April 17, 2003

Cecil Green Memorial

The original notice sent of Cecil Green's passing by Dr. John Orcutt, Deputy Director of SIO and former Director of IGPP:

Dr. Cecil H. Green, a long-time colleague of scientists at Scripps and the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green IGPP and a friend and major benefactor of the Institution, died on Saturday, 12 April, in the Scripps Green Hospital where he had lived for several years. Cecil was born at the very end of the nineteenth century and lived into the twenty-first; in less than four months he would have celebrated his 103rd birthday. Dr. Green developed his initial relationship with Scripps through Judith and Walter Munk; Cecil helped the Munks with the plumbing in their new house in the 50's.

Freeman Gilbert, while a student at MIT, first met Cecil in 1952. His first gift (1964) to IGPP was the Donal Hord sculpture, Spring Stirring, now in the garden near the Munk Conference Room.

Probably the most important gift to IGPP was the endowment of the Green Scholar program in 1972.  The first scholar was Xavier LePichon and the two most recent scholars (119th and 120th in order) are Gary Pavlis and Thorsten Becker.

In 1978 Cecil helped the University of California and IGPP acquire the Cecil and Ida Green Piñon Flat Geophysical Observatory and the first station in the IDA network was installed in 1974 in Australia with funds made available by Cecil. In 1976 he helped Scripps purchase a modern multichannel seismic system for geophysical research at sea.

Most recently, Dr. Green helped with the construction of the Roger and Ellen Revelle Laboratory at IGPP as well as the cable-stayed bridge - Scripps Crossing. Of course, he's done an enormous number of small things for us including awarding the first Systemwide Fellowships at the celebration of IGPP's 50th anniversary. Cecil has played an integral role in the history of Scripps and IGPP and we are all saddened by his death.

IGPP will hold an informal memorial service at 9:00 am on Thursday (17 April) in the garden by Spring Stirring - all at Scripps are invited. A memorial service will be held that afternoon at 1:00 pm in La Jolla at St. James-By-The-Sea Episcopal Church.

Order of speakers at the IGPP memorial

• Bob Parker* - Director of the Green IGPP.
• Freeman Gilbert* - former Director of the Green IGPP.
• John Orcutt - former Director of the Green IGPP.
• Jon Berger - Director of Project IDA at the Green IGPP.
• Ed Frieman - former Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
• Walter Munk - former Director of the Green IGPP.

* - read by Charles Kennel, Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Bob Parker
Director of the Green IGPP

Fellow Members of IGPP,
I think it can be said without exaggeration that, with the passing away of Cecil Green, we have lost one of the most influential people in the history of the institute. You are all aware of the buildings and programs that Cecil's generosity to us has made possible: for example, the Green Scholar Program, the Revelle Laboratory, the Pinon Flat Observatory, Scripps Crossing, and countless contributions in matching funds to research projects from the Green Foundation. Teddy Bullard, my PhD advisor who knew a thing or two about running organizations, once wrote that nothing was more valuable in the life of an institution than the availability of a certain amount of unrestricted funds, money that did not come from the establishment in the normal pipeline. Such funds, he wrote, could make all the difference, for example, to fix problems in an emergency, to enable the Director to take a few risks and above all to give the institution some flexibility and freedom from the suffocating oversight of accountants and bean counters, who invariably lack imagination, yet have so much control. With a modicum of independence from the parent organization comes a collective cohesion, and the raising of institutional morale: we are, at least to a degree, the masters of our own destinies, not just cogs in the state clockwork. IGPP amply illustrates the accuracy of Teddy's observations: we owe so much to Cecil and Ida Green.

The Green's at home

Most of us, I believe, on hearing the story of how Cecil and his friends mortgaged their houses and borrowed all they could to buy Geophysical Services Inc in 1941, must have thought how lucky he was that the gamble paid off: A small geophysical exploration company turned into the technological giant of Texas Instruments. But of course luck, as the saying goes, favors the prepared mind, which is another way of saying luck had very little to do with it. There is an element of risk in every aspect of life, and we should recognize that Cecil was a most fortunate man. He was an extraordinarily generous man too, and he spent all his later years sharing his good fortune with others. And finally we must understand that he was, as his earlier career clearly proves, a wise man, who in later life chose wisely how to share his wealth. We at IGPP are very grateful for both his wisdom and his good fortune.

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Freeman Gilbert
former Director of the Green IGPP

My first meeting with Cecil Green was in the late winter of 1952. I was a junior at MIT in the Department of Geology and Geophysics. Cecil was President of Geophysical Service, Inc. (GSI) and one of the founders of Texas Instruments (TI). He visited MIT to interview students for his summer program. The year before, he and some colleagues in Dallas had started the program for college students interested in Geophysics. Several oil companies and a few prospecting companies participated. The students spent about one week in Dallas visiting research facilities and attending lectures. Each student then was assigned to a GSI seismic reflection crew for the remainder of the summer and was required to write a report to Cecil at the end of the program.

Cecil visited a few universities around the country and solicited faculty recommendations for students. He interviewed each candidate and made the final selection himself. In the first year, 1951, one of the chosen eight was Milo Backus, George's brother. In the second year I was one of the eight. After the initial week in Dallas I traveled by train from Dallas to Laredo, Texas. I changed trains in San Antonio. I was wearing work clothes and carrying a duffel bag. An Air Force sergeant ordered me to get into 'that line' to ship out to boot camp. I had to talk fast to persuade him that I was (almost) a prospector on my way to find oil.

Ida and Cecil Green

The summer in Laredo was hot and dry but very educational. It was my first experience with fieldwork for a commercial purpose and I feel that it helped shape my career in many ways. In particular, I was impressed then and remain impressed now that the president of a large company would take the time and effort to interview several twenty-year-olds and personally select a few of them for his summer program. That was Cecil. He was a 'people person' if ever there was one and he always took a keen, personal interest in everything that he did.

The philanthropy of Cecil and Ida Green is legendary. They gave many tens of millions of dollars. Yet, I believe that the quality of what they did outshines the quantity. One example here at IGPP is the Green Scholar Program. It has helped more than a hundred scientists of all ages and it has helped IGPP as well. I leave it to another speaker to tell that story.

I suggest that we designate August 6 as Cecil Green Day at IGPP. Each August 6 we can get together and remember a truly remarkable human being.

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John Orcutt
former Director of the Green IGPP

In the great age of exploration that began at least 500 years ago, private individuals, kings and queens provided the support necessary to send ships abroad to discover new lands. However, unlike Cecil Green, these benefactors did not actually participate in the adventures they spawned. Cecil reveled in a close association with those with whom he worked and loved the celebration of these relationships. He was truly engaged since the fifties in what can only be characterized as Creative Philanthropy.

I was talking with IGPP's (and Scripps') illustrator, Breck Betts yesterday. He had just finished one of the posters you’ve seen this morning and he marveled at the number of people who dropped by to learn about Cecil's life. This memorial provides us with yet again another opportunity to recollect his fundamental impact on who we are today.

Cecil was a global thinker and, while Texas had provided him with so much, his interests and philanthropy extended around the planet. Prof. Robert Schrok of MIT wrote of Cecil:

"To think seriously of giving to help others is commendable;
To give is the essence of humanness and nobility;
To give generously and with deep purpose is the greatest act of all because it requires thought, effort, and discrimination of the highest order."

Cecil was born at the end of the nineteenth century in Manchester and survived the 1906 earthquake 6 years later. He started his undergraduate career at the University of British Columbia and finished it at MIT in electrical engineering. He worked a variety of jobs with GE, another company that became ITT, and GSI in the twenties. At a critical moment, after returning to ITT from GSI, in 1930 a senior officer in GSI wrote to him:

In return for this unusual rendering of service, the company is willing to pay an unusual compensation. They give you a monthly salary of from $450 to $500, A Buick eight, with all car expenses paid, and an excellent opportunity with a promising organization. Personally, I am more than pleased with my situation, as I am sure that five years of this work will make it possible for me to occupy a strictly executive position, at a good income, from which we might be able to retire at an early age.

Well, Cecil, old dear, I have tried to tell you the facts of the position as clearly as possible, without making it either too bright or too gloomy. I would like to know if you would be interested in accepting an offer as party chief under these conditions. I realize that it will be difficult for you to make a decision without further information, so won't you write me, and ask any questions that might occur, so that I can inform you fully.

Cecil owned GSI by 1941 and, based on the work the company did in electronics during WWII, he, with Eugene McDermott, also at GSI, formed TI in 1951.

Walter Munk and Cecil first talked about a program at IGPP in 1969 that would bring visitors to IGPP on a regular basis. Cecil ran into a problem with UC in 1971 in that the administration wanted to mingle his funding with the Regents endowment fund. After a lot of work, the university agreed to an independent investment mechanism in 1971. The Green Foundation for Earth Sciences was incorporated shortly thereafter and Xavier LePichon was the first Green Scholar shortly afterward. I had the pleasure this past week of dining with Xavier at a joint meeting of the EGS and AGU in Nice. The meeting was poor, the food and wine were excellent. The 120th Green Scholar is now at IGPP. XX of these Green Scholars, Guy Masters, Bernard Minster, Peter Shearer, Mark Zumberge, are now on the faculty here. It's been a remarkable success - the program has, in a very real way, helped define IGPP.

Cecil Green and IGPP Green Scholars in Cabo San Lucas in 1995.

I have lots of memories of Cecil. I knew him for nearly three decades and was able to visit him the last time this past Saturday morning. Early in my career at IGPP as Director, I recall some pretty tense discussions over investments of the foundation's assets with Cecil and Bill Schofield. Lots of the really pleasant memories were the annual "picnics" at the Cecil and Ida Green Piñon Flat Geophysical Observatory above Palm Springs. There's a great picture of Cecil and myself on a door in the Revelle Lab refueling one of the buses carrying us back and forth. I also recall one little test - Cecil asked during one of the trips if I played golf. I answered, honestly, "no," I countered by asking him if he did and he replied, "no, I've never had the time." I passed that one, thank God. He loved these trips - he always asked all the neighbors of the observatory to have lunch during the visit and enjoyed talking to each of them about what was done at Piñon and thanking them for their support and forbearance. Another fond memory that involved Cecil's philanthropy was joining, with Sharyn, the Warden of Green College, Oxford, one evening for dinner in the college's Radcliffe Observatory. Green College had been constructed in an extraordinarily sensitive way around the ancient, cyclidrical observatory. Joining the then President of UBC, Robert Strangway, in the Green Faculty Club for lunch is another fond recollection of Cecil’s extraordinary philanthropy. In geophysics, you will never be far from a gift from Cecil Green!

John Orcutt watches Cecil refuel one of the buses while returning from a Piñon Flat picnic.

Cecil, we will miss you enormously, but we will always remember with fondness the huge amount of time and support you lavished on us.

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Jon Berger
Director of Project IDA at the Green IGPP

As I look around today the these photos I am reminded of the once again of how much I owe to Cecil and how much I will miss my dear friend.

You have only to read his obituaries to appreciate that the list of Cecil's good works is long and impressive, full of important people and prestigious institutions. Yet as all who knew him can tell you, Cecil was as unpretentious as he was generous. Student or Nobel Laureate, Captain of Industry or caretaker at PFO, great or small, Cecil would treat them similarly with his kind and friendly manner. You just couldn't help liking this man.

In my case, I had the good fortune to meet Cecil when I was still a graduate student. He used to stop by once a year so and give us students a travelogue by way of a seminar. Who will ever forget the show of his 1939 trip to Arabia and the anecdotes and tales that accompanied his slides? These were very early color slides including several of Cecil in native costume with camels attending. I recall him saying to us with a grin "Incidentally, I had to smuggle the undeveloped film across several mid-eastern borders sealed in tea- tins as color processing could only be done in the US at those days."

My first vivid memory of Cecil was a picnic we had in the high dessert near Anza sometime in 1970 (I think). We had gone up there to show him the site of what we hoped would be a new geophysical observatory. We stopped beside the highway overlooking Deep Canyon and, as luck would have it, a family of Big-Horn Sheep happened by. Cecil, ever the photographer, quickly jumped up and snapped away pictures which often featured in some of his later travelogues. This was the first - and last - time I ever saw these rare animals but it marked the beginning of a long friendship with Cecil. He was to have a major impact on my professional life.

In 1996, we celebrated 25 years of picnics at the observatory Cecil and Ida help found at this site. On the board you can see a photo taken at the official opening of the Cecil & Ida Green Piñon Flat Observatory. As always, the Greens encouraged us to share our assets as they themselves were doing. Cecil liked to leverage his philanthropy, supporting things that would spread the benefit to many others beyond the direct beneficiaries and the Observatory is a good example as its facilities are open to all.

The official opening of the Cecil and Ida Green Piñon Flat Observatory on July 27 1980. From left to right: William Nierenberg, Ida Green, Walter Munk, Cecil Green, Frank Wyatt, Jon Berger, Richard Atkinson, Freeman Gilbert

As you all know, the Greens provided the essential startup funding for Project IDA, named of course for his wife and partner IDA. Their continued support and encouragement helped make the IDA network, a major facility for global seismology - another example of Green leverage. One of the photographs on the board was taken at the 1995 symposium on the occasion of the 20 anniversary of Project IDA held at Cabo San Lucas. On the rocks of the cape, arrayed behind Cecil, are many of the nation's top geophysicists including 6 former Green Scholars (another photo on the board). Some of the home institutions of these participants were recipients of Green largesse but virtually all of them have benefited from Project IDA through the data that is provided to the community.

Cecil Green at the 20th anniversary of Project IDA, Cabo San Lucas in 1995

Over the years Cecil visited quite a few of the stations. He would often drop by IGPP at the commencement of one of his trips to enquire what IDA stations lay along his route. Finally, my colleague Holly Given and I decided we would organize a tour of the IDA stations in Russia during the waning days Soviet Union when such things could be fairly easily and safely organized. Somehow word that a great American philanthropist was coming seem to precede us wherever we went and Cecil would be accosted by a constant stream of bizarre proposals by complete strangers. One day it would be a group trying to interest him in a huge panoramic camera, the next a man with a chicken centrifuge that was somehow to get rid of salmonella bacteria. In one of the pictures on the board he is being demonstrated the feats of a Soviet hydrofoil on Lake Baikal. You can see that he is thoroughly enjoying himself. I know from personal experience that this trip supplied him with a large stock of especially good tales to accompany his slides.

Cecil would often say that good health and good friends were his greatest assets. God gave him his good health for a century but his good friends he made himself. For many of us here, he was not only a benefactor and an inspiration but also a good friend.

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Ed Frieman
former Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography

I would like to reflect for a few moments on Cecil and his relations with SIO as I saw them during my watch. The extraordinary generosity of the Greens in both medical and educational arenas has been noted many times. It is not often that persons of great wealth choose to strip themselves bare so to speak and give all their money away to causes or institutions they believe in. Yet in many ways that is what Cecil and Ida did and then Cecil continued that practice after her death.

As you have heard IGPP was a major beneficiary of Cecil's munificence, but there was another side to Cecil that I believe many at IGPP will recognize. He was essentially a funny, warm and caring person and on occasion took almost childlike delight in some of the honors he received.

I remember the time when he returned to La Jolla after being awarded an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth in 1991 and we teased him by calling him Sir Cecil. There came over his face an abashed but small and delighted smile, which sort of said, I'm really pleased, but how could this have happened to me?

Cecil early on was a major benefactor of the UCSD faculty club and in his honor they created the Green Dessert. It was a concoction of ice cream with some very sweet sticky green stuff on top. Cecil was utterly delighted with it while many of us sat there on many occasions and struggled to get it down.

You will also remember the great pleasure he took in the annual picnic visits to Piñon Flat observatory. We spoke about it a few years ago and he was rueful about not being able to take that trip as he became more and more infirm.

I'll close with a few more remembrances of him. When IGPP was heavily involved in setting up seismic monitoring sites in far-flung places in the world and in particular in the Soviet Union, he went along on one of those very difficult trips with Holly Givens as his baby sitter and brought back hundreds of slides.

He was ready at the drop of a hat to give a talk on that experience as well as anything else that struck his fancy. He usually said as he climbed up to the dais "Lock the doors" as he was ready to start. He always mentioned that what counted was good luck, good health and good friends. After some time had passed he would say that Ida warned him not to be an old fool and that he should get off the podium. He would then completely ignore his own advice and continue on for a very long time, obviously enjoying himself.

We will miss him sorely not only for his extreme generosity, but also for his genuine warmth and humanity. I think he appreciated us in some way because we were, in his terms, good friends.

Walter Munk
former Director of the Green IGPP

The rain has kept us from sitting outside in front of Donal Hord's statue Spring Stirring. The statue has a special meaning for us. In the early 1960’s, just after we had moved into this laboratory, Cecil had come here after inaugurating the new Green Building at MIT. It is 19 stories high; we are 19 rooms long. Cecil remarked that ours was the more beautiful (he was right on that) and that he wanted to give us a moving-in present. Judith said instantly: Spring Stirring, her favorite Donal Hord statue, then for sale for $16,000.

We had finished dinner at the Green’s. Cecil said: "let's see it." The statue was in Donal's garden in Pacific Beach. Donal had gone to bed. We drove to PB, climbed a fence and looked at it in flashlight. And here we are, forty years later, with Spring Stirring guarding the entrance to the laboratory. At the time we did not know that Donal had left Spring Stirring to Judith; Judith was still in his (unmodified) will when he died a few years later. We will never know whether we would have had the generosity to pass it on to IGPP.

Three years prior we had sat on this site and dreamed about the design of IGPP. Judith had already sketched Spring Stirring into the center of the Wimmer-Yamada conference and reading room patio, south of where an 8,000 year-old Indian kitchen midden had been discovered. From the very beginning we thought in terms of a single story multi-level redwood building overlooking the cliff with carpeted floors to keep the noise down. The then U.C. office of the Architects and Engineers (A & E) gave a negative review to the early drawings: redwood was not a suitable material for a laboratory, the building was to close to the ocean's edge, and the University President was the only one entitled to a carpeted office. When Cecil heard about the negative review he suggested: "why not let O'Neil have a look?" O'Neil Ford was a renowned Dallas architect whom Cecil had retained to humanize all of T.I.'s laboratories. At Cecil's invitation he came for three days and then reported favorably. The A & E office capitulated. We would not be here if it has not been for Cecil's timely intervention.

Many of us in this room today have known Cecil for a long time. Vic Vacquier met Cecil in 1943. Milo Backus (George’s brother) was an early fixture of GSI, and Freeman Gilbert has told you about the GSI summer classes organized by Cecil. Maurice Ewing and I were lecturers one summer in the early fifties. So when Cecil and Ida took a summerhouse in La Jolla in the mid-fifties, he got in touch with us. Judith and I were digging a drain for the patio of our house then under construction when Cecil called: "would it be convenient if I dropped by?" (I remember the words). His prowess with a pick-and-shovel must date back to the early GSI days. The drain is still functioning.

Some years later I was in my office when Cecil called, and again: "would it be convenient if I dropped by?" His proposal was entirely unanticipated: to establish a foundation to support visiting scholars. Cecil had been giving some thought of how a small group (as we were then) could maintain adequate contact with a broad outside community. His solution: a regular program of visiting scholars. The terms of visits: no less than two months (to avoid tourist-oriented visits) and no more than 2 years (to avoid any excuse to the University for not following through with some promised permanent appointments).

The "Green Scholar Program" almost terminated before it started. Cecil was not impressed with the financial record of the University Endowment Trust and had requested that his gift be independently administered. At a crucial meeting in this very room, with Cecil and his attorney Bill Schofield present, the University Treasurer who (rightly) interpreted this as criticism of his performance, formally moved that the gift be rejected: "Why, some others might make their gifts subject to similar conditions," he said, to which the then Chairman of the Board of Regents ("Dutch" Higgs, a San Diego Lawyer and a friend) replied: "that may not be such a bad idea." And here we are, forty years later, having just welcomed Thorston Becker, the 120th Green Scholar.

Two vignettes. Cecil's long-term partner Eugene McDermott had flown his plane to San Diego to pick up Cecil for a trip to Cabo San Lucas. Cecil invited me to come along. Looking out the port at the vast nothingness of Baja California rocks and shrubs, Cecil remarked: "what a place for used razor blades" (as you may gather, he was not a founding environmentalist).

For many years Cecil chaired the MIT visiting committee for Earth Science. We were on the way from the Ritz in downtown Boston (Cecil's favorite hotel) to the meeting in the Green Building. A large radar dome on top of the 19-story building is a familiar signature of the Cambridge skyline. "Where to?" said the Taxi driver, to which Eugene McDermott, who was sitting in front, replied "to the Green Building." "Yes sir" said the Taxi Driver. "So you know the building?" "Yes sir." Eugene was tremendously pleased. He nudged the driver: "you know, that's Mr. Green in the back seat." "You don’t say." "Yes, he is the man who gave the building." The driver was unimpressed: "If I had my name on a building with ONE ball on top, I wouldn't brag about it." Cecil roared with laughter.

Cecil and Ida gave my daughter Kendall a beautiful toy train for her third birthday; it has now gone to my grandchildren. And when Cecil learned that my daughter Edie was looking for her first job in television, he arranged an interview for her with one of his Dallas friends.

As you have heard repeatedly, Cecil liked to talk. When we had the opening ceremony for Revelle Laboratory, Judith arranged that, 15 minutes into Cecil's talk, Nancy McCaleb's dance group would dance their way down in the glass elevator, and then take Cecil by both hands and dance away with him. He didn't mind at all, he loved beautiful women. He would speak often of his tour in the Soviet Union under the watchful eye of Holly Given.

Cecil's 99th was celebrated at our house. The Doctors had warned us that he could stay for only 15 minutes. He gave several talks and stayed for three hours.

I have been trying to define what it is that I most value in our friendship. It is not Cecil's boundless personal generosity. I think it is that he cared so much about his friends. He would think about them. He would sense when some could benefit by receiving help and others could benefit by giving help; and with a gentle hand he would steer them towards a juncture.

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Cecil H. Green August 6, 1900 - April 12, 2003

Download a Cecil Green Retrospective [PDF format]*
* - reproduced with permission from the Leading Edge, April 2004