In the fall of 1973 I took an introductory course in meteorology at Penn

State. It was my junior year. The class was a large lecture-hall class. Joel
Myers, Ph.D., President of AccuWeather, was the instructor. Dr. Myers is
a nationally-prominent meteorologist, a man of considerable stature.
He served on the faculty of Penn State from 1964 until 1981 as
instructor, lecturer and assistant professor and has taught weather
forecasting to approximately 17% of all practicing meteorologists in the
United States upon retirement from active teaching in 1981. The
meteorology course I took had a lab component, where students broke
up into small groups.
One day Dr. Myers posed a question to the class. I appeared to be the
only student in the lecture hall to raise his hand. I gave the correct
answer. Weeks passed. One day I was walking through the corridor in
the Earth Sciences building where Dr. Myers’ office was located. Dr.
Myers saw me. As I approached, he said, “Hello, Gary.” How did he
know my name? Why would he know my name? My only thought is
that my answer to his question in class weeks earlier had triggered his
curiosity, and he asked the lab instructor who I was. Dr. Myers must
have thought I was “a bright young man.”
Following my graduation from college I got a job as an editorial assistant
at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. In March 1976, when I was 22
years old, the Vice President of the Franklin Institute (Alec Peters), a
man of considerable stature, sent a note to my supervisor saying that
he should put “an annotation” in my personnel file stating that I was
doing a good job. I had absolutely nothing to do with Alec Peters! Why
did he do that? Why did the Vice President of the Franklin Institute take
an interest in me?