Class of 1969
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50TH ANNIVERSARY MEMORY BOOK Class of 1969 Letter from Through this 50th Reunion Memory Book, we invite you to celebrate with Maria Klawe us some of the accomplishments of the Harvey Mudd Class of 1969. As you surely know, your years at Harvey Mudd College were significant both on campus and off, academically We hope you enjoy reading these submissions of the journeys our and in a wider social context. You were in college members have taken, the passions we have followed and the ways when the internet was in its earliest stages, when the we have made a difference in our world since we were all together charge-coupled device was invented and when the at Harvey Mudd. Joining with our classmates, this book provides a first temporary artificial heart was implanted. When compilation of 300-word attempts to share individual experiences over you graduated in 1969, you stepped into a summer the past half a century. Each of our journeys begins with a “Once upon of change: Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, the a time” of applying, being selected and accepting the opportunity to Stonewall Riots catalyzed the gay rights movement, U.S. involvement join this Class of 1969 at Harvey Mudd College and being awarded in the Vietnam War escalated and the Woodstock music festival made a degree “with all the rights and privileges thereto appertaining” the popular music history. You joined a wave of scientists and engineers College conferred upon us. who would shape our world into the one we know today. This Memory Book reflects on the unique stories of our experiences It takes bravery and perseverance to navigate any new adventure, following the time we spent with each other—living together and and I congratulate you for what you have accomplished both at Harvey experiencing the College’s rigorous training, including learning new Mudd College and afterward. Your contributions have been substantial ideas, gaining new experiences and contemplating our futures. For and have been recognized in many realms. You’ve developed a many of us, this included finding out for the first time what it is like to reputation in graduate schools, industry and in your communities as “be on our own,” to make the choices that would shape our lives. And premium problem solvers able to excel in virtually any field. Needless to being reminded over and over again how “life is what happens while say, Harvey Mudd College is very proud of the Class of 1969. I offer my you are busy making other plans.” congratulations on this occasion of your 50th reunion and my sincerest We hope you enjoy these extraordinary glimpses of how our choices gratitude to you for paving the way for today’s students. led us on special and unique journeys well worth celebrating. We’re very proud to be associated with all of you and look forward to the achievements we all have yet to attain in the years to come! Happy reading and celebrating the wide range of our Class of 1969’s accomplishments and lives. President Harvey Mudd College Your 50th Reunion Planning Committee, Tom Bleakney Howard Cohen Walt Foley John Harrell Andy Kaye Libby (Evans) Medley Ron Roth John Tiller 2 3 John W. Family: Armstrong Married for 18 years to Chiuyit Lian with no kids. John • Physics Education: MBA from UCLA in 1971 with a specialization in international relations. After graduation, I studied applied physics at UC San Career: Diego then a postdoc at the National Radio Astronomy Spent over 30 years in construction management working for Bechtel, Observatory, followed by employment at the Jet Propulsion Chevron and CH2M HILL. Concentrated on large municipal projects such as Laboratory. At JPL, I’ve been fortunate to work on water treatment plants, airports and ports. interesting problems at the intersection of science and engineering, mostly using radio data to infer properties of Travels: astrophysical plasmas and contributing to space-based Majority of Europe, South America, and China, Thailand, Nepal, Australia, Bali low-frequency gravitational wave detector development. and Costa Rica. In a practical sense, this means I’ve spent most of the last What do you do for fun? 50 years looking at noise and trying either to interpret it or Play tennis, participate in dinner clubs and go out for dinner to new make it smaller. restaurants. Almost all my work at UCSD, NRAO and JPL has been collaborative, and I have had great colleagues. Things you are proud of: Important non-work events: I married Cathy Wallace in 1975; our daughter, Managed the completion of the Pier Ashley, was born in 1982. I had a stroke in 2012 (but good recovery, IMO). T Project for the Port of Long Beach Cathy passed away in 2015 after a long illness. which converted the L.B. Naval In addition to collecting lots of rejections, I’ve published a few short science Station into a container terminal for fiction stories (Nature/Futures; each, of course, is a deathless classic). I’m trying Hanjin Shipping. to push back on my natural inclination to become a recluse/curmudgeon, since I find curmudgeonhood unattractive in others. We’ll see how that goes. One of the diseases of old age is waxing philosophical (my JPL lunch group called it “geezing”). Nonetheless, I considered contributing here some no- doubt profound life-insights. The bad news: (a) I have few, (b) none are original, and (c) some sound as if they came from fortune cookies. Also (a generic problem with eternal verities) taken as a group they are seemingly contradictory. In any case, here John I. are four: luck plays a bigger role Barsky in life than I used to think; risk John • Engineering aversion can be overdone; not all change is bad; 10 years from now these will be “the good old days.” 6 7 Thomas H. My career is as an attorney specializing in environmental law and intellectual property. In the environmental area, Bleakney I focus on litigation to protect land from development Tom • Physics on the California coast and advising grass-roots organizations. Examples of such land are Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach and Mori Inspirations Point which is south of San • Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov. Francisco. I have been intellectual Omar Bradley’s A Soldier’s Story: great leadership in the face property counsel for Silicon Valley of great challenge. corporations. I am also an artist and focus on painting • A Caltech lecture by Seinfeld, Connie’s landscapes. I have two sons, one of whom is a criminal first husband, opened my eyes to the defense attorney and the other is in college majoring in threat of Global Warming, triggering a philosophy. lasting study commitment. • James Hansen, Gavin Schmidt: science of Global Warming • Cosmos reboot: historical insights and many new discoveries within our own lifetimes. Machu Picchu, Galapagos, Solar Eclipse Totality in Idaho. Contributions • Aerojet Engineer of the Year award. Led successful demonstration of fault-tolerant parallel computing. • Lead architect of special-purpose, radiation-hard computer now in active space deployment. • HMC Physics Colloquium presentation on “Physics of Climate Change” • “A Solar Primer, physics and engineering of Photovoltaic solar systems” Hal J. Bohner, J.D. • Promoting electric vehicles, charging at over 90 superchargers in six states. Hal • Engineering • “Update on Electric Vehicles” presented to Claremont Sustainability Forum. Sources of Wisdom • “Don’t tell all” from John Armstrong. • “Don’t put yourself down, you are smart” at the right time from Henry Brady. • “Modern Portfolio Theory” from Howard Cohen. I truly value the deep and lasting friendship and support from Howard and his wife, Marilyn. • In 1966, the Surveyor spacecraft is attempting the first soft landing on the Moon. Despite long odds, it is approaching the surface on course, and Platt Center basement fills with Mudders crowded around the color TV. Well-known JPL scientist Al Hibbs, my Dad’s friend, calmly counts down the altitude and velocity. We cheer as Surveyor nails the landing, but pictures are delayed because no one has written the commands. After midnight on the East Coast, a third-string network announcer spoke to the camera with a sheepish smile: “Perhaps you are wondering why they did not use a parachute.” Laughter erupts. 8 • Grateful for many good friends, lots of exercise and good health care. 9 Henry E. Brady Henry • Mathematics and Physics Going to Harvey Mudd College was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me. In some ways it was predetermined: Stanford rejected me, Caltech put me on their waiting list, and HMC accepted me. Harvey Mudd provided me with a first-class education with a group of classmates who helped me to learn, mature and ultimately succeed. The classes were just terrific: learning about computers and programming became a lifelong involvement; taking courses on game theory, linear and non-linear programming, logic, physics, politics and many other topics taught me how to think, how to produce models and how to do empirical work. With the skills obtained at Harvey Mudd, I went to MIT where I started in political science but took a lot of economics courses because they used mathematics I had learned at HMC. After graduating with a PhD in economics and political science, I went on to teaching jobs at UC Berkeley, Harvard, the University of Chicago and, finally, Berkeley again, where I’ve been for almost 30 years in political science and now as dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy. William E.Brown III Joe Platt and the other wonderful faculty members (Alden Pixley, Alonzo William • Chemistry Stoddard, Robert Borrelli, Courtney Coleman, Robert Wolf, Thomas Helliwell, to name a few) were inspiring and dedicated.