Hi guys. Grandpa has extra photos and a few videos on his Flickr account. They are here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chuck_smart/
At the beginning is a brief sketch of a few life events, which I copy below:
Hello, I'm a geologist. I've been married to my wife Susan for 53+ years. We have two grown sons, both married to great young women. We have two grandsons and three granddaughters.
I grew up in Stirling and Millington, New Jersey, USA. USMC 1 1/2 tours RVN March 66 to October 67. While on active duty I visited, besides Vietnam, Oahu, Hong Kong and Okinawa.
In Stirling we lived 100 meters from what is now the southern edge of the Great Swamp NWR managed area. Then it was our friends' farms.
My parents, Lou and Peg Smart, were very active in saving the Great Swamp. My Dad, my brothers and I used to pole our Arkansas Traveler boat all through it. My Mom was in charge of finding us with the station wagon when it got dark.
While a geology undergraduate at Rutgers, a feud broke out between two assistant professors up for the same tenure track. One left, the other was fired. Since both were my student job employers, I had to look for a new job. My paleontology professors, Steve Fox and Dick Olsson, gave me a job counting Foraminifera, tiny fossils. Since I was entering my senior year and the paleontologists and sedimentary geologists were the only ones left to recommend me, I applied to Harvard and Princeton Graduate Schools as a paleontologist, and wrote my Senior Henry Rutgers thesis on Eurypterids. During that year I also took courses in Vertebrate Anatomy and Physiology from Nathan Hart, the great developmental biologist. Combined with the engineering courses I took (I have an extra BS Mech E from Rutgers), I had a rare combination of skills, and Princeton and Harvard offered me exactly the same support, to the dollar.
In graduate school at Princeton I was privileged to take Biology classes from Tom Sanders (Genetics) and Robert MacArthur, John Terborgh, and John Endler (Ecology and Evolution) , and to do paleontology field work in Kenya and Ethiopia. My wife and I traveled through Africa, India, Europe, and the Caribbean. While at Princeton I worked as a teaching assistant for Al Fischer, the great invertebrate paleontologist.
After Princeton I went to Harvard, where I lectured on Circulatory Physics, essentially teaching future surgeons the consequences of changes to arteries and veins. My lectures were very popular. While reprising my lectures at the University 0f Chicago, I got a job offer from the University of Illinois Medical School teaching A & P, but instead moved to Ethiopia and found Bodo Man, and important human fossil.
I spent much of my career at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. I worked for Tom Uzzell and for Frank Gill, and knew Andy Mack and Mark Robbins. Our two sons went with us during field seasons.
I recently retired (the second time) as a geology professor from Kean University in New Jersey, but along the way have worked in the Oil Industry (for Shell Exploration, Cities Service, and as a geophysics contractor for Conoco) and have consulted for the Mining Industry (Amax, Alcoa). Besides Europe and Africa, we also worked throughout Asia, the Caribbean, Northern South America, India, the South Pacific, and nearly every state in the union. We have never been to Australia or Antarctica; maybe next year.
