Reflections on My Time in the Wolfe Den

Reflections on my time in the Wolfe den H. Philip Stahl ABSTRACT The three and a half years I spent as a member of the Infrared Group were transitional. Bill Wolfe was the nexus. Bill played a role in getting me to Arizona and keeping me there. He helped me advance professionally and taught me how to think like a systems engineer. He played a central role in my effort to earn a PhD. And, he helped start me in SPIE. This paper contains my personal and honest reflections on the impact which Bill Wolfe has had on me. Keywords: History 1. INTRODUCTION When Mary Turner asked me to give a Wolfe Tribute talk, my first reaction was no; and, so was my second reaction. My reasons were simple. I didn’t think I had anything to say. I have not followed in his footsteps. I long ago left the field of infrared and radiometry for optical testing and interferometry. I have not contributed any new knowledge or theories based on Bill’s work. I have not worked my entire career with him nor do I know him well enough to shed light on his character or share any humorous stories. I have had a modest career, I am not a chief scientist or a tenured professor or a business owner or a corporate officer. And, I’m not even sure if I am officially a Bill Wolfe student. While Bill was my employer and adviser for my first three and a half years at the Optical Sciences Center, Martin Tomasko of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory was the Principal Investigator for my project and I got my Master’s degree by paying $10 after passing my PhD preliminary examination so that I could teach introductory physics a Pima Community College – because as a new father I needed to supplement my assistantship to pay the hospital bill which was not covered by the student health plan. (Many thanks to Glenn Boreman for helping me get that job.) But Mary persisted and asked me to think again, so I started to reflect. I thought about the person I was before first encountering Bill and I thought about the person I am today. The three and a half years I spent in the Infrared Group from 1979 to 1984 were transitional for me and Bill Wolfe was in many ways the nexus. Bill started me in SPIE. His mantra of ‘Think of Everything’ taught me to approach each task as a systems engineer. He helped me to advance professionally. Bill was central in my fight to be given the opportunity to earn a PhD and Fred Bartell (of the infrared group) changed my life. And, while he does not know it, Bill even played a role in getting me to Arizona. Bill once told me that all presentations need to have three points because all sermons have three points. And, I’ve observed that the best sermons are those which are personal. So, with the risk of seeming narcissistic, I going to share some very personal and honest reflections on what Bill Wolfe has meant to me as a teacher, adviser and mentor. 2. BEFORE BILL WOLFE In my case, past is truly prologue. It is impossible to understand who I am today or how the time I spent in Bill’s infrared group help shape me without knowing a little bit about who I was before my association with Bill. I grew up on a pig farm outside of Bellevue (a small town of about 6000) in northern Ohio. To say that I was innocent or naive or ignorant about how the world worked would be an understatement. But, I made up for that deficiency by being ambitious. While I got good grades in school and thought I was smart, it seemed to me that no one else besides my parents did. As a result, I have always had a bit of an inferiority complex. In junior high school I was given a test and advised to become an accountant because I didn’t have the aptitude to be a scientist or doctor or lawyer or engineer. As high school graduation approached, I was 13th out of 240 but was not elected to National Honor Society nor did I receive any academic honors. (But they made up for it in 1999 when I and my childhood friend Mark Wagner were among 14 initiated into the inaugural class of the Bellevue High School Halls of Excellence to recognize graduates who have distinguished themselves – I was the youngest inductee.) In school, I was a science/math nerd and a music geek. And to make matters worse, I was an Eagle Scout who lived in the ‘country’. According to my cousin Margaret, I was a gregarious introvert. My Mom said I had the gift of gab (in junior high I had talked my way into a couple of 4H grand prizes at the county fair; I finished 3rd in a Boy Scout public speaking contest with a discourse on Einstein's pacifist beliefs; and throughout high school, as the highest ranking Boy Scout in town, for Memorial Day I recited the Gettysburg Address at the community cemetery commemoration, for the American Legion and in church services). In middle school, each day was about survival. Fortunately, the physical intimidation stopped in 9th grade when I joined the wrestling team at the 90 pound class. There seemed to be a code that the ‘popular’ football and basketball players didn’t pick on wrestlers – no matter how small they were. And, being a wrestler gave me a ‘bravado’ with which to mask my insecurities. I liked wrestling because you didn’t have to rely on someone else’s opinion of you to say if you were good enough or not. Either you beat the other guy or you didn’t. (I did not win a single match in 9th grade, but I never gave up. And, while I never went to district or state, I won about 60% of my matches.) But best of all, my teammates always accepted me ‘as-is’. I wrestled throughout high school and college. I even wrestled intramural my first year at the University of Arizona. At the same time, I also liked the camaraderie of making music. I have played in orchestras and bands (and sung in choirs) since 6th grade, including at Wittenberg and Arizona. While I long ago gave up wrestling, I still play clarinet (with my three children) in the Huntsville Twickenham Winds band. But most important of all, Karen and I met in marching band during high school – and we have been together ever since. The only thing I did know for certain was that I was expected to go to college. My great grandfather (the son of a farmer) had gone to Oberlin College for one semester and came back to the farm with a wife. My grandfather (the son of a farmer and farm implement manufacturer) attended Oberlin for a year or two and also came back to the farm with a wife. My dad did it differently. He married mom and took her to college with him. And, after 2 years in the army, he brought her, me and his BS in Agriculture home to the farm. As I said, I was expected to go to college. But, unlike those before me, I was not expected to return to the farm. The problem, again being a complete innocent, was that I had no idea about how to go to college or in what to major. And, I received no guidance from anyone in my high school. Throughout junior high school I was selected to take standardized tests in math, science and social studies, as part of some sort of intra school competition, because I always scored in the 99% range and helped make the school ‘look good’. I did similarly on the PSAT, SAT and ACT. As a result of these tests, I got lots of letters from colleges such as William and Mary, MIT, West Point and Stanford. But, I didn’t know what to do with them, so I just threw them away. Finally, in February of my Senior Year, after wrestling season had ended, Dad and I took a road trip. We visited Bowling Green State University, Ohio State, Ohio Northern, and Wittenberg. At the time I was interested in physics and computers. I was interested in physics because of my high school physics teacher Mr. Meyers. I was interested in computers because for my science fair project I wanted to write a program which plotted the position of a rocket from launch to orbit. To write this program (in machine code), I had to use a mechanical stylus to punch holes into a computer card which were read by an optical scanner. I rejected Ohio State because it was too large. I rejected BGSU because the professor made me wait in the hallway for 30 minutes to talk to him for 5 minutes. And I selected Wittenberg University for two reasons. First, as I walked around campus people smiled at me. And second, the librarian there helped me find a book with the aerodynamic flight equations I needed for my rocket program. I wrote the code in the car ride back to the farm. During my freshman year at Wittenberg I thought about being a patent lawyer, but Political Science was inane (interestingly, my first son Mike majored in Political Science). I decided to major in Physics because it was the only subject which I found to be challenging and in Secondary Education because of Mr.

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