Obituaries

William Henderson / Jean Labrousse

William Keith (Keith) Henderson
16 September 1926 – 28 January 2011

The birth of the WMO World Weather Watch (WWW) in the 1960s with its focus on the implementation of a Global Telecommunications System (GTS) for rapid exchange of meteorological information between WWW World, Regional and National Meteorological Centres brought a new generation of communications engineers onto the international meteorological scene. One such engineer-in-a-hurry, seen often around WMO Headquarters in the 1960s and early 1970s, who played a key role in the early design of the GTS and who maintained a life-long commitment to international meteorological cooperation was Keith Henderson of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Keith joined the Bureau in 1960 as a communications engineer from the Australian Post Master General’s (PMG) Department and retired in 1986 as head of all the Bureau’s observations, engineering, communications, satellite and infrastructure activities.

Keith was born at Warrnambool, Western Victoria into a dairy farming family of Scottish descent. His primary education was at a one-room country school. After the death of both parents, Keith and his sisters moved into Warrnambool where Keith was raised by his sisters and an aunt. After secondary school, he joined the PMG, in 1942, as a trainee technician. He spent 18 years with the PMG becoming an engineer through internal examinations.

When Keith joined the Bureau in 1960, it relied on the PMG’s Department for most of its communications services. Weather reports were lodged as telegrams collected, sorted and delivered to forecasting offices by teleprinter, from the central telegraph offices. Forecasts were distributed by the same system. PMG charges for this were a major budget item for the Bureau. The Bureau also used facsimile transmitters to send charts to its major forecasting offices and to transmitting stations operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) which broadcast Australian synoptic reports and weather charts throughout the region. The RAAF also received similar broadcasts from Indonesia and New Zealand and relayed them to the Bureau. The system had become the main method of international data exchange. Two small Bureau units in Melbourne and Darwin handled the interchange with the RAAF.

Keith’s first main task when he was brought into the Bureau was to keep this system working while planning a new data collection system based on ‘Telex’ to take over from weather telegrams. But a more immediate challenge was to produce better flood forecasts following the disastrous New South Wales floods of 1955; particularly for the McLeay Valley in NSW where a flood forecasting system had been developed but needed automatic rain and river measuring systems reporting by radio. There was also the challenge of setting up radars and automatic weather stations desperately needed for cyclone and flood warning. Keith set about these many tasks with the no-nonsense can-do resolve that was to characterise his entire career in the Bureau. He established a communications section, hired trained technicians, brought in experts to design and implement receiving and display equipment for the new meteorological satellites and began the redesign of the entire Australian meteorological data collection and distribution arrangements just as the concept of the World Weather Watch was beginning to take shape on the international scene.

So, in 1965, Keith, by now a senior engineer driving a host of innovative projects on the local scene, headed to Geneva for his first WMO meeting to begin the design of the GTS. Over the following seven years, he participated in a further eight such meetings in Europe and the USA. Although he developed a reputation as a tough, hard negotiator, he formed many friendships with others involved in the development of the GTS. Few Australians visiting WMO Headquarters in the early 1970s were not confronted with the opening question “And how is Keith?”.

Back in Australia, the Director of Meteorology, Dr Bill Gibbs, had brought all the Bureau’s communications, observations engineering and related activities together in a new Facilities Branch and, in 1975, Keith succeeded his meteorological mentor, Harry Ashton, as Assistant Director (Facilities).

A year later he became a foundation member of the Frosterley Club (the Club of long-serving Bureau Officers) and, at a lunch, found himself seating along side Dagmar Foukal. She had joined the Bureau in the early 1950s as the ‘princess of the punch girls’. Over time, she had become the ‘queen of the data entry ladies’. They married and, many years later, in retirement, became the power couple of the retired Bureau as Keith took on the Presidency of the Frosterley Club.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Keith assumed many new and difficult technical and management responsibilities in the Bureau, always with his characteristic focus on getting things done rather than sitting around talking about getting things done. Technologically, he had, in his quarter of a century in the Bureau, revolutionised Australian meteorology and built up a group of protégés who were more than ready to take over when he decided to call it a day.

Keith retired form the Bureau on 2 December 1986. He remained an active member of the Frosterley Club and other retired Bureau Officer groups until his death. He travelled widely with Dagmar meeting her relatives in Europe and some former colleagues/adversaries, and now friends, from his WMO GTS days. He also found time at last to spend time on music in which he had a great interest. Sadly, in the latter stages of his life, obvious changes, not for the better, appeared. He announced he was giving up on his computer because “It is too complicated for me” and he had to stop driving his car because he would forget where to go or what to do. It was becoming obvious that family and friends were facing ‘the long goodbye’. Dagmar’s fortitude and perseverance enabled him to get about on public transport almost to the end.

Keith, however, in accordance with his long-held beliefs, saw that, if it was to be with dignity, the time had come for his life to end. And so it was to be. His many friends and colleagues were greatly saddened to learn of his passing on 28 January 2011. But for all those who joined Dagmar and Keith’s family on a wet and stormy evening in Melbourne on 4 February 2011 for a celebration of Keith’s life, it was, indeed, an occasion for inspiration and exhilaration, as well as sadness, as former colleagues reflected on the achievements and idiosyncrasies of one of the most colourful Bureau characters of his generation.

All of Keith’s former friends and protégés in the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, many themselves now also retired, and those still remaining who did battle with him in WMO fora in the early years of the World Weather Watch, treasure the memory of this enigmatic, brusque, loyal and loveable man with his good engineer’s pragmatism and his enduring tolerance of lesser achievers - and even of meteorologists who were bold enough to question his judgement on engineering matters!

Keith is survived by his beloved Dagmar, his three children from his earlier marriage to Nanette (dec) and his nine grandchildren and great grandchildren who had become the centre of his life in his late retirement years.

Sue Barrell, Don Handcock and John Zillman.

Jean Labrousse, ancien Directeur de la Météorologie Nationale, est décédé samedi 9 juillet 2011 à l’âge de 79 ans.

A la Direction de la Météorologie Nationale (DMN), après un premier poste au Togo, il fit assez rapidement parler sa fibre pédagogique en intégrant l’ENM, où il rencontra en particulier Jean Lepas, qui allait devenir un de ses plus fidèles amis et collaborateurs.

Curieux de tout ce qui pouvait ouvrir des perspectives d’avenir, il orienta ensuite sa carrière vers le traitement de l’information météorologique. Il fonda ainsi successivement le centre de calcul de la DMN (le CETI) et, en 1974, celui du Centre européen de prévision météorologique à moyen terme (CEPMMT). A Reading, il comprit rapidement toute la signification de l’évolution radicale vers le calcul vectoriel que proposait Seymour Cray. Il succéda à Axel Wiin-Nielsen au poste de Directeur du CEPMMT qu’il occupa de 1980 à 1981.

Nommé en 1982, Directeur de la Météorologie Nationale, il y mena pendant cinq ans une politique de modernisation sans précédent dans de nombreux domaines, qui fit notamment de la DMN un acteur de premier plan dans le domaine de la prévision numérique. Après son remplacement par André Lebeau en décembre 1986, et quelques mois d’attente au Conseil Général des Ponts et Chaussées, il devint en 1987, Directeur du Département Recherche et Développement de l’Organisation Météorologique Mondiale (OMM).

De 1991 à 1993, à son retour en France, il dirigea le Département terre océan espace environnement du Ministère de la recherche et de l’espace. De 1994 à 1997, il fut en poste à Bruxelles où il anima avec détermination le Secrétariat scientifique du programme de Coopération Européenne dans le domaine de la recherche scientifique et technique (CEE-COST). Il termina sa carrière au Conseil Général des Ponts et Chaussées tout en contribuant aux travaux de la Caisse française de développement et du fonds français pour l’environnement mondial.

De 1998 à 2003, il a présidé l'Association des Anciens de la Météorologie (AMM) en lui donnant une nouvelle dimension ; il en était devenu président d'honneur en apportant jusqu'à ces dernières semaines un concours actif au fonctionnement de l'association, notamment en présidant le jury du prix "Patrick Brochet" 2011 de l'AAM.

Jean Labrousse laissera aussi le souvenir d’un être généreux, chaleureux et ouvert, aux grandes qualités humaines et relationnelles. Il avait le don de créer et d’entretenir des relations de profonde confiance, savait s’entourer des conseils de ses collaborateurs, à tous les niveaux sous sa responsabilité, et ne décidait qu’après avoir bien examiné toutes les possibilités et leurs implications. Il apportait encore ces derniers mois son concours à de multiples organisations dans lesquelles ses avis pertinents étaient particulièrement attendus. Tout au long de sa carrière, il ne s’était jamais départi de son sens aigu du contact et … de son accent hautement reconnaissable, de Carcassonne.

Météo France

An obituary by Lennart Bengtsson and Paul Hardaker (in English) is published in the October issue of Weather, Royal Meteorological Society