Name Your Price

By Joe R Eagleman

Come take a unique journey with this author. The journey starts with a one-room country school. It includes him becoming a Professor and Research Scientist with many other interesting talents. Joe Eagleman tells in this autobiography about the many facets of his life.  His tornado research resulted in changes to national safety rules. His invention of a miniature tornado was used as the pattern for the Universal Studios Twister in Orlando, and for the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It was filmed by numerous TV stations including Fuji TV in Japan.  He had a research project on Skylab and started the Atmospheric Science program at KU where Joe Eagleman Scholarships are given each year.  Included in this book are stories about his early life on a farmas the 11th of 12 children.  This book also includes his experiences as a professor, musician, artist, poet, luthier, taxidermist, world traveler and other interesting endeavors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joe R Eagleman
• Release date: Jan 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224495870

Joe R Eagleman

Joe R. Eagleman (1936- ) was born on a farm near West Plains Missouri. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri in 1963 and was a professor at the University of Kansas for 39 years. He taught thousands of students about Atmospheric Science through his courses there and many thousands more through four different textbooks used by over a hundred universities over a span of several decades. He directed a successful experiment on Skylab, funded by NASA. He invented a tornado in his laboratory that was used by Universal Studios for a 50 ft. tornado attraction and can be seen at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. He started the Atmospheric Science program at KU and wrote a technical book on severe thunderstorms that included his tornado safety research, which resulted in changes adopted nationally. Since his retirement, he has published several books and recorded several albums of original music (Eagleman Band). His autobiography, Name Your Price, tells of his early life on a farm where he was the 11th of 12 children. It includes his work as a scientist and a number of unusual hobbies including those as an artist, musician, luthier, marksman, taxidermist, world traveler, and other endeavors. For more information see http://www.JoeEagleman.com.

Book preview

Chapter 1  Introduction

Name your price, said the lawyer on the other end of the line. It was the first time that I had ever been told that. A week earlier someone from Universal Studios in Hollywood had asked me to come there for a trial. Universal Studios was being sued by Volvo Corporation over the rights to create an artificial tornado. Volvo claimed the right to produce artificial tornadoes because they had recently used one in a television commercial produced by them. I was being placed in the middle of this case because I had previously written a technical book and two textbooks that described how I had produced the first unconfined tornado like vortex by using a system of three different fans. The fans were placed above a hole in the ceiling of my laboratory to pull the air upward and attached to the ceiling to make the air rotate similar to measurements within thunderstorms from Doppler radar. The resulting miniature tornado extended from the floor into the hole in the ceiling and could be seen by using steam or other means for visualization.

I realized that the tornado I had created in my laboratory at the University of Kansas was original and could probably be patented. Since I was a Professor of Atmospheric Science and had developed the tornado on university property a patent would be shared by the University. I chose to make the information on developing the tornado available to the public by publishing it in research articles and in my books.

As a Professor at the University in 1998 I was involved in the usual full-time load of teaching and research so it was a little hard for me to relate to Universal Studios urgency so I had turned them down last week. But I realized that being told name your price was different and I quickly ran through some numbers in my head and came up with $1000 per day for my services. I later realized that I could have asked for 10 times that amount and they would have gladly paid it.

My wife, Doris and I were given tickets to Los Angeles and accommodations in the Westin Hotel. This was a hotel where a previous president, Ronald Regan, had held his acceptance speech because of the huge banquet room on the first floor. We were in Hollywood for three days and needless to say Universal Studios won their case when one of my books, Severe and Unusual Weather, was entered as evidence since it contained detailed information on the creation of an artificial tornado and was first published in 1983.

Following the Twister Movie in 1996, Universal Studios wanted to build a replica of my laboratory tornado in Orlando Florida. After the successful conclusion of the lawsuit, they were able to create a realistic looking tornado that was 50 feet high. It was the main attraction in the Twister building from 1998 to 2015 and was viewed by millions of people. Along with me, to develop the attraction they also worked with Ned Kahn whom I had helped to develop an unconfined tornado like mine at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1986. This tornado simulation has also drawn millions of visitors over the past several decades because it, like mine, is unconfined and a visitor can touch it and affect the circulation and appearance. It is not surprising that it is still a great attraction today and has survived several transformations including moving into a new building in 2013.

This was not my first high-profile experience. Early in my professional career a tornado struck Topeka Kansas in 1966 and I was the first to show statistically that the Southwest corner of a house was the most unsafe place to seek shelter. This contradicted the current information that was supplied to the public by the weather service. This, of course, caused great controversy for several years until it could be verified that similar statistics applied to other tornadoes.

Prior to the launching of Skylab in 1973 I had been selected by NASA to direct one of the experiments to be conducted from space. For my experiment the astronauts turned on several of their instruments as they passed over the test sites that I had selected in Kansas and Texas. The control tower in Houston called me the day before they were to turn the equipment on for my data so that I could get my crew into the field to take ground measurements. From this successful experiment we learned that we could get detailed information on the amount of water in the surface 6 inches of the soil by using a radiometer from space.

I have always saved things so it was not surprising that I stored the many volumes of raw data that NASA sent to me for the Skylab experiment. Several decades after Skylab, in the year 2000 shortly before I retired from the University, I got a call from the Department of Agriculture. They were looking for the raw data from my Skylab experiment to combine with more recent measurements to use for determining water distribution for crops. I was surprised to learn that NASA had lost track of duplicate copies of the raw data or had destroyed them and so the Department of Agriculture was delighted to have my copies. They paid my salary for two months during the summer so that I could organize and ship the volumes of data to them.

Becoming a professor and research scientist was not something I had even imagined as I was growing up in South Missouri. My parents had never attended high school and I was the 11th of 12 children growing up on a farm in a rural area. Only one older sister had made it to college. My first eight years of school were in a one room rural schoolhouse and this is not usually considered to be the most ideal learning environment. I was also told by an older brother before I entered first grade that I would never amount to anything. The course of events that led me down this path is detailed in the following chapters.

Chapter 2  Early Childhood

It’s a boy was heard coming from the downstairs bedroom with emphasis resulting from the previous birth of four consecutive girls. I wonder when Dr. Roe will get here. Can we name him Joe? asked Grace. Yes, and since we haven’t named any of the other 10 children after Dr. Roe, perhaps he should be called Joe Roe. As reported to me later, this happened on October 9, 1936 as I became the 11th of 12 children born to Edward Barkley Eagleman and Ella Mae Crawford Eagleman. On their birthdays in 1936 my siblings were Lula Bell, three, Fern Marie, six, Reba Mae, eight, Grace Francis, 10, John Crawford, 12, Ralph Glen, 13, Roy Thomas, 15, Virgil George, 18, Allen Henry, 19, and Edwin Everett, 22. My youngest sister Wilma Ruth was born when I was almost three years old and Allen and Edwin were married and had moved into their own homes.

Dr. Roe was our family doctor for many years. He frequently called on patients in their homes. He had a famous son, Preacher Roe, who pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates and Brooklyn Dodgers from 1938 to 1954.

Our house had a bedroom, living room and kitchen down-stairs and three bedrooms upstairs. Most of the bedrooms were large enough for two or three beds in each. The living room had a fireplace for our source of heat and a wood cooking stove in the kitchen. Mom and dad slept downstairs where they kept the fire going in the fireplace and the kids all slept upstairs. Mom and dad had met at a 4th of July picnic at Bakersfield Missouri and after their marriage mom moved into the house where Dad was born. Mom was born about 20 miles west at Howard Ridge Missouri. They were married in 1912 when mom was 16 years old and dad was 20. At the time I was born mom was 40 years old and dad was 45. Mom’s autobiography, My Life Story, that she wrote when in her eighties is still available and tells about her life that started in a log cabin.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of my older brothers, Ralph, John and Roy standing in front of the fireplace warming themselves after working outside on a cold day. I remember wondering if I would ever be that tall and hugging the calf of Roy's leg as my head came about to his knee.

I was also quite young when I remember gathering for our meals around the large table where I sat on my mother's lap. One day John asked me how long I was going to sit on mom's lap and I replied, Until I am as big as Virgil .

We always sat in the same place around the table when we ate. Mom and dad sat on the north side of the table. The smallest child sat on mom's lap. When I was on mom's lap, Lu sat on the left side of mom. Virgil sat on the East side, Grace and Reba sat in the middle of a bench, John sat on the East of the bench and Ralph sat on the West side of it. Roy sat on the West side of the table and Fern sat between him and Ralph.  After my youngest sister Wilma was born, I moved to the northwest corner of the table between dad and Fern because Roy was married by then and Wilma sat on mom's lap. When Wilma was about three years old, she moved to the left side of mom and Lu moved to the bench between Virgil and Grace as Ralph and John had married and moved away.

Sometimes dad needed to make extra money so he found a job as a carpenter for a few months. After one such job in June 1941, he came home with a small terrier puppy for Wilma and me. We named the puppy Penny. It was a very nice little dog and we were very happy to have it. Unfortunately, it did not last very long because it soon disappeared and we never knew what happened to it. I would guess that the large outdoor dogs probably killed it.

Playmates

Many of my preschool days were spent playing with my younger sister, Wilma, and Allen's children, Kenneth and Leta who were close to our age. They walked over to our house almost every day and the four of us invented many of our own games. One of our favorite activities was catching crawdads from the stream down