I was doing my dissertation research on turbulent jets with Victor Goldschmidt at Purdue when he and the late Bob Nerem, then at Ohio State, were the principals behind the first Fluids Retreat in 1973. As I recall, Victor had connections with the church camp where it was held. I know I attended in 1973 and 1974, as I took photos, and probably 1975 and maybe 1976. I stayed in fluid mechanics for my whole career, teaching ME at U. of New Mexico (’76 – ’81), doing research at Lockheed Aircraft in Atlanta (’81 – ’88), and teaching in Mechanical & Aero Engineering at Oklahoma State (1989 – 2012). Now retired in Santa Fe.

The retreat was modeled after the APS DFD meetings with short talks and abstracts only. There were ground rules, some of which were a little different for the early ‘70s. I believe that one was that the presented work had to be new, not yet published. The innovative ones were that one could not use titles – no referring to someone as Professor or Doctor – everyone was equal.

The exposure to other’s research and meeting students and faculty doing the research was really valuable. I learned a lot technically and made friends whom I kept seeing through many years. I think I met John Foss and Mike Werle at the first retreat and maybe Hasan Nagib, though Victor took us up to IIT on a visit which may have been earlier. There were lots of other interesting faculty I met including Mark Morkovin (lived in Oak Park where I was born), Bob Brodkey (he loved NM, too), and Isaac Greber (Isaac passed last November – my last interaction with him is in my handout on Richardson’s Turbulence Poem which is in the uploads). I even got to know others from Purdue better. I remember riding back in a car with a bunch of Purdue CFD guys. Doug Abbott said something along the lines of “Damn experimentalists think they are God because they can see things!” I also remember interesting research. One of Bob Nerem’s students gave a memorable talk on the blood flow measurements they were doing inserting hot film anemometer probes into live horse aortas!

There also was non-technical fun with volleyball and the nightly trips to the (Green?) Frog tavern. Some of that is a blur. I do remember when the coasters started being awards for something or other, maybe violating the rules. I have uploaded some photos from the 1974 Retreat here (let me know if you can identify more than Bill Schultz and I can!) and they also are in an album on Flickr with some more photos at:  https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjAoYW6

All in all, I am very glad the Retreat has continued. I certainly enjoyed and benefited from the Retreats and hope all the rest of you do, too!