Question: When did you join the ODU faculty?
Answer: I actually joined the faculty in 1976, after I had studied here for my master’s degree and been a teaching assistant.
Q: What are your early memories as a faculty member?
A: I think the reason I was hired was I knew how to operate a planetarium. I had done it in Iowa before I came here to graduate school. When I started as a graduate student, C.S. Sherwood was running the Pretlow Planetarium, which had opened in 1966. I overlapped with him for two years. The planetarium was built with funds from an anonymous donor who wanted to honor the memory of Mary Denson Pretlow, who was head of the Norfolk Public Library from 1917-47. I kept asking Mr. Sherwood who the donor was, but he told me all I needed to know was the donor was an admirer of Mary Pretlow.
Q: How old were you when you became director of the planetarium?
A: I was 28 in 1974, when I took over.Mr. Sherwood was getting on up in years, so I took over his astronomy classes using the planetarium and started offering public shows to school groups and such. We’ve been doing that ever since.
Q: We’ve heard you were the only astronomer to direct an observation program in the Caribbean for the Haley’s Comet passage in 1985. How did that come about?
A: It’s an interesting story. Some Navy folks at the Guantanamo Bay station wanted to observe the comet, and they were wondering who they could get to help them. One of my former students was a lieutenant down there and he recommended me. So I got this call from Cuba, and they flew me down with my telescopes to show them Haley’s Comet. I couldn’t believe it. They had 600 people lined up to look at it.
Q: You are a very popular instructor. Can you comment on your teaching strategies?
A: My training is in education. I have a master’s in science education. I also taught public school for four years early on. I sometimes think students like me because I served time in the trenches teaching public school.
Q: What is the biggest change you’ve noticed in the university during your years on the faculty?
A: The physical structure of the campus has to be the biggest change. When I came, there were just a few buildings. The education building was new and the pride of campus. Things sure have changed. Facilities for sciences have improved tremendously. Another big improvement is OCCS (Office of Computing and Communications Services), which is so important today, but underappreciated. When I started there were maybe 60 terminals on campus. You had to wait in line for one and log on to the main frame. Now I can give a test and walk it over to OCCS, and before I get back to my office they’ve e-mailed me the results of the test. We never dreamed of that in my early days. By the way, back in the 70s there was a primitive text game of Star Wars on the main frame. Everybody played it and the university got so upset they’d go through your files and delete your 33 storage blocks of the Star Wars game. You’d have to keep reloading it over and over. It’s hard to believe so many people played it. It really was primitive. You’d write in your actions and the game would tell you whether or not you’d been blown up. I remember, it would say, “Sorry, you’ve been blown up.”If you beat the Star Trek game, it called you a Denebuian Slime Worm.
