolve, while retaining its central focus on electromagnetic theory and communications - and on engineering new and clever ways to bring them together - then there is less reason for despair. Tell them that the new software-defined radios (SDRs) have enhanced signal processing and detection capabilities for both receivers and transmitters, bringing ham radio fully into the computer age. Tell them they don't need a pricy transceiver, that low-cost "hand-helds," in conjunction with repeaters that pick up weak signals and amplify them to extend their reach, will let them make contact and join networks on the go. Tell them about AMSAT and point out that Elon Musk isn't the only one who can send communications satellites into space. Tell them that almost all astronauts have ham licenses so that they can educate classroom and museum groups about their mission, or just call home, while circling the globe.

Worries that children will give up hamming when they discover cars and sex strike me as misplaced. Isn't that often the way with childhood interests? I gave up piano lessons when I was fourteen, over my parents' protests, but have returned to music again and again at various times in my life and am grateful for the pleasure it has brought me over the years. And my husband Ovide, who was licensed in his teens only to stop altogether during his career-building years (though he credits the basic electronic knowledge he acquired as a ham with enabling him to set up his lab), resumed and greatly upscaled his ham activity after retirement. (See below for the long version.)

And why limit recruitment to kids? It's a hobby that can be taken up and enjoyed anytime in life. Women in particular, who might have missed out on amateur radio as children because it seemed to be so exclusively a boy-thing, would seem to represent an obvious target for recruitment (preferably with an updated vocabulary in which women hams are hams, not YLs!) and might even bring some fresh new perspectives to the field.

What better time to promote a "nerd-magnet" than when Silicon Valley is "cool"? What better time to drum up interest in a new hobby, one you can work on alone if necessary, than in the midst of a pandemic?

Is ham radio relevant in the age of cell phones and social media? If you're looking for meaningful communication with your fellow humans, try random dialing your cell phone and see what that gets you. Or try having an in-depth conversation on Twitter. And yet hams calling CQ can readily connect with technologically sophisticated people all over the world.

The answer most often offered, however, is the importance of ham radio to civil defense. When faced with a disaster, we rely heavily on a complex network of cell towers that could fail or become overloaded under extreme adverse conditions. Amateur radio, operating independently of this fragile infrastructure, can be counted on - as hams like to say - "when all else fails." This was the rationale for the War Emergency Radio Service (WERS) during World War II, as noted, and for the formation of Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES) in 1952, developed within government agencies as a volunteer public service to maintain communications in times of extraordinary need. ARRL also maintains its own civil defense unit, called the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES).

Arguably, the need to produce new generations of people with the skills required to respond in times of crisis is in itself a reason for attracting young people to the hobby. Tell them it's their chance to be a genuine superhero!

Though “when all else fails” usually refers to a breakdown of infrastructure due to weather, war, earthquake, or other major emergencies, a less dramatic instance of ham radio being the available technology occurred in my own family in 1962 when my sister Leslie spent the summer as an exchange student in Chile. Because telephone calls were prohibitively expensive, my dad suggested she call her family at home by visiting a ham friend of her host family who would then make contact with an American ham who could then phone my parents - awkward, but better than nothing for a homesick teenager.

* * * * *

During his long quiescence as a ham, Ovide had kept his license active. So when shortly after our retirement the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum sent out an appeal to all local hams for help in setting up a ham radio station for kids, he expressed his interest, and a seed was planted. Not long after, we went to visit an old friend from my Northport High School days, who just happened to be dating the owner and editor of a popular ham magazine. Our new acquaintance lured Ovide to his ham shack, which Ovide as a licensed ham could legally operate, and sent him home with a backpack full of books on antenna design.

Suddenly, much of the energy and brainpower Ovide had thrown into his scientific research was diverted not only to the study of radio equipment and antenna design, but to electromagnetic theory, astrophysics, meteorology, and other such esoterica. Fortunately, his XYL (ex Young Lady - cringe - that is, his wife), having grown up surrounded by receivers and transmitters and steeped in the lore of Project Diana, wasn't fazed by the prospect of investing in an office full of radio equipment or planting a hex beam next to the house.

It turned out to be the perfect hobby, combining his fascination with electromagnetism and radio propagation with his extrovert's love of interesting and wide-ranging conversation (and no, it isn't all about radio equipment or whose tower is taller!). He has now talked with hams in 165 countries and counting, including a commercial airline pilot flying 40,000 feet over the North Pole enroute to China and a lonely sailor in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a solo trip around the world. Some of his contacts are brief, but others are extensive and repeated, occasionally blossoming into genuine friendship.

Meanwhile, finding myself immersed once again in all things ham, I did a little research and discovered that no one had claimed my father's callsign since 1992, the year he became a "Silent Key" (SK). So I signed up for HamTestOnline, a self-paced programmed-learning course, spent a couple of weeks intensively cramming, and presented myself to the Witch's Hat Depot in South Lyon, Michigan to qualify for the technician (entry-level) license. The exam itself consisted of 35 multiple choice items drawn from a pool of 400 questions, so there were no surprises; the only thing that varied was the order in which the answer choices were presented, to prevent a test-taker from memorizing only the letters associated with each question.

As of March, 2011, the proud old call sign W2AXO is now back in Stodola hands, waiting for a member of the next generation to take up the mantle. But don't expect to find me by calling CQ; I'm happy to leave broadcasting to my more gregarious husband.

when edwin met beatrice

7/2/2020

The history of the Stodola family in the United States began with my grandfather's grandparents, who were part of a wave of German immigration in the mid 19th century in response to war and turmoil in Europe. A subset, like Henry ('Hy,” which likely started off as Chaim) and Barbara Stodola, were Ashkenazi Jews who in addition to fleeing civil unrest were seeking to escape antisemitic persecution. Hy arrived in Boston from Prussia on July 21, 1849, and then made his way to New York City. Barbara arrived a few years later; they must have met and married in New York. Their first child, Malia, was born in 1855, their second, my great grandfather Joseph, was born in 1858, followed by Lena in 1860 and Samuel in 1862. In the 1870 census, Hy's occupation was listed as "baker." Barbara died in 1908, by then a widow.

On May 29, 1881, Joseph, a dry goods merchant, married Bertha Eilau. Joseph and Bertha had three children, Gilbert Isaiah (born in 1883), my grandfather Edwin Sidney (born in 1885), and Ruth, the baby (born in 1892). Gilbert listed himself as an editorial assistant on his World War I draft card but also stood as proof of a scientific bent in the family, having published an article in the January 1923 edition of the Scientific American about an ingenious device he’d invented for installation in taxicabs to allow the fleet owner to determine the time and distance covered in each trip. So my father’s engineering abilities and love of gadgets, though they probably surprised his artistic parents, apparently didn’t come from out of nowhere.

My grandfather must have displayed a gift for music early in life and was evidently encouraged to pursue it. By the time he was in his late teens or early twenties, he had achieved critical acclaim as a concert artist, including the obligatory Carnegie Hall recital, and was also working as a piano teacher. His advanced training included six years under the tutelage of Henry Holden Huss - largely forgotten now, but in his day a well-known American pianist and composer, and performances of his pieces can still be readily heard on youtube. They evince a conservative taste in music and are quite free of avant grade rhythms and dissonances. (It is worth remembering that Brahms lived until 1897, when my grandfather was age 12 and Henry was age 35, so the romantic tradition was hardly ancient history during that era.) The Henry Holden Huss collection is housed in the Music Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

I’m not sure when these six years of study with Huss began and ended. My family “archives” includes a tattered photo of Henry Holden Huss and his wife, the American soprano Hildegard Hoffmann (clearly a marriage made in HHHeaven!), dedicated on the reverse “To my dear pupil Edwin Stodola” and dated June ’04. Or at least I think it says ’04. If so, it was likely a token or souvenir of Henry and Hildegard’s marriage, which took place in that same month and year, and the six years my grandfather studied with him must have included if not started with 1904.

At the end of his training with Huss - shall we guess around 1910? - my grandfather left his native New York to join the faculty of a conservatory in St. Joseph, Missouri. It was sometime during this period that he met my grandmother, a native of Missouri. Did they become acquainted after he arrived there, or did he meet her elsewhere and move there to be near her? I cannot say.

(Florence) Beatrice King, born in 1889 in Savannah, Missouri, was the doted-upon only child of Arthur and Vergetta Sayers King. Like Edwin, she found her calling early in life and participated in theatrical performances as a child. Her training was in a profession that almost doesn't exist today, as an elocutionist or diseuse; perhaps the closest modern equivalent would be a performance artist. After finishing her secondary education she attended the Chicago Conservatory of Music and Dramatic Art, followed by postgraduate work at the Columbia College of Expression and the American School of Expression and Oratory. She then returned to Missouri and coached students in drama and public speaking. She also painted and wrote poetry and plays. She was sociable and effervescent and had a wide circle of friends. She must have dazzled the quiet Edwin.

Beatrice, age 9, costumed for a theatrical performance.

Beatrice on her wedding day, January 11, 1913.

Edwin and Beatrice married in St. Joseph on January 11, 1913. It was clearly a love match, but one that came at great personal cost to my grandfather. When he proposed to my grandmother, her parents, after duly inquiring about his moral character - probably of Henry Holden Huss! - welcomed him into their family. His parents, however, were unable to accept this connection, and sadly all contact ceased.

* * * * *

One of my most treasured souvenirs is a charming brochure assembled by Beatrice and Edwin, apparently to help in recruiting students. This brochure, with a “Beatrice” column and an “Edwin” column, is actually the source of much of what I know about both my grandparents’ training. Since the brochure lists my grandmother’s name as Beatrice King Stodola, it must have been published shortly after their wedding. (In fact it might even have replaced an earlier version that did not include my grandmother’s married name.)

Not long after, their Missouri saga came to an end, and by the time my father was born in October of 1914, they were living in Brooklyn. Now that my grandfather was back in New York, I wish I could report a reconciliation with his parents, but alas, that did not happen, then or ever. Edwin’s brother Gilbert, so far as I can tell, never married, and his sister Ruth, marrying late in life, never had children. So my father and (later) his two younger brothers were Joseph and Bertha's only grandchildren. My grandmother made a couple of valiant attempts to visit her in-laws, hoping the sight of their adorable little grandson would melt their hearts, but she was not invited in. Only now, through the miracle of ancestry.com, am I slowly piecing together my grandfather’s story and even tracking down a few cousins on the Stodola side.

* * * * *

Upon returning to New York City along with his bride, my grandfather resumed his association with Henry Holden Huss and Hildegard Hoffman Huss in the capacity of "pupil-assistant" of both, which apparently included serving as an accompanist for their other students.

This ushered in what might be called the Golden Age of my grandfather’s career, as a google search turns up several reviews of concerts and recitals in which he played pieces I could only dream of tackling. The oboist and musicologist Lisa Kozenko, in a doctoral dissertation focused on this era, describes “a musical reception in honor of the American baritone David Bispham (1857-1921) along with the Husses. The guests included the Vincent Astors, Carolyn Beebe, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the Hermann Irions, Hugo Kortschak, Mrs. Ethelbert Nevin, and others. In its April 7, 1917 issue, Musical America reported that Huss was asked to improvise ('A thing which he does fascinatingly'). His student Edwin Stodola suggested “D B” as theme honoring Bispham: 'It was on that that Mr. Huss built his splendid improvisation, which won warm favor from all present.'”

So we have now arrived at the May 6, 1918 concert in Rumford Hall and my grandparents’ subsequent move to Boston, as described in my most recent blog post. Although I concluded in that essay that they had not moved to escape the pandemic, they almost certainly also did not move to advance Edwin’s career as a concert artist; if anything, probably the opposite. Although Boston was once the hub of the national chamber music scene, the center of gravity had by now shifted to New York City. Had he been bent on pursuing a concertizing career, my grandfather should have stayed put and remained under the wing of the Husses.

“Being a musician is not an easy profession in any era,” wrote Kozenko in her dissertation. "[By 1920], the competition from radio, recordings, jukeboxes and movies confronted anyone attempting to pursue a career in music.” The May 6 concert appears to have been almost a swan song. With a growing family and a pandemic emptying concert halls, he had likely decided it was time to shelve the dream of supporting his family as a musician and move on to a different life plan.

This is not to say that he abandoned music altogether. Performances in Boston included a musical accompaniment to a lecture on “The Relationship of Poetry and Music” by my grandmother at the Boston Public Library in April, 1922; piano music in a radio broadcast in October, 1922, "Rhymes and Music for Little Folks," also featuring readings by my grandmother. Similar notices appeared occasionally in the Kingsport Times during their few years in Tennessee, where he ran a print shop. His 1957 obituary states that in addition to teaching and concertizing, he served as director of music for the [New York] Veterans Administration, where he assisted in the training of veterans studying music at Columbia University, Juilliard, City College, and New York University.

But there is nothing to suggest that he ever gave up his day jobs, in which he used his keyboard skills as a “typewriter” and a printer. Music had become an avocation.

Despite the disappointments that beset them, theirs was a happy union. My grandfather was a gentle man and a gentleman, quiet and reserved, but he never passed my grandmother's chair without touching her shoulder. He even enjoyed "helping" her with her garden, which mostly consisted of planting seeds and pulling weeds under her direction.

By the time I knew him, his hands were rusty with arthritis and disuse, and he had grown hard of hearing. He never willingly played the piano in my presence, and when he was cajoled by my grandmother into accompanying family musicales it was clear to me even as a child that his skills had sadly atrophied. Yet so far as I know, he was content with his lot.

PANDEMIC!

5/10/2020

The annual flu season of 1918 started in the Spring. As flu seasons go, it was relatively mild; those who became ill typically suffered through a several days of chills and fever, then recovered. The number of reported deaths was low. A year earlier, on April 6, 1917, the United States had entered the Great War, and news of major offensives in Europe, not the flu, dominated the headlines. As summer approached, the flu subsided as usual.

Then, on August 11, the Norwegian vessel Bergensfjord docked at a Brooklyn NY pier. Twenty-one of those aboard - 10 passengers and 11 crew members - were ill. A team of doctors and city officials, having been warned in advance, were on hand to meet the ship and quickly sent those where were ill to nearby hospitals. The first few cases of what turned out to be one of the deadliest pandemics in human history had landed in New York City.

Despite efforts at containment - the pier was immediately placed under strict quarantine - the disease started to spread, insidiously at first, but soon sweeping through the city’s densely-populated neighborhoods like wildfire. Unlike its earlier incarnation, this second wave turned out to be a merciless beast. The first death in New York City was recorded about a month after the Bergensfjord arrived, by the first of October the daily death toll had reached around 50, and by the middle of the month over 400 people were dying each day. October of 1918 was the deadliest month of the entire epidemic. Eventually over 20,000 lost their lives.

And a singularly unpleasant death it was. The historian Mike Wallace described “patients gasping for breath as their lungs filled with bloody frothy fluid.” Within days or even hours, they basically drowned in their own bloody fluids. Victims could awake feeling fine and be dead by midnight.

Consistent with the usual demographic pattern, children under five and adults over seventy were at elevated risk. Unlike most influenza epidemics, however, healthy young adults between the ages of 20 and 40 were also highly susceptible to infection and suffered by far the highest mortality rates, with pregnant women being at the highest risk of dying if infected. Amazingly, except for individuals over 70, older adults, the group upon which the flu usually preys most heavily, were largely spared, producing an unusual W-shaped death curve - likely because some similar but less lethal bug had struck during their childhood and conferred lingering immunity.

* * * * *

Sometime between May 6, when my grandfather gave a concert in Rumford Hall on Worth Street in lower Manhattan, and September 12, when he was issued a draft card in Massachusetts (in response to an August 1918 amendment to the Selective Service Act raising the upper age limit for eligibility), my father and his parents moved from their densely populated Brooklyn neighborhood the relatively quiet town of Randolph, a suburb of Boston.

During the dark moments we are all living through today, it occurred to me to wonder whether the Great Influenza played any part in their decision to leave Brooklyn. Historically, even when contagion was less well understood, people realized that crowded conditions might contribute to the spread of disease and city-dwellers who could afford to do so often fled to less crowded areas when a pandemic struck.

Public health officials anticipated from the start that New York would be severely affected by the Great Influenza. It was a large port city whose population had mushroomed due to recent waves of immigration. Many of its doctors were overseas fighting World War I, which at the time appeared to have no end in sight though in fact it ended rather abruptly with the Armistice on November 11 of 1918. The installation of subways and elevated trains created a brand new phenomenon, “rush hour.” New York was a center for international travel and shipping and the departure point for more than a million troops headed for battlefields in France. In short, New York was a veritable breeding ground for the flu, and Brooklyn was at its center.

If ever a family had targets painted on their backs, it was the Stodolas. Edwin was about to turn 33 and Beatrice was 28 (the modal or peak age for mortality in the 1918 pandemic), her pregnancy putting her and her unborn child in even graver danger. My father, aged three, was also in a high-risk category.

The likelihood of my grandparents having known what was coming in time to stay ahead of the fast-moving tsunami, however, is low. Front-page news focused on the Great War, while reports on the Great Influenza were buried or absent. And not just by chance; countries engaged in fighting actively suppressed news of the outbreak to avoid undermining morale. (Because Spain was not at war, the Spanish press wrote freely about it - hence the misnomer "Spanish flu.") When the approaching infection could no longer be ignored, local officials, abetted by the press, typically reassured the public either that it wasn't really the Spanish flu or that the worst was over. Not until people saw their friends, neighbors, and family members dying before their eyes, dying horribly, did they recognize the disconnect between what they were being told and reality.

If against all odds Edwin and Beatrice were somehow cognizant enough of their plight to entertain the hope that moving to a less densely populated suburban area would improve their chances of surviving the pandemic, they were quite simply mistaken. The Boston area per se was hardly a haven from the flu. In fact it struck the port of Boston even before it arrived in New York; indeed, in the end, the death rate from influenza in Boston was even higher than in New York. Nor did the suburbs provide any refuge. Except for a few communities that were either smart enough or fortunate enough to achieve true isolation from the outside world, there was nowhere to hide from the Great Influenza. In fact, there is no evidence for either Boston or New York that the suburbs fared better than more densely populated urban areas.

No place to hide: A field hospital in Brookline, one of several suburban Boston towns in which my grandparents lived during their stay in Masachusetts.

Rather, my grandparents' move was probably motivated by a desire for a more suburban lifestyle for their growing family, a preemptive job offer for Edwin, or both. They had already endured a serious health scare in the summer of 2016, a polio epidemic that infected thousands and killed more than two thousand in New York City, mostly in Brooklyn. With my father approaching his fourth birthday and their second son, Quentin, due in mid-October, their current quarters may well have been feeling cramped. It was time to look around - perhaps for a place where their children could have a yard to play in, where the family might even adopt a dog!

Beatrice with King and baby Quentin.

King and his enormous dog Sandy.

In this context, my grandfather either found or was recruited for a job as a Private Secretary at the recently-opened Boston branch of the National Industrial Conference Board. The NICB had been founded in 1916 in New York to help mollify labor unrest following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. The organization turned out to be as liberal as pro-management organizations ever get. During the time my grandfather worked there, the NICB conducted and published groundbreaking research on worker’s compensation and the 8-hour workday and developed the Cost of Living Index. (Much later, Alan Greenspan began his career at the NICB.) Today it might be called a think-tank, and it may have been my grandfather’s introduction to the publishing business. This new job would explain their choice of New England, a place to which to the best of my knowledge neither of my grandparents had any previous connection.

How did my grandparents and their children manage to survive the Great Influenza? Did they catch a milder version during the initial Spring wave, when they were in Brooklyn, that protected them from the deadlier version that came roaring back in the Fall? Did one or more of them contract the flu that raged around them shortly after they arrived in Massachusetts - but recover? Was it pure luck?

Despite my grandmother's proclivity for journaling and letter-writing, I have yet to find a word in the family archives that might shed some light on this issue. Many have likewise remarked on how little mention the Great Influenza has received, in either the history books or in literature, either contemporaneously or later. Only recently, in the wake of several other pandemics or would-be pandemics, and now in the light of the coronovirus crisis, has this lost pandemic begun to receive the scientific and historic attention it deserves.

* * * * *

My grandparents remained in Massachusetts until 1925, by which time their third son Sidney (born in 1920) and my grandmother’s parents Arthur and Vergetta King had also joined the household. They then moved to Kingsport, Tennessee, where my grandfather had landed a job with a printing press. Life in Kingsport, however, lacked the liberal spirit they found congenial and the cultural amenities they enjoyed. Just a few years later they returned to Brooklyn so their three sons could take advantage of New York City’s excellent educational system.

Their seven year sojourn in Massachusetts was clearly a happy time for my father, and apparently for the whole family. Presumably it was during this period that my grandparents discovered and fell in love with Cape Cod. They eventually bought and refurbished a small cottage in Wellfleet that my grandmother christened Shining Sands, where my sisters and I spent many idyllic summer vacations during our childhood.

QUEST OF THE MAGI

12/23/2019

Here is my holiday gift to my readers: One of my favorite photographs, of one of my happiest childhood memories - the annual reenactment of "We Three Kings" by my sisters and me, accompanied on the piano by our grandfather.

Cindy, Leslie, and Sherry Stodola, with our grandfather Edwin Stodola at the keyboard. I must have been around 9, and my sisters 7 and 4, which would make the year ~1952.

In the back of a large closet in her Oakland, NJ home, my grandmother kept a trunk crammed with the makings of just about any costume a child could desire - exotic scarves and shawls, colorful lengths of tulle and velvet, and opulent fabrics threaded with silver and gold. I never saw my grandmother sew, so I suppose these treasures were gleaned from the wardrobes of her various thespian activities. Her grandchildren were always welcome to delve into its depths, strewing its contents around the room as we searched for just the right pompom or scrap of lace to complete the look we were striving for.

At no time was our fervor for such revelry greater than at Christmastime.

Because their three-ness matched our three-ness, my two sisters and I felt a particular affinity for the Three Wise Men. When Amahl and the Night Visitors debuted on Christmas Eve of 1951, we quickly adapted our own hilarious (to us) and rather raucous version, prancing around the house and belting out "Mother, Mother, Mother come with me!" at the top of our lungs.

Not even Gian Carlo Menotti's charming opera, however, could compete with our perennial favorite, the splendidly dramatic old carol "We Three Kings." Each of us had her own favorite king and her own favorite verse to sing. Mine was Balthazar; for some reason I found his lugubrious description of his gift perfectly irresistible: "Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume / Breathes a life of gathering gloom / Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying / Sealed in a stone-cold tomb."

I hadn't the faintest idea what myrrh was, of course, but then I didn't know what frankincense was, either. No matter, we all knew they had to be something pretty special since they obviously had to equal the value of the third gift, gold.

Once we had perfected our costumes, committed our verses to memory once again, and duly rehearsed, we herded our captive elders into the living room, and my grandfather, after considerable coaxing, sat down at his Steinway. In his youth he had had a successful career as a concert pianist, but by this time his skills had sadly atrophied from disuse and arthritis. I now have an inkling of how painful this must have been for him, but at the time I was completely oblivious. I only hope he knew how grateful we were for his critical contribution to our production.

And this, this is the magic moment captured in the photo - the performance just about to begin, Sherry and I trying our best to look serious as befitted the solemn occasion, the irrepressible Leslie grinning from ear to ear, our long-suffering grandfather seated at the keyboard, chomping on his ever-present cigar. My father was undoubtedly the photographer. Truly a Stodola classic.

* * * * *

Wishing my loyal readers health, happiness, and all good things in the New Year. Thank you for joining me in my ongoing quest to honor the legacy of Project Diana and to preserve the life and times of the many people who in one way or other were touched by it. Look for more in 2020.

"GOOD MORNING, MOON"

10/4/2019

The moon is in the ascendant this weekend. The theme of this year’s World Space Week (October 4-10), which begins today, is “The Moon: Gateway to the Stars.” Coincidentally, International Observe the Moon Night, a moveable feast that occurs in late September or early October, happens to fall on October 5 - tomorrow - in 2019.

World Space Week, inaugurated in 1999 by the United Nations, and Observe the Moon Night, launched by NASA in 2009 to celebrate its return to moon exploration, are public engagement programs intended to increase awareness of space exploration and science. Both organizations, however, have taken the short view of the history of space exploration. The beginning of World Space Week commemorates the launch of Sputnik 1, the first human-made earth satellite, on October 4, 1957, which is described as “opening the way for space exploration.” NASA also dates the "Dawn of the Space Age" to the late 1950s, when a series of unsuccessful attempts by the USA and the USSR to orbit, impact, or carry out a "fly-by" of the moon culminated in a Soviet Union fly-by on January 2, 1959 - listed as a partial success because the goal was impact.

* * * * *

Project Diana enthusiasts know better. The true dawn of the space age, the event that opened the way for space exploration, occurred on January 10, 1946, when a small band of radar scientists at Camp Evans on the coast of New Jersey said “hello” to the moon, and for the first time ever in human history, the moon said “hello” back.

At moonrise, 11:48am, the men aimed their antenna at the horizon and started transmitting. Their first few tries were unsuccessful, but at 11:58am, the moon began answering - tentatively, then definitively. The conversation continued until 12:09pm, when the moon moved out of radar range. On the following three days, and on eight additional days during the month, two-way communication resumed: Signals were sent, and around 2.5 seconds later, the time it took to make the 800,000km round trip, the moon reflected back the greeting from Planet Earth.

* * * * *

And just like that, Project Diana disproved once and for all the going hypothesis that the ionosphere could not be penetrated by radar. By adding the radio band to the visible portion of the electromagnet spectrum, the use of radar expanded our observational capabilities tenfold. Not only that, it represented the first-ever application of radar astronomy, which offered the possibility not simply of observation but also communication with other parts of the universe.

A practical result of the birth of radar astronomy was that measuring the distance to and velocity of a heavenly body or a spacecraft became so accurate that over thirty years later, even though other methods were available that might have been adequate, it remained the method of choice for tracking the Apollo 11 mission. The moon bounce technology pioneered by Project Diana - that is,
reflecting microwaves off the moon and analyzing the reflected signal - was subsequently used for topographical mapping of Venus and other planets near enough to be within radar range, measurement and analysis of the ionosphere, and radio control of space travel, missiles, and orbiting artificial satellites.

The space program as we know it today could not exist in the absence of this advance.

* * * * *

A less tangible contribution of Project Diana was its effect on the imagination not just of the public but also of the scientific community. As I have written elsewhere in this blog, “[T]he inspirational and aspirational elements of the project dynamized future research by emboldening scientists to consider such new and exciting possibilities as artificial satellites, space probes, and yes, human spaceflight, in the process garnering widespread public support for such efforts in ways that have been well-documented here and elsewhere.”

One more way in which Project Diana inaugurated the space age: It started the tradition of naming space programs after Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. In actual fact, as someone pointed out, most of the subsequent programs were named after gods and not goddesses. All that has now changed with Artemis, named for Diana’s Greek alter ego, a collaboration between NASA and its commercial partners to land “the first woman and the next man” in the region of the lunar south pole by 2024. The longer-term goal of the Artemis program is to establish a sustainable colony on the moon, and eventually to send a crewed spaceflight to Mars.

* * * * *

After the success of Project Diana, the team was disbanded and its members reassigned to other work. When the Army then started jobbing out much of its research program, scientists originally attracted to the Signal Corps by the research opportunities it offered came to feel that the jobs they had come to do no longer existed; many, like my father, left for positions in private industry, where the action, they concluded, now was.

Another decade would elapse before the first artificial satellites were rocketed into space, followed rapidly by crewed spaceflights. But despite this long hiatus, Project Diana was no mere “precursor,” it was truly the foundation of all subsequent space exploration.

A TALE OF TWO MOONSHOTS: WHAT PROJECT DIANA TAUGHT US ABOUT THE MOON

8/6/2019

On July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft took flight - the realization of President John F. Kennedy's promise in 1961 not only to land a human crew on the moon within a decade, but also to bring them home safely. Four days later, Neil Armstrong gingerly descended the 10-foot ladder of the lunar landing module, the Eagle, and became the first human to set foot on the moon - taking, as he so famously said, "one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” A TV camera attached to the Eagle broadcast the images back to earth, and the effect was electrifying, dispelling most doubts about the wisdom of devoting so many resources to life support that, by using vehicles without a human crew, might have been spent on the pursuit of pure science.

Almost immediately, Armstrong set about collecting samples of "moon dust" from multiple locations. Twenty minutes later, he was joined by his fellow astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, who also began collecting samples. In all, two and a half hours were spent collecting 2.2 pounds of material. They also deployed a seismometer to detect possible tremors and an optical reflector used to measure the distance between Earth and Moon with even greater accuracy. To mark the symbolic importance of the achievement, they planted an American flag along with a plaque that read, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon.... We come in peace for all mankind."

The two then climbed back into the Eagle, napped for a few hours, and rejoined pilot Michael Collins in the Columbia command module to begin their journey home. On July 24 - eight days, three hours, 18 minutes and 35 seconds after liftoff - the mission ended in splashdown in the Pacific, where the three astronauts were recovered by the USS Hornet. They then remained in quarantine for three weeks, just to be sure they hadn't brought back any extraterrestrial microorganisms, before they were allowed to return to their homes, and to the ticker tape parades that awaited them.

Between 1969 and 1972 there were five more successful moon landings, during which ten more astronauts walked on the moon. One more crewed mission (Apollo 13) orbited the moon in 1970 without landing and returned under harrowing circumstances after an explosion in an oxygen tank crippled the spacecraft, riveting public attention and leading to a radio transmission even more memorable than "one giant leap for mankind": "Houston, we've had a problem" (commonly misquoted as in the 1995 movie Apollo 13, "Houston, we have a problem").

No one has been back to the moon since 1972.

* * * * *

Several weeks ago, as I stood in the checkout line of my local market, I noticed National Geographic’s glossy new publication entitled The Moon: Our Lunar Companion, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.

How could I resist?

The volume begins with words about the sway the moon has always held over the human imagination and culminates in a detailed look at the first moonwalk on July 20, 1969, the succeeding three and one half years of human exploration, and their enduring legacy. The intervening chapters offer an overview of the history of the scientific study of the moon, starting in 1609 with Thomas Harriot’s observations with an early version of the telescope.

As I thumbed through its pages, looking for but not finding a reference to that other moon shot just 23 years earlier, it occurred to me to wonder what, if anything, we learned about the moon from Project Diana. Most contemporary reports on Project Diana focused on the remarkable innovations in the equipment - the transmitter, antenna, and receiver - that made it possible for the project to succeed in bouncing radar waves off the moon when all previous attempts, including one by Project leader Jack DeWitt himself in 1940, had failed. But did we actually learn something about the moon itself that might have served as the basis for the generation of new knowledge? Something that might have helped pave the way for the lunar landing?

* * * * *

At least two of the men involved with Project Diana were asked to compare their accomplishment with the lunar landing, and both, in their responses, touched on ways in which Project Diana constituted part of Apollo 11's historical background.

In an oral history interview I conducted with my father in 1979, he remarked on the excitement generated by the success of Project Diana and I asked how it compared with Apollo 11. "Well, it was much less than that in magnitude. But philosophically and sociologically, I think it was important, because as far as I know, it really was the first time that man had in a measurable way [italics mine] manifested his influence beyond the reaches of the immediate locale of the earth. Indeed, somebody on the moon could have received radio signals that were transmitted from the earth, but this was really the first proof of it."

According to the History of Army Communications and Electronics at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, 1917-2007 (published 2008), Dr. Walter McAfee, who made the mathematical calculations for the moon shot, also downplayed the comparison in a 1985 interview, stating that the Project Diana scientists were thinking more about the utility of their work in propagating radio waves than in going to the moon. Nevertheless, he added, the experiment improved our ability to measure the distance between the earth and the moon and led to some understanding about the nature of the surface of the moon.

* * * * *

Learning something new about the moon itself, of course, wasn’t part of Project Diana's mission. Nor - unlike Apollo 11 - were the efforts of well over 300,000 workers and a $25 billion budget thrown at the project. Nonetheless, in the process of determining what they needed to know to succeed, the team contributed to what was then known about the moon in at least two respects.

First, as both my father and Dr. McAfee noted, by pioneering a technique of active observation that involved reflecting microwaves off the moon and analyzing the reflected signal - radar astronomy - the Project Diana team developed the most accurate method to date for measuring the distance between the earth and the moon. By extension, and of critical importance for the future of space exploration, Project Diana also showed that the distance and velocity of a spacecraft could be determined very accurately from the earth. Even though the Columbia's onboard navigation system would probably have been adequate for that purpose, the ground-based method was still unsurpassed in accuracy and therefore the main method used to track the Apollo 11 spacecraft.

Second, as Dr. McAfee mentioned, Project Diana contributed to what was then known about the nature of the moon's surface and played at least a cameo role in a subsequent debate on the topic. To be clear, he was not talking about mapping the topography of the moon, which could not have been done with the equipment they were using at the time. The team was, however, seriously concerned about reflective properties of the moon that might need to taken into account when using it as a radar target, as discussed at some length by DeWitt and Stodola in their 1949 paper. If the moon was perfectly smooth, the reflection would be expected to be comparable to light bouncing off a mirror. From what limited astronomical evidence existed, however, they inferred that the terrain would more likely consist of plains and mountains similar to earth - perhaps somewhat rougher due to the lack of water and air to produce "weathering." They used experimental data from tests of a mountainous area near Ellenville, New York, probably obtained during the development of methodology to distinguish low-flying kamikaze planes from ground clutter,
to adjust their signal transmission and reception parameters.

Later, as radar reflections became somewhat more refined, a serious controversy developed, fueled by a theory proposed by Cornell scientist Thomas Gold that the moon was covered by a fine layer of dust or "lunar regolith" that might be deep enough to swallow an astronaut or even a spaceship like quicksand. It wasn't until 1966-68 that a series of Surveyor probes sent to investigate the nature of the moon's surface landed successfully and satisfied NASA scientists that the moon's surface was well-enough compacted to support the weight of an astronaut. So Gold was right about the lunar regolith, it turned out, but not about the quicksand (which for some reason was a disproportionate and almost obsessive fear during that era - someone calculated that 1/3 of movies made in the 1960s included at least a passing reference to quicksand). The assumption under which the Project Diana team operated, it turned out, was closer to the truth.

Even so, the astronauts remained understandably nervous about the ability of the moon's surface to support not only themselves but also their landing module, which was equipped with legs designed to serve as a built-in launchpad. This was, after all, their only option for getting off the moon. The Eagle had to work right the first time, without benefit of a full dress rehearsal, and there was no rescue plan if it failed. The astronauts knew this. (What they didn't know is that in the event they were stranded, all communication with them would be cut to avoid sharing the last words of the doomed duo with a watching world.)

The collection of moon dust by the astronauts, and even the famous photograph of Buzz Aldrin's bootprint, were part of NASA's ongoing investigation of the nature of the lunar surface and its weight-bearing capacity. Fortunately, the astronauts were not swallowed alive by lunar quicksand, the Eagle minus its legs was able to lift off, and as one wag put it, "this fear was finally relegated to [the] scientific dustbin of history."

* * * * *

In addition to contributing to our store of practical information about the distance to and the surface of the moon, if only as a byproduct of meeting the needs of their own mission to hit it with radar, Project Diana (as my father recognized) achieved a PR coup when DeWitt decided to focus on the moon as a target for their efforts, presaging Kennedy's decision to focus on human spaceflight rather than to send robots or dogs to the moon. Both decisions galvanized the imagination and provided a major stimulus to future research.

Jack DeWitt’s original assignment was to research and test the capabilities of long-range radar to determine its utility for detecting incoming ballistic missiles. It was not intended as a hypothesis-testing experiment but rather as a demonstration project, or perhaps more accurately a proof of concept. DeWitt decided to fulfill this assignment by “shooting the moon” - a longstanding dream that he justified by arguing that it was the obvious and in fact the only available target for making such a test.

This decision was truly a stroke of genius. It transformed the project from a military exercise to something much broader in scope and interest, something that captured the world’s imagination. “Somehow,” the New York Times declared, “the moon and all the heavenly bodies become more real…more than a guide to navigators and an inspiration to poets…tangible objects to which we can reach out." The success of Project Diana resolved any remaining doubts about whether radar could penetrate the ionosphere. It revolutionized wireless communication. But more than that, the inspirational and aspirational elements of the project dynamized future research by emboldening scientists to consider such new and exciting possibilities as artificial satellites, space probes, and yes, human spaceflight, in the process garnering widespread public support for such efforts in ways that have been well-documented here and elsewhere.

- - - - - - - - - -
(Thanks to Drs. Ovide Pomerleau and Gregory Wright for their assistance. Any errors are mine, not theirs.)

WHEN KING MET ELSA

7/22/2019

My parents were married on July 22, 1939. It was an event that almost didn’t happen. Because it did, and because I love “how we met” stories, the 80th anniversary of their wedding seems as good an excuse as any to recount theirs.

Elsa and King Stodola, July 22, 1939. This is my only photo of their wedding festivities.

By way of background, my mother lived in Massachusetts and my father lived in New York City, but they happened to have two mutual friends - Grace Boyd, whom my mother had known since her early childhood in Barre, Massachusetts (and a source for parts of this story); and Mary Baptiste, a college friend from Gloucester, Massachusetts, daughter of a Portuguese fisherman and in Grace’s words, “as brash as Elsa was timid.” Grace and Mary had both spent time in New York City, and they knew my father through his network of Unitarian young people.

The first time my parents met, my mother had recently graduated from Boston University and was working as a nanny in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. She was also engaged to be married; heartbroken after the breakup of a long college romance, she had impulsively accepted the proposal of a young man she'd recently met through Mary. One day my father tried to look up Mary in Gloucester during a brief trip to New England and learned that Mary was visiting a friend named Elsa in Beverly Farms. So my father made his way to Beverly Farms, where he found Mary and met my mother and her fiancé, who was also visiting.

And that was that; King returned to his engineering studies at Cooper Union in New York and Elsa resumed preparations for her upcoming wedding. They parted with no expectation of ever meeting again.

Then my mother suffered a devastating blow. Shortly after her wedding, her new husband simply walked away from my mother and the marriage. My mother’s only hope for getting her life back on track was a divorce - easy enough to obtain today but so expensive (at a time of widespread economic hardship) and protracted then that it threatened to destroy her chances of happiness. Despondent and desperately in need of a change of scene, she moved to the Bronx, finding a job as a mother’s helper to earn the money she needed for the divorce. Fortunately, someone warned her to maintain her legal residence in Massachusetts, where three years’ desertion was grounds for divorce; in New York, divorce was granted only for adultery. While she waited out her three years, she was careful to maintain her voter registration in Massachusetts and to vote by absentee ballot.

As my mother’s first Christmas in New York approached, Grace sent King a Christmas card with a note saying, "Elsa Dahart, whom you will remember meeting when you visited Mary Baptiste about a year ago, is now living in the Bronx, and doesn't know anyone else in town. Her phone number is…” My father being my father, he gave my mother a call, and although it couldn't yet be said that the rest was history, my mother was gradually drawn into my father's large circle of friends.

An anecdote shared with me by Grace reveals a lot about both of them at that moment: As my mother approached her 25th birthday, her divorce decree finally within reach, she still couldn’t help feeling that life might have passed her by. After all, she had always planned to be married and have a child by the time she reached 25, and as she began telling her friends, everything had now gone wrong. One day my father, upon hearing this plaint, said, "Well, now that you have lived your life, what do you plan to do next?" This comment struck everyone as so comical that even my mother laughed.

Although my parents had by now become close friends, my mother was quite shocked when my father proposed marriage. Until now she had regarded him as “just” a friend; understandably wary of another such commitment when she was still awaiting the official dissolution of her disastrous first marriage, she took several weeks to think about it. But as Grace put it, “King was so kind and understanding, and made her feel he did truly love her—and they had gotten to know each other so well during a long platonic friendship…,” she finally agreed to marry him.

At this point, my father had received his engineering degree and accepted an entry-level job with the Army Signal Corps in Washington DC, assigning radio frequencies to military bases. On July 6, 1939, my mother's divorce decree became final in Worcester, Massachusetts; on July 15, 1939, my parents applied for a marriage license in Washington DC.

A week later, they were married in the All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington DC.

* * * * *

My father had been raised as an Episcopalian but found his way to the Unitarians at the age of 13. It was the perfect match for him, providing the social and intellectual stimulation he craved in the context of a rational approach to religion.

My mother, who had attended the Methodist Church as a child, converted to Unitarianism when she and my father became a couple and it suited her for about the same reasons it suited my father - though she always thought the Methodists had better hymns.

All Souls Unitarian Church, Washington DC, corner Harvard St NW and 16th St.

St Martin's-in-the-Fields, London, inspiration for the design of All Souls.

All Souls Unitarian Church was founded in 1821 and has been located at the corner of Harvard Street NW and 16th Street since 1924. The building's beautiful neoclassical facade was modeled on that of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields at Trafalgar Square in London, where coincidentally Ovide and I spent a delightful evening at a baroque music concert during our trip to the UK in April. My parents loved All Souls and for as long as they remained in Washington DC continued to be active in the church. Later, after each of their daughters was born, they brought us back to All Souls to be christened.

* * * * *

Elsa & King, sometime during the early years of their marriage.

It was a happy and successful marriage. Said their friend Grace, "I've always felt that King was very good for Elsa. He was so gregarious, and kept his friendships in such good repair, and he sort of pulled her along with him." Though my mother didn't achieve her goal of becoming a mother by the time she was 25, she happily welcomed me a few days before her 30th birthday and went on to have three more children.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, my parents were legendary among their friends for how well they got along. I have thought about this a great deal. It was definitely not a case of not caring enough to get angry. Obviously they maintained good communication and practiced mutual respect, patience, and kindness - all those good things - but I also think part of the magic was rooted in their 1950's style division of labor. For the most part, they each had their own spheres of responsibility, and within those spheres each abided by the decisions of the other.

Sadly, their lives together were cut short by my mother's untimely death in 1965 at the age of 52. Her dreams for their old age and all the wonderful things they would do together after the children were grown never materialized. Possibly because of the division of labor mentioned above, our father was ill prepared to take over her responsibilities. Our family had lost its anchor.

PROJECT DIANA - NOW AN IEEE MILESTONE

6/26/2019

Taking its place alongside such space age icons as the Mercury Spacecraft MA-6, the Apollo Guidance Computer, and the Grumman Lunar Module, the Project Diana site at Camp Evans in Wall Township NJ, was designated an official Milestone by the IEEE on May 17, 2019. Click HERE to see the announcement and several photos, including one of the unveiling of the plaque. The IEEE Milestone program recognizes outstanding technical developments around the world.

The plaque, mounted near the entrance of the building that housed the laboratory, reads:

“On 10 January 1946, a team of military and civilian personnel at Camp Evans, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, USA, reflected the first radar signals off the moon using modified SCR-270/1 radar. The signals took 2.5 seconds to travel to the moon and back to the Earth. This achievement, Project Diana, marked the beginning of radar astronomy and space communications.”

The IEEE Jersey Coast Section, which nominated the Project Diana site for this honor, elaborated in its supporting documentation on the new scientific possibilities ushered in by the birth of radar astronomy:

“Before 1946, scientists observed the universe using large passive radio telescopes that caught and recorded radio waves emanating from the universe outside the earth’s atmosphere. This technique of passive reception was part of a field known as radio astronomy. Following the success of Project Diana, scientists had access to what is known as radar astronomy. Unlike radio astronomy, this technique is an active observation by reflecting microwaves off objects and analyzing the reflected signal, in the same manner as Project Diana had done with the moon.... The success of the project became a symbol that led to the beginning of the Space Age for the United States.”

CINDY STODOLA POMERLEAU

I was just shy of 3 years old when the US Army successfully bounced radar waves off the moon - the opening salvo in the Space Race, the birth of radioastronomy, and the first Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) communication. I was born on the Jersey coast for the same reason as Project Diana: my father, as scientific director of the Project, was intimately involved in both events. Like Project Diana, I was named for the goddess of the moon (in my case Cynthia, the Greeks' nickname for Artemis - their version of Diana - who was born on Mt Cynthos). Project Diana is baked into my DNA.

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