SUMMER 1963 p.55
Ben Oostdam's Autobiography:
Sep.1: at 02:00 took off for Iceland, where we made a short and chilly stop. Thereafter, we enjoyed the glaciers of Greenland, rivers further south.
Finally, we landed in New York around 17:00. Although we had no problems at Customs, someone somewhere found she missed a valid small-pock injection. We somehow crossed that bridge, bused our luggage to United to check in, then enjoyed a courtesy van to a nice (US$ 16.78 instead of quoted $ 14.20) hotelroom where we abluted and the like. Poor Rose suffered from an ear-ache that night.
Sept.2: Monday = LABOR DAY : the morning was rather hectic, since Rose was flying United to visit her father in Utah while I was to fly Eastern to Washington to discuss my job at Ocean Science and Engineering. . So I had to run from one counter to another
and took her as far as possible on her way before getting myself to Eastern. After seeing Coney Island from the air and being surprised about the number of trees in Maryland, I landed at 10:30. Although I was only due tomorrow, I decided to call OSESA, which was a good thing since they were all to fly to Africa tomorrow.
So at 12:00, I met Larry Brundred and two civil & mechanical engineers/VP's, a French bloke (Francois Lampietti) and a Norwegian (Erik Stephansen), and after lunch I had an hour interview with:
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WILLARD BASCOM, about beaches, Zeigler, Inman, Shepard, my thesis, etc. He also flattered me by asking for my wife's first name. In principal, we agreed:
Up to date, he had received a quarter of a million from the DeBeers group and promise of a million dollars for a survey vessel. |
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Late in the afternoon, I took a taxi to the Airport and flew - this time first class, via Chicago to Salt Lake City; too many lobsters and drinks...
At 22:00 I landed in SLC, took a $ 6 taxi and searched around till I met an elderly man stepping out of his house: my new Father in Law!
He was very emotional and invited me inside where we woke up a rather surprised Rose!