Marshall &Kay Family Histories
B. VAUGHN MARSHALL
1961 - 1966
Weed, California
This is probably a good place to tell the major’ car break down’ story. Toward the end of July of 1961 Vaughn was borrowed from the permafrost project to help do some field studies in eastern Washington again. This sounded interesting to him because the fellow working with Vaughn planned to take his family along and invited Vaughn to do the same. They decided to use the extra per diem to rent a small trailer for each family. This seemed like a good idea because they would be moving around quite a bit and it would save time setting up camp every time we’d move. It turned out to be an interesting summer on the whole and we had many good camping memories. I mentioned that we always had to deal with second hand cars and this was a little concern to Vaughn as he planned the trip. He tried to be very careful not to add too much weight to the trailer so that it wouldn’t be too hard on the car to pull it. All went fairly well on the way to Washington State from California. I think there were a few repairs but the car kept going all that summer. The other couple was taking a different route home so we didn’t leave together.
We got as far as a place called Weed, California. It was a small town. As we drove down the main street on our way through, the car just stopped. No warning, it just stopped! With some help Vaughn got it moved to the side of the street. This was not easy with the trailer still attached. After deciding that it was something he could not fix Vaughn went looking for a garage that would fix it. There were a number of places in the town where cars were repaired but there was only one place that would do the repairs for us. They helped us move the trailer to a nearby trailer park and towed the car to their shop.
We were running out of cash and needed to get on the road as soon as we could. It was a weekend and there weren’t any banks open to get cash. This was pre ATM time. This was also pre credit card time (if you can imagine a time like that). We weren’t worried at first though because, for a change, we had enough money in the bank to pay for a major repair. One phone call would establish our ability to pay. But, the bank was closed! We ended up staying in Weed for the weekend. Early Monday morning the call was made and the repairs done, enough to get us going again. Then the trip home began. I remember that I felt comforted that Vaughn would get us home. One of the things he decided was that we would not turn the engine off at all. Part of the problem with the car seemed to be electrical and he didn’t want to take a chance that it wouldn’t start again. By the time we got home it was barely running. The very next morning we drove it down to the Rambler car lot to see if they would take it in for a down payment on a new car. Vaughn couldn’t get it out of first gear all the way there. We were surprised that the dealer accepted it as our down payment. Cars weren’t as expensive in those days but the monthly payments were more than we had so Vaughn agreed that I should work “on call” at the hospital for a few months to pay it off. That was our very first new car. What a novelty.
Menlo Park, California
Vaughn continued to take classes at Stanford whenever he could working toward his Masters. He also continued to fulfill his Priesthood assignments, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints.
On August 1st 1965 our fourth baby was born. I had gone to a very good doctor who watched me very closely and we were blessed to have another sweet baby girl. We thought she looked just like an angel. Vaughn returned to T-3 in October of that year and arrived back home the day before Thanksgiving. He’d had a very full year.
In 1966 Bob Yates, one of the chiefs in the Rocky Mountain Project, asked if he could borrow Vaughn for the summer. He thought Vaughn’s heat-flow knowledge would be of great value to him. So Vaughn was “hired” to go to Washington State with Bob for the summer. The family was included because there were some campgrounds near the areas where he and Bob would be working and we could camp out as a family for the summer. Bob’s wife had planned to go with her husband also. Vaughn went on ahead in June. He was able to find a good campground and campsite for us and set up camp. He camped out by himself while I got the kids and myself ready to join him. He was there about a month alone. I think it must have been a little lonesome for him. In his letters he talked about all the hiking he was doing every day. He kept very busy till we got there. It was my first real experience camping out of a tent, and it rained and rained the first few days and nights after we arrived. We had borrowed a larger tent for the family from Vaughn’s dad but it wasn’t waterproof and everything, including us, was getting all wet. I just fell apart. Vaughn kept it all together for all of us and with his calmness and camping know how; he helped me learn to be a camper. We laughed together recalling the stories of our son blazing trails through the tall grass with the baby stroller, and our newest daughter inside squealing with delight; and how we all built a playpen for her out of the wood left in camp while she took it apart as fast as we put it together. We all stayed till September 7th and had a very memorable family summer. Vaughn solved the rain problem by going into town and buying the largest piece of plastic (for covering hay stacks) that I’d ever seen. We covered the tents and kept dry. The mud problem remained a challenge.
During these years something began happening at work that started out as a worry to Vaughn, but as time passed, it turned into a major frustration for him. He was accumulating a lot of data from his work at T-3 and it needed to be compiled into a “paper” that could be published. In government work, if you are not publishing, you’re a non- entity. Vaughn could do a certain amount of the writing and prepare the graphs, tables and etc., but Art, with his doctoral background, was responsible for the theory background. Heat-flow had been Art’s baby for a long time and would remain so. As time went on Vaughn talked to me about his feelings. He said that Art was involved in so many studies and projects that he didn’t have enough time for them all. Often the one that was connected to the “squeakiest wheel” would get attended to first. Vaughn was never a “squeaky wheel”. He always felt that, that behavior was impolite. He told me that Art would come to work and go immediately into his office, close the door, bury himself in his work and remain there all day. He said that it was so difficult to have a conference with him. This often left Vaughn looking for something ‘ to do’ at work.
Early on he found that” something”. He had been doing charts and graphs on a large plotter ‘by hand’ and then printed them out and reduced them for publication. He decided that there was a better way. At that time, (early 60’s) there was a computer in one of the rooms near his office. As I recall, he said no one was using it – no one really knew how. He determined to learn how to put it to use on his material. I don’t know very much about computers and I’m not sure the type of computer he originally worked with but ‘Tektronix’ was a name I often heard him refer to. It seemed that he was always leaning a new computer language. Two of them I recall, were Basic and Fortran. Our son, tells me that Fortran was probably the software he used to develop the programs he needed in order to produce his graphs, etc. He developed programs that not only plotted the data but also curved it. His computer knowledge suddenly made him a valuable person with the project. A number of the people there would ask him to help them work up their material on the computer.
Once when I visited him at work he took me to another building and showed me a room where the whole wall was a computer and it’s component parts. He explained that it was part of a computer system connected to a mainframe in Washington DC. He had taken a class in VAX / MAS. Our son told me that that had to do with that particular computer. It cost the project a lot of money to use. He said that he had to have a special password to get in and that the time he was allowed on it was limited. He felt good about working with the computer and that helped. However, the problem of getting the Arctic material published didn’t go away. He and Art were finally able to get some preliminary studies published in the 60’s.