[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 170 (Monday, December 10, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12770-S12771]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              IN MEMORY OF JAMES CLOEREN AND JERRY NORTON.

 Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, on October 30, the State of 
Maryland, our Nation, their families and the Johns Hopkins Applied 
Physics Laboratory lost James Cloeren and Jerry Norton in a tragic 
accident. They died while flying their experimental aircraft near 
Westminster, MD.
  James Cloeren and Jerry Norton were engineers and world renowned 
experts on ultra-stable oscillators used in satellites for navigation. 
They spent their careers advancing the technical development of our 
national space program, both defense and civilian. They built custom 
oscillators for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the European Space Agency. Oscillators 
are precision instruments, similar to a clock that would lose no more 
than a second in a million years. Clocks on data-collecting satellites 
must be precise and endure radical changes in temperatures and shifts 
in magnetic pull. The Jet Propulsion Lab described their instruments as 
``the finest in the solar system in terms of the cleanliness and 
stability of their output''. At the time of their deaths they were 
working to complete four oscillators that are the heart and soul of a 
pair of NASA satellites. Using ultra stable oscillators, the satellite 
will measure small gravitational perturbations that reflect climate 
changes. The satellite program is called GRACE. Their colleagues at APL 
are working hard to finish Mr. Cloeren's and Mr. Norton's work. NASA 
has directed APL to affix the names of Jim and Jerry upon the 
oscillators in recognition of their pioneering work in space. What a 
fitting monument that these two satellites will carry the names of 
these two colleagues who were united in work, friendship and death.
  Mr. Cloeren had worked at APL for 20 years and Mr. Norton for 40 
years.
  Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jim's wife Sally of Westminster, 
MD and daughter Cathy Racow of Boca Raton, FL and Jerry's wife Ann and

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daughters Maria Lawall, Jane, Tina and 4 grandchildren of 
Marriottsville, MD.

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