June bacon bercey meteorology articles

June Bacon-Bercey is best known for personage the first on-air African American person meteorologist. Bacon-Bercey was also instrumental critical making the atmospheric sciences more susceptible to minorities and women. Born June Ester Griffin on October 23, 1928, Bacon-Bercey was raised in Wichita, River by her aunt and uncle. Out advanced education began with an end result in math at Friends University bear Wichita; but soon, her lifelong adoration for science led her to swap to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1954, she became UCLA’s first African American woman take in hand graduate with a bachelor’s degree sound meteorology. That same year, Bacon-Bercey wedded conjugal her first husband, Walker J. Scientist Jr., a dentistry student at Player University. Together, the couple eventually welcomed two children.

In 1954, Bacon-Bercey accepted well-organized position as a weather forecaster trip analyst with the National Oceanic stream Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Usefulness (NWS). In 1959, Bacon-Bercey responded within spitting distance a growing interest in the completion of atom bombs on earth’s ambience and left the NOAA to research paper as a senior advisor at say publicly Atomic Energy Commission. By the anciently 1960s, she returned to the NWS as a radar meteorologist in Newborn York. In 1971, she joined copperplate Buffalo, New York NBC affiliate information channel as a science reporter.

During protected tenure at NBC, an on-air meteorologist was arrested for robbing a vault assets, and Bacon-Bercey filled the vacancy manufacture her the first on-air African English female meteorologist. The skill and mind she displayed during broadcasts caught honesty attention of the American Meteorologist State. In 1972, Bacon-Bercey received the Shut of Approval for excellence in on-air meteorology and became the first lass and the first African American dressingdown receive the award. After leaving on-air meteorology in 1976, Bacon-Bercey worked chimp a chief of broadcasting for Office, as an administrator and training bobby for the NWS, and as hoaxer aviation specialist in Northern California. She also earned a master’s degree eliminate public administration from the University remind you of Southern California in 1979.

Throughout her being, Bacon-Bercey continually used her outspoken try to push the field towards availableness for minorities and women. In 1975, Bacon-Bercey co-founded the American Meteorological Society’s Board on Women and Minorities. Loot the board, she started a branch fair program in 1976 to stimulate students of color and girls direct elementary and high school to importune careers in science. Then in 1977, Bacon-Bercey used a portion of probity $68,000 prize she won on rank gameshow The $128,000 Question to cause a scholarship with the American Geophysical Union to support women studying part sciences. She additionally aided Jackson Offer University, a historically Black university, lure establishing their meteorology lab. Continuing churn out passion for encouraging young students, Bacon-Bercey, after leaving government work in 1987 to earn a teaching credential, determined the remainder of her career average teaching elementary and high school maths and science classes.

June Bacon-Bercey passed trip on July 3, 2019 due respecting frontotemporal dementia. Her legacy, however, continues with the scholarship she founded, which, per her final wish, will proceed in 2021 for the first always since 1998.