We say it all the time: Time flies. That was never truer than when I got a call from my friend Evan Forde, saying he was retiring from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration after 50 years.
He worked in NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory on Virginia Key, and was the first Black oceanographer to explore the Atlantic’s deep canyons in a two-man submersible in 1979.
I had an immediate flashback to one of the first times I spoke with Evan. He had already been on the job for seven years when I had the opportunity to tell the world about this brilliant young oceanographer, who just happened to be Black. It is always refreshing to write about the progress of our younger generation and, in particular, young Blacks who succeed despite discrimination and other obstacles.
As I was writing this column, I thought about the late Katherine Johnson and the other Black women in NASA who were called human computers because they were so brilliant. The film, “Hidden Figures,” told the story of three Black women, especially Johnson, who were instrumental in formulating the mathematical calculations to launch astronaut John Glenn into orbit.