Little Brother, Part 2

Lee and I take full credit for my brother doing so well in school. The poor kid was forced to sit at a desk in the basement as we played school. She and I were the teachers and he was the student. We really taught him. There were tests given.

Will he ever forgive us for what we made him do?

When the product Chip made became a success in the industry, he began to ponder. Lightening was his nemesis. It was the only thing he didn’t understand enough of to be able to combat its affect on his product.

He and Betty began the search. They fell upon a university in one of the storm centers of the U.S. Where better to study lightening? It was several states away from his job so he quit. Or rather, he tried to quit. They negotiated a part-time position, as they needed him to fly to their customers to explain his product. This offered him just enough income to not starve to death during the many years at the school.

Chip was able to find an advisor to oversee his research for a PhD. The advisor told us at the graduation ceremony that he was the first US citizen he had ever sponsored. Sad fact. His PhD would be in physics. Atmospheric Physics. As he had never taken physics class before, this was going to be a challenge.

He used a lot of duct tape and scrape material in a large truck trailer parked on the university campus to do his storm tracking and research. If a good storm was coming in at night, he would be notified by a group of students living on top of a mountain via shortwave radio at his home. He would hop into his car; drive the few blocks to the campus and fire up the equipment.

After many years, Chip developed a new system of looking at incoming storms. Usually, storms were seen in one dimension on radar. We have all seen that on the weather channel with its blips. He developed a way to take a pie wedge from a cloud to determine if there was lightening or hail based by the way the crystals were formed. This is now being used as an early warning system for farmers and ranchers throughout many states including Texas and Oklahoma.

I have told Betty that I so admire her for giving up her house and his income to move to the middle of nowhere so he could get his PhD. Not many wives would be willing to do that.

Later, Chip taught at the university but hated the meetings and the politics. He still teaches on occasion and loves the students who still drop by his house for a visit. He is currently working on a project funded by several countries. It has something to do with over 200 radar stations on the top of a mountain in Chile. It is the driest place on Earth as it has only 1/10^th of an inch of rain a year.

The project is winding down and he is beginning to explore his options. They may need to move or he may be able to telecommute. Whatever he does, I sure it will be on his terms.