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July
17, 2001
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an
online newsletter for and by NOAA employees
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Leona Stevenson, from the Fisheries' Southwest Region, enjoying her Mahi Mahi Award at the Fish Fry with acting NOAA administrator Scott Gudes (left) and Bill Hogarth, acting assistant administrator, NOAA Fisheries. The award recognizes exemplary service, which Leona's been providing for the past 42 years.
California  Scott Gudes recently toured the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Monterey, California with staff members (left to right) Warren Blier, David Rosenberg, Tom Evans, Scott, Jeff Kopps, Lynne Trebler, Charles Morrill, Robert Diaz, and Brian Powlak.
John Ferguson is widely known as an accomplished creator, doer and fixer, sometimes at great personal risk. He's now also known as Vermont Federal Employee of the Year. John's dedicated electronics support is an excellent example of both individual skill and resourceful teamwork, benchmarks of NOAA's initiatives around the globe. As an electronics technician, John worked at the National Weather Service Office in Burlington throughout the decade-long modernization. He has facilitated day-to-day operations by maintaining and troubleshooting critical and ever-changing electronic and computer equipment. Despite position descriptions that sometimes could not keep pace with accelerating weather service efforts, John learned, adapted and stayed focused on keeping new equipment up and running at peak performance. His creative, common-sense engineering expertise kept the Burlington office's back-up generator functioning during most of the 1998 ice storm. When office space expanded a few years ago, his extra work and ideas minimized service disruptions and saved nearly $50,000 in additional contract costs. At times he has served as acting official-in-charge. Even with the intensity of maintaining automated meteorological and hydrological observing equipment throughout Vermont and northern New York, John is known to stay on the job, volunteering with data distribution and phone calls during critical periods of weather warning. The personal risks can be high. Alone at a remote site, he once had to dig through six feet of snow to work on powered electrical equipment. To install critical equipment, he has tethered himself to the wind vane of a steeply pitched Vermont roof. Another time he replaced a high voltage power unit on the radar so meteorologists could track severe weather. Before starting he handed a curved stick to a colleague. The stick is used to pull someone free of electrical currents. It's called "the deadman's stick." In an agency where meteorologists predominate, it's important to recognize that Doppler radar must continue to function smoothly if the public is to be alerted to life-threatening weather. John Ferguson steadfastly makes sure it does.
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