What's My Old Boss, "Wild Bill" Malm (Retiring) Have to do with YOUR Health? Air Quality?!

Literally HALF my lifetime ago I was sitting at a front office of a new Fort Collins company which I'd helped type a winning proposal for, Air Resource Specialists, and in whizzed one of the new researchers in town for the National Park Service.  He was part of a Washington office, the Air Quality Division (Visibility Monitoring Program) which was set up there due to the supercomputer at Colorado State University as well as the expertise of the University's programs in related atmospheric science, statistics, recreational resources and the like.  He grabbed one of the employees and now 25ish years later, we're lifelong friends with many great memories together. If there's anyone who doesn't have to worry about tons of amazing things to reflect upon, it's Bill.  He built and airplane and a house in his spare time in the last few years I worked for him.  Like many 'high achievers', he covered a lot of ground!

Known as 'Wild Bill' to some, Dr. Malm later hired me to be his 'right hand woman' for anything from purchasing paper clips to computers and videography equipment.  He'd set me up with the basics of what a new hire needed to be and I'd take it from there, shepherd proposals, be the liaison between our offices and administrators and graphics artists who believe it or not, were not yet using computers initially.  He hired me, a woman who hadn't completed a business degree at that time, because he felt in the interview I was smart enough to do the job.  And according to a few conversations over the 17 years since I quit to turn my attention to MY passion, health care, he's confirmed that I did a pretty good job for him.  

He'd come screaming through my office to his every morning -- coffee in hand -- talking to me before he got in the room and all the way through and he'd download what he had thought about my needing to do in the next minutes or months.  Then I'd be in the queue all day for questions, as his growing stream of staff would come to him with whatever brief direction they needed for doing their piece of the puzzle.  Over the next eight years he built a team there at our offices, with his contractors and subcontractors, with industry scientists, and with other government agencies that literally impacted our health -- in that the studies he wrote about, went innumerable times away from his beloved family and property and animals for, ended up changing air quality in the United States (and therefore the world). 

I  learned an incredible amount from him in those eight years and since he's not had TIME SO FAR to see me at work since, he'll have no way of knowing the debt of gratitude I have for the opportunity to assist on his projects.  The same attention to detail that I brought with me to HIS team's benefit hopefully shows in Lumigrate, though it's nice that many things like blog posts can be more informal and less 'fuss'.  I found Bill was a professional who did things his own way and the rest of the team had to accommodate it and to say it takes a certain type of person to work in with that is an understatement.  However, he has traveled through his life accumulating wonderful people around him.  He is the epitome of "maximizing" if you ask me.  He is a work hard, play hard guy. 

I saw him in Crested Butte a few summers ago and after they'd done a huge bike ride and eaten, he looked at the spot in front of him at the table and most people would say 'time for a nap' and he said 'we should go into town and see if there's some music going on or something'.  Big Dogs don't sit on the porch at his house or office, that's for sure.  I think I'd been there five years when one of his colleagues was on the phone with me after they'd attended a meeting together and he asked me how long I'd worked for him and remarked it was remarkable.  However, the first NPS position we created still has the same woman working in it I notice --  I'm sure she'd agree that when you get to be around a lot you see the whole picture.  My trepidation of him dissippated at great gatherings at his house but also when he held a duck for me to pet because I'm as afraid of precarious flying birds as precariously flying bosses.  What would become my husband was at my interview, another significant person in my life overall, as he patiently helped me work on all the things that were necessary for me to get back to college, get into the incredibly choosy occupational therapy program, which has led the way to what you see before you today. 

I'm  proud to say Bill would load me up with work-- as he did everyone -- and in barely enough time to get it all done -- and I never missed a deadline. Much of what I did was made more difficult because I didn't discover until midway that I had an undiagnosed visual processing learning disability and I know that perplexed him and many types of work take me much longer to accomplish that you'd expect.  Although, there was one time when I would have with a printer malfunction at the last hour before FedEx, but he then admitted, laughing, that the deadline had been changed but he'd not told me since then he could give me another project.  He then wanted to go out after work and I think it's one of the first times I remember being so mad I just couldn't deal with it.  But obviously we got over it.  We got sideways with each other only once, regarding where my office was going to be related to his when we brought in a new administrative support person who I thought should learn from being in the room with me how to do the job, as I knew I had something ahead of me to be moving onto someday.  I do know he remembers that evening, but I don't know that he realized I was having a lot of health issues (migraines, fatigue) -- at the time I really didn't recognize how serious they were going to be actually, so those around me wouldn't have been able to know really.  I think he had hoped I'd just stay there and work for him forever.  In many regards that would have been great but I hope he'll someday appreciate that he was only providing another layer to my foundation of knowledge in order to hopefully go and accomplish my own personal best as well. 

This evening I'll have to acknowledge in my own way from halfway across the state of Colorado, as I'm here for Lumigrate today ... next to Colorado National Monument (a NPS site which is involved in the air quality effort).  It would be really fun for me, as it's at the home of someone who was 'there back then too' and I see all the names of people who have been added since that I simply have never met, and since the building they are in was furnished in those days with partitions and desks and chairs that I helped procure, it just has always appealed to go back and visit sometime.  Hopefully another day he and I can drop by together and say 'hi' maybe.  There are the "weather wienies", stormchasers, experts on 'snow',  people who worked on the NOAA programs used to forecast tornadoes, and the man you'll see every year predict the hurricanes for the US -- and Bill -- ALL very interesting people.  I hope they have a great send out.  Important to note that many of us receive our weather information from people who have been trained at the neighboring atmospheric sciences program and the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere also contributed a great deal to the success of the program. 

When I was fortunate enough to get up there to see a bunch of them in June, Bill said that he'd received an NPS award and I have found online and included the information for that below.  I believe he said the EPA gave him a lifetime achievement award or something along those lines and it was the first time in the history of the EPA that they'd given one to someone outside the EPA (though he was hired by NPS from the EPA if I remember his resume correctly -- I should, I used to update it ALL the time).    Again, please scroll below and COMMENT if you're so inclined.  Embellish what I've said, add your own twist, correct me if I've been wrong and know that I hope this can serve as a nice gift for Bill to read in the coming days when he has 'nothing to do'. 

Director’s Award for Excellence in Natural Resource Research William C. Malm, PhD, Air Resources Division, Fort Collins Malm is the coordinator for the NPS visibility/particulate research and monitoring program. He has designed and built instruments to measure the effects of atmospheric aerosols on the scenic qualities of landscape features, as well as their optical and chemical properties. He formulated radiation transfer algorithms that allow pictorial visualization of aerosol scattering and absorption effects.

The awards will be presented at the George Wright Society Meeting in Portland, OR on March 5, 2009. Each recipient will receive a $2,000 cash award, a framed certificate, and a limited edition bronze bison sculpture.

For those who are reading here that know Bill, please add a 'Comment' below.  OR if you haven't had the pleasure but want to contribute, YOU are welcome as well... as y'all know, at Lumigrate we like to provide an area for information exchange.  It occurred to me to share this here, as "air pollution" is part of what gets added to the 'barrel' in our complimentary ($0.00) 20 minute video titled "Chronic Illness: Full Barrel Syndrome".