Kingdon Kerr

Dinner was my favorite time of all. There would often be discussion that continued well after the meal was finished on topics such as space travel or the relation between camera shutter speeds and f-stops.  He used to take my sister and me out at night and point out the different stars. Later in life, he used his mostly self-taught knowledge of photography and astronomy to direct some of the early photo missions into the outer reaches of the solar system. I can still hear him talking about looping a satellite around one planet to accelerate it towards a more distant planet in a quest to get some photographic data. My dad had a lot of sayings: One I always liked was "You can go 90% of the way on 10% of the effort." It's a more quantified way of saying "The devil is in the details."

Email to Bob Kerr from high school buddy: 

The UCLA School of Engineering has been soliciting donations from alums. On the donation form it asked if I wanted to give "in memory" of someone. I thought of your dad. I still have such great memories of him. I've often told stories of when he was driving us home from the movies one night and he took us up on Gretna Green opposite the Brentwood Elementary School where there was no traffic. He proceeded to speed up the car and then spun the steering wheel to cause the car to swing back and forth, and it oscillated from left to right. He did it several times to demonstrate an underdamped oscillation versus a damped oscillation, where the car would either continue to swing wider and wider back and forth, or would settle down and go straight. It was called "simple harmonic motion" in our dynamics class at UCLA, and I never forgot your dad's demonstration. That was REAL!! Your dad was a great influence on my wanting to be an engineer. There are many other examples, including the superb sound system you had at home, and the fascinating setup you had in the garage for some kind of truck suspension. 

Grandpa took a series of photos of Colin and me when we were 1- and 2-years old and were first living with our grandparents at Walther Way after Mom's divorce. I am crying in all the photos and Colin's face goes from happy to distressed. I remember how bright and hot the lights were and crawling under an end table to get away from them. I have two other pure memories that aren't reliant on photographs or recordings -- one of Grandpa sitting at the round dining table in Newport Beach, reading the paper while having breakfast before going to work. And my favorite memory of him standing in front of his wall of electronic equipment and playing Hawaiian music. Grandma tied towels around all of our waists and we were hula dancing. She had to go into her bedroon to get an extra big bath towel to fit around Grandpa's waist and we were all laughing. I also remember after Mom got the phone call that her dad had died suddenly, she went into her bedroon and closed the door and I heard her sobbing in there. It was the only time I ever witnessed her really crying.