American Meteorological Society University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
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American Meteorological Society University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Tape R ecorded Interview Project Interview of Jerry D. Mahlman November, 2005-January 2006 Interviewer: Robert Chervin CHERVIN: This is the 9th of N ovem ber 2005; this is an interview w ith Dr. Jerry M ahlm an, and w e are interview ing at the Foothills Lab of N CA R. I am the interview er, R obert Chervin. I've know n Jerry for at least three decades, and w e often ran into each other at airports. W e don't travel as m uch anym ore for a variety of reasons. B ut the purpose of this interview is to go over Jerry's long, scientific history and find out how it began and how it evolved. First of all, can you m ake som e com m ents on the various influences on you, either in fam ily or school or hom e life that caused you to becom e involved in science in the first p l a c e ? M A HLM AN: I think m y first influence w as m y m other, closely follow ed by m y second oldest brother, w ho w as a physics m ajor in college and w as a physics teacher in high school for m any years. I have four siblings, all m ale, all college-educated, the oldest w ith a B achelor of Science degree, the next tw o w ith m aster's degrees. I w as the fourth, w ith a PhD ., and m y younger brother has a doctorate in education. A nd all of these academ ic degrees w ere created w ith no sources of funds from our parents, partly because m y parents lived in a poor tow n, in a relatively poor tim e, just com ing out of the G reat D epression. M y father w as a brilliant but, in retrospect, psychologically dam aged person. Later I felt that he w as som ew hat threatened by the success of his five boys, including m yself. I had a steadfast, w ise, and stable m other w ho had a tw o-year teaching degree from the U niversity of N ebraska. I som etim es describe m y childhood as very norm al, but in retrospect, it w asn't very norm al. I rem em ber at the age of six or seven being asked w hether I w anted to have an allow ance for m y m oney, or I w anted to go earn it m yself. I chose to earn it m yself, because that's w hat m y older brothers w ere doing. I never regretted that, although today that seem s alm ost like child abuse. B ut it w asn't, because I had a lot of support from a lot of people. I had a norm al childhood, but it w asn't necessarily typical in any reasonable w ay, because I w as w orking those jobs, m aking spending m oney for m yself. I w as a Cub Scout, all the w ay through the ranks. I w as a B oy Scout. I achieved the rank of Eagle at 1 age 14, and for m y tow n I w as the first w inner ever of the Boy Scouts’ G od and Country A w ard, so I w as off to a great start. B etw een ages -- w ell, fifth through ninth grade, I w as very interested in science, particularly geology and astronom y. I w as fascinated by N ebraska's severe w eather. (I had the experience of being conked out by a golf ball-sized hailstone, for exam ple, w hen I w as in junior high). I w ould read books on these subjects. W hen I w as in the fifth grade, they didn't quite know w hat to do w ith m e, and so m y teacher told m e to go into the other room and read the encyclopedias, and so I read the entire Com pton's Encyclopedia. In the sixth grade I got the nicknam e of "The W alking Encyclopedia," because I'd read the w hole thing and I actually knew answ ers to m any science questions. So I had a very rich and varied youthful life. Sports w ere already a big part of that, but not nearly as m uch as they w ould becom e later. A t age 15 m y life changed radically w ith im pending adolescence, in the sense that, thanks to the birth of rock and roll, m y good B oy Scout w ays had fallen by the w ayside a bit. I w as extrem ely athletic in junior high and high school. I played football and had som e talent in basketball. In track, I w as a school record-holding pole vaulter, and an 880-yard runner. I w as on the boxing team , w as in the G olden G loves boxing tournam ent (not particularly successful there). I played baseball and softball in the sum m ertim e, som etim es softball in the adult leagues. I w as a w izard at table tennis and I qualified for the N ebraska high school golf tournam ent as a freshm an. I w as into bow ling as I got into adolescence. I got so I could shoot pool for m oney, and m ake m oney. A lso, this w as the tim e of the birth of rock and roll. I rem em ber that m y life took a radical shift there w ith the horm ones of adolescence. Songs like "School D ays" by Chuck Berry and "W hat’d I Say" by R ay Charles, "H eartbreak H otel" by Elvis, "Tutti Frutti" by Little R ichard -- m y life had been transform ed from a straight arrow to the volatile adolescent. CHERVIN: And did that have any im pact on your academ ic activities? M A H LM A N : Yes, it did. I tied the all-tim e record for the least num ber of assignm ents taken hom e in our high school, as in zero. B ut at the sam e tim e, I w as reading books on anthropology and astronom y. It w as also a tim e of evolution of w hat I call m y racial and ethnic diversity consciousness. I w as a m inority on m y high school basketball team . The m ajority w ere Lakota Indians. These guys w ere m y friends, and I began to realize w hat a really rotten life circum stance they'd been dealt, and still have. I had sim ilar aw areness about A frican-A m ericans, obviously a rarity in m y tow n, but I had the privilege of w orking for an A frican-A m erican plum ber w hen I w as in high school for a part-tim e job in the sum m ertim e after m y full-tim e job, w hich I'll describe in a m inute. There w as one Jew ish fam ily in tow n, w ho I actually knew because I delivered new spapers to them . They didn't stay in m y hom etow n of Craw ford, N ebraska, m ore than a few years. In retrospect, I'm not terribly surprised. O ne of m y big breaks in life w as that at age 15 I got a job as a janitor, w orking for a PhD . cultural anthropologist from the U niversity of Chicago, w ho w as at that 2 time the curator of the Fort Robinson Historical Museum just three miles from my hometown of Crawford. I was the janitor. I squeegeed the windows and mowed the grass and did all those kind of things, but I also, as I was cleaning the windows in the museum and so forth, I began to realize the incredible degraded state that the Native Americans had been put to in this country, and that status has not changed radically over the last four decades, five decades, even. And so I was privileged that I was given this job as a janitor, lawn mower, window scraper, and so forth, but then my boss started giving me jobs to help with preparation of the exhibits for the museum. Then I started to be involved in archeological digs within what is now Fort Robinson State Park, and I actually learned the science of field archaeology because of this. At that time, I realized that there was this famous Western author, Mari Sandoz, and so with my boss's encouragement, he had me reading her books. She was the one who wrote the bookCrazy Horse, The Strange Man o f the Oglalas, it was called. And I had read herCheyenne Autumn and a book calledOld Jules, who was her grandfather. Well, one day Mari Sandoz, this famous author, came to the Fort Robinson Museum. My boss came in my room and it just blew me away when he said, "Would you like to have tea with Mari Sandoz?" CHERVIN: And you were how old at the time, 15? MAHLMAN: No, I was about 19 at that time. CHERVIN: OK. MAHLMAN: My “advanced age” was because I had been working summers at the Museum for four years or something like that.