Sam Gerard, 1926-2010
Robert “Sam” Gerard died peacefully at his home in Palisades on January 28, 2010, after a long illness. Sam was born on February 4, 1926, in Huntington, Long Island, where his father, Leo, had a seafood restaurant on the Jericho Turnpike. Sam attended local elementary schools and started high school at Mount Hermon, in Greenfield, Massachusetts but he was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of 15 and spent time in a Long Island sanitarium. Once cured, he briefly attended Huntington High School. After six weeks there he passed all the New York State Regents exams and was accepted as a student at Cornell University’s Hotel School.
Sam discovered he was more interested in science than in learning about hotels and restaurants. He spent a summer with the Geological Survey in Alaska, then transferred to the University of New Mexico and began a major in geology. His parents were not willing to support him in this new endeavor, so he worked in the summers and paid his own tuition. He met his wife Alice at the University in the spring of 1951 — she also had transferred from an eastern college —and they were married in September of that year.
Simon, the Gerards’ first child, was born in May 1952, the same month his parents graduated.
The Gerards spent the next year in Montreal where Sam had been accepted into the Master’s program in geography. Returning to the United States in the summer of 1953, they settled in Palisades, home of Alice’s parents. The next year, 1954, Sam started work at Lamont Geological Observatory as a research scientist. He remained at Lamont for 37 years, eventually moving from science, where he was studying ocean circulation, to the Marine Department, where he served as the Marine Superintendent and as MarineTechnical Coordinator.
Two more children joined the family: William “Tony,” born in 1954, and Annie, born in 1955. In 1957 the Gerards built a house in Palisades, the same house where Sam died 52 years later. The house is full of unusual lamps, desks and tables that he created over the years.
During his years at Lamont, Sam designed, built and refined ocean floor and mid-water sampling equipment that was subsequently introduced on board Lamont’s research vessels, the R/V Vema and the R/V Conrad, and later adopted by other scientific institutions. He was known for his mechanical creativity and for his elegant solutions to engineering problems. Among many accomplishments, Sam designed the famous “Gerard Barrel”—a water-sampling instrument— and he discovered an undersea seamount off the coast of Africa, now named the Vema Seamount. He was also instrumental in identifying the location of the Thresher, a nuclear submarine that sank off the coast of New England in 1963. Sam’s last major project before retiring from the Observatory in 1991 was to oversee the conversion of the R/V Ewing into a fully outfitted oceanographic ship and part of the U.S. fleet of academic research vessels.
He and Alice enjoyed traveling to visit archaeological sites and cooperated in researching and writing about the controversial site of Glozel in France. He also enjoyed spending time with his grandchildren Perri and Cory. Sam is survived by Alice, his wife of 58 years, by his sisters Genevieve Conroy and Carol McCann, his son William, his daughter Annie and his grandchildren Perri and Cory. The family plans to celebrate Sam Gerard’s life with a memorial party at the Palisades Community Center, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm on Saturday, March 13.
Contributions in Sam’s name can be sent to: Development Office, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, 61 Route 9W, PO Box 1000, Palisades, NY 10964-8000 Checks should be made out to Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.