Ballot for COMARA Board of Directors - Vote by September 15, 2010
Fred Kelly
Fred Kelly joined COMSAT's Labs in the early 70's as a member of the computer center. In the early years Fred taught various computer technology courses to Comsat's staff at Clarksburg and L'Enfant Plaza, tuned the IBM mainframe, and created benchmark programs for computer selection. Over the years Fred worked for Comsat General on the facsimile based Intelpost project, Comsat Technology Products selling the Starcom VSAT product and creating the Starcom data service and Comsat International Ventures providing marketing, sales, technology selection and business planning support for various venture. Fred has been a supporter of Comara since its founding by attending many events.
Dan Swearingen
Dan served as a communications systems engineer with COMSAT from 1970 to 2000 except for the year he served at the newly created INMARSAT Organization in London in 1980-81. He was a system designer on the MARISAT project and spent most of his COMSAT career working in the mobile satellite area. After retiring from COMSAT, Dan spent several years as an engineering consultant and adjunct lecturer at GWU. In the first three years of retirement, he also helped the COMARA Board with the planning of its annual socials. Dan has also used his retirement for a mix of grandfathering, travel, music, and various volunteer activities.
Bob Yamazaki
Bob joined COMSAT in December 1975 after retiring from the U.S. Army as a commissioned officer.
He served initially as a systems engineer with positions at COMSAT Headquarter until he became
Director of Pacific Offshore Operations with oversight of eight Pacific Ocean earth stations.
He then moved back to Headquarters and headed up the Operations Division for Intelsat Satellite Services
with concurrent duties as U.S. Operations Representative to INTELSAT.
In 1990 he moved to COMSAT International as Director of Operations and Engineering
and remained there until his retirement in 2000.
Bob is a avid golfer, scuba diver and sailor. He is a community volunteer as well.
Pictures From the IRA-COMARA Picnic - June 26
The first IRA joint family picnic, sponsored by the Intelsat Retirement Association (IRA) and COMSAT, was held on Saturday, June 26, at Glen Echo Park from 11:30 am - 2:30 pm.
Alan Olson, IRA picnic co-organizer, has published his pictures from the picnic using Google's Picasa Web. You can view the photos from http://tinyurl.com/ira-comara-picnic
Member Communications
We use email for communications because it saves time and money. We don't use a commercial service to handle mailing (it's too expensive) so Board members have to stuff the envelopes and attach the labels. If you receive this newsletter in the mail, we don't have a working email address for you. An email to an invalid email address bounces (returns an error message to the sender). Although we try to find a valid address when an email bounces, this takes time and is a significant cost, so if you have an email address, please send it to webmaster@comara.org.
If you are a former COMSAT employee or surviving spouse, you are welcome to join COMARA by filling out the registration form at http://comara.org (click on the "Register for Membership" link in the left menu bar). Two email addresses can be entered in the form and newsletters will be emailed to both addresses. At registration, we request that the new member pay the current dues ($10/year). Your dues payment does two things: it validates you as a member (spammers don't pay dues), and it supports the objectives of COMARA.
Protecting your personal information: Many pages on the COMARA web site are available to anyone. However a few are restricted to members who have paid dues. The listing of contact information becomes available only after you sign in.
Note: We mail newsletters only to registered members who have paid dues. We continue to email newsletters to anyone who has registered.
Please pay your dues if your payment is not current.
Why not send a $20 check for 2010 and 2011? Make checks payable to COMARA; put "Dues" on the memo line; and send to COMARA, PO Box 34594, Bethesda, MD 20827. You can check your dues status at http://comara.org. After you sign in, your dues status is displayed at the top of the page. If you then click the "Edit My Profile" link at the left, you'll find more detail.
The In Memoriam Section (Members)
The In Memoriam feature is found in the Members section of the web site. It's one of the pages that you can only see after you Sign In. We have reached a point where this section is growing. We need your help for names of people who have passed. If you can include a link to an online obituary, that will help. Send to webmaster@comara.org, or reply to any newsletter. This section is not limited to COMARA members. We also publish notices for any former colleague.
This section needs some major updating. We have fields in the database to record the deceased status of our members and spouses. The names on the In Memoriam section and those found in the database are not current. We're working to get this feature up to date.
Surviving Spouse Membership
One of the actions we take when we receive a notice that a member has died is to see if the member gave us the name of a spouse. We then attempt to interchange the names of the member and spouse. This makes the spouse the member. Future newsletters will be addressed to the surviving spouse. If this happens, and you don't want the continuing communications, you can contact the webmaster, and we'll make the registration inactive. Then, you won't receive any further communications from us. However, the web site is always available for you to visit.
Bouncing Email and Lost Members
Newsletters are individually addressed and sent directly from the web site using one of the web site operating system services. This is a pretty amazing process to watch in operation. The code that is used reports as each email is sent. We currently send about 620 emails. The entire process takes only a few seconds. The registration record has space for two email addresses. We send to both of these emails if available. The mail interface has fields for the From address and also a Reply-to address. The hosting company also provides a separate webmail service. Any bounced emails are returned to the From address. Most of the time, if you reply to one of these newsletters, your reply goes to the Reply-to address (members@comara.org).
Every bounced or automatic response email is opened and examined. When we can confirm that the email bounces because the email box is no longer in use for at least two newsletters, we make some changes. If one of the two email addresses is still working, we promote that one to the primary email address, and remove the address that is bouncing. You should receive an email letting you know of the action.
We get a few newsletters that bounce because a mail provided decides that email coming from the IP address used by our hosting company is sending spam. This usually goes away after awhile. We do attempt to use another account to alert you to the actions by your email host.
We also track the returned mailed newsletters and record that in the database.
When we no longer have a working email address nor a postal address, the member becomes "lost" since we no longer have any way to send news to you.
There are two pages in the Members section where you can check the list of Lost Members and members with Members Without Email. (You don't need to sign in to see these names.)
News From Colleagues-Keeping In Touch
Pier Bargellini writes I am very sorry, had in mind to come to the COMARA annual meeting but will not be able to attend due a commitment in Los Angeles on September 19th. Kindly bring my greetings and salutations to the group
Thankfully I am ok at age 96.6 and so is my wife at 88. We'll visit our friends on the Cape the first week of September, go to Italy the first two weeks in October, and to Mexico in early November for the winter there. I am still active in ham radio (WA3KNN) but the propagation is down now due to the few sunspots . Cheers and best regards to all there .
The Briley's spent their vacation in Normandy with a short visit to Brittany but
with one change-no visitors. For the past 15 or 16 years, the vacations in
Normandy have included visitors and that meant another visit to the beaches and
other sites related to the Normandy invasion on 6 June 1944 and, of course, the U.S.
Cemetery for the war dead, including the wonderful museum that really displays the
story of WW II in Europe. Yes, we became very experienced tour guides.
Considering our age, we are not sure there will be another Normandy vacation that
involves a round trip of 1200 miles. But I never say "no." Having entered France via Utah Beach, I would like very much to participate in the ceremonies commemorating the 70th anniversary of the landings that will fall on 6 June 2014, when I hope to be in good health at the young age of 93 years. Time will tell!!!!
Enclosed is a recent picture taken at a local French restaurant. Not many COMARA's know that Michelle was a COMSAT employee for a number of years. She headed the Paris office of COMSAT International under Bill Taylor. Best wishes for an enjoyable COMARA dinner. We would be very happy to see any COMARAn(s) who may be visiting Geneva, Switzerland, or the vicinity.
Howard and Michelle Briley
Diane Helfgott writes: My two children, David and Lisa, and their spouses and Richard, and the five grandchildren, Rachel, Natalie, Ben, Nathan and Mollie, spent a wonderful week at Beaches in Boscobel, Jamaica in July. Everyone had a great time, with all the activities and water sports. I wanted to share our family picture with everyone.
Robert W. Ames, Jr. writes: after my 8 years at COMSAT I served time at GTE Spacenet and then Intelsat where I retired; however, did not get out of the business. At the time of my retirement in 2002, I was also the Chairman of the Satellite Users Interference Reduction Group (SUIRG) and soon after my retirement I transitioned the organization into an incorporated international association. At SUIRG we focus solely on the problem of satellite interference and our efforts were recognized by the satellite industry at the Satellite 2010 conference when SUIRG was awarded the Society of Satellite Professions International Industry Innovator award for our work in getting contact and location information embedded within transmit carriers.
SUIRG is the proud recipient of the SSPI 2010 Industry Innovator Award. Don't forget to register at www.suirg.org for the 7th annual SUIRG 2010 Interference Conference to be held in San Francisco on 28-30 September http://www.suirg.org.
Bill Calloway writes that George L. Skinner, former COMSAT comptroller, is recuperating from surgery for brain cancer at his home in Fredericksburg, VA. Bill asks that you keep George in your prayers.
Joe Pelton, current COMARA President. is still destroying trees. His 32nd book entitled "Megacrunch: Ten Survival Strategies for the 21st Century" is now available on Amazon.com. His 33rd book entitled "Space Safety Regulations and Standards" is to be out in September 2010 and his mammoth 1800 page "Handbook on Satellite Applications" is to be published next year. He says he hopes to hit 50 books before he truly retires. He spent a good deal of the summer teaching at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France and attending the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in Vienna, Austria.
IEEE Award to former RCA-Astro-Electronics Division for TIROS 1. The TIROS 1 satellite ushered in the age of weather forecasting using remote sensing. This satellite provided the first photos of atmospheric formations used to provide your weather reports. On Monday Sept 27th the IEEE will present a Milestone Award to Sarnoff Inc. (since all of RCA is defunct). The TIROS 1 award will join the prior two for Liquid Crystal Display and Color Television System. A number of COMSAT members formerly worked for RCA on TIROS and other programs. George Martch posted some pictures of the engineering staff at
http://ubtrue2.net/tiros50thanc/T5AAstro1960EngrMgrsEngrs.htm. Some of the people are Sidney Metzger, Jim Owens, Gary Gordon, Ron Garlow, Walter Morgan.
He also provided a section covering some history.
http://ubtrue2.net/tiros50thanc/Index.htm
In Memoriam
Dr. John V. Harrington, former senior vice president of research and development and director of COMSAT Laboratories, passed away after a brief illness on Dec. 13, 2009, at his retirement home in Solomons Island, Md. He was 90.
Dr. Harrington was born in New York City on May 9, 1919. He graduated from The Cooper Union in 1940 with a degree in electrical engineering, received a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1948, and his doctorate from MIT in 1958
He enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War II, receiving his commission as a lieutenant in 1942. He served as an electronics officer aboard several Navy destroyers in the Pacific theater, principally responsible for shipboard radar defense systems.
After his return to civilian life in 1946, Dr. Harrington joined the U.S. Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory, where he pursued his interest in the development of radar technology, space research, and communications technology. He subsequently served as head of Lincoln Laboratory's Radio Physics Division from 1958-1963.
After receiving his doctorate, he joined the faculty of MIT in 1963 as a professor in both the aeronautics and astronautics and electrical engineering departments. At the same time, he was named the first director of the MIT Center for Space Research. In the early 1970s, he joined the Communications Satellite Corporation, where he served as senior vice president of research and development, as well as director of COMSAT Laboratories, until his retirement in 1984.
During his professional career, Dr. Harrington the U.S. Air Force award for exceptional civilian service in 1952, The Cooper Union President's Citation for exceptional professional achievement in 1965, and The Cooper Union Gano Dunn award for outstanding professional achievement in 1983. He was widely published in numerous professional and technical journals. He holds several patents on data transmission methods and bandwidth compression systems for the transmission of radar data. He was a fellow of several honorary professional societies in his fields of interest, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Harrington is survived by his wife, their five married children and their spouses: John F. and Maureen of Queenstown, Md.; Nancy and Jack Higgins of Natick, Mass.; Jeffrey and Karen of Acton, Mass.; Richard and Betsy of Accokeek, Md.; and Brian (SB '77) and Kathleen of Westford, Mass., as well as 14 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
John Spencer was born April 5, 1940, to the late John H. Spencer and Mary Anastasia (Obey) Spencer Blinn, and he was the stepson of the late John Blinn. He died on June 8, 2010, after a valiant fight with lung cancer.
John retired from Lockheed Martin in 2000, returning to the work force for G.D.E. until 2005. He served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War in Company B, 27th Ordinace Battalion, from 1959 until his honorable discharge in December 1964.
In addition to his wife of 20 years, Julia, he is survived by his children, John R. and wife, Jennifer, and John O. and wife, Anastasia Marie. He is also survived by his stepson, Doug Wallick Jr. and wife, Cheryl; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren .
Celeste Wellington, wife of Joe Wellington, former manager of rates and tariffs at COMSAT, died on May 27, 2010, at age 89. She and Joe had been married for 55 years.
Services for Edwin Istvan were held Monday, June 7. Ed was the husband of the late Barbara L. Istvan; and father of Rud, Laury, Karlyn and Steven Istvan. He is also survived by six grandchildren.
A note from Kathie Hulley - (Kathie had asked us to delay publishing of Mike's passing until she was ready to share this news) We would very much like you to stop by and share your memories of Mike Hulley with family, friends and refreshments...
Sunday September 12th any time between 2pm and 5pm
21809 Diller Lane
Boyds, MD 20841
RSVP: kathiehulley(at)gmail.com or 301-580-4896
Copyright 2010 by COMSAT Alumni & Retirees Association. All rights reserved.
COMARA, PO Box 34594, Bethesda, MD 20827
Please join your COMSAT friends and colleagues for a social gathering on Sunday afternoon, September 19 at the Golden Bull Grand Cafe in Gaithersburg.
This will be a chance to visit and catch up with friends and acquaintances from your COMSAT days. Spouses are welcome.