Writer’s Note: Many people are moving to Vermont or have summer homes here. This is a profile of one couple who owns a summer home in Westminster West. What drew them here? What is their connection to Vermont?
Robert Pappalardo
Bob Pappalardo and his wife Mabel , who he met at Venice Beach and whose parents came originally from near Hong Kong, live near Pasadena, California though they have had a summer home here in Westminster West, VT since 2016. He has been a planetary scientist, in a sense, since he was four years old. Now in his early 40’s, he is lead scientist for the Europa Mission to Jupiter at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena that launched in early October from Cape Canaveral. It will take 5 ½ years for the Europa research craft to arrive in Jupiter’s orbit.
The goal of this audacious NASA project is to determine if there is life – or the potential for life - in the ice-covered oceans of Europa, the second closest of 95 moons of the planet Jupiter. After years of scientific research by countless scientists worldwide looking for other forms of life in our universe, they have found these oceans on Europa, a moon about the width of the US yet with three times earth’s total volume of water - may well be able to harbor life. But for the moment, back to Earth.
Bob Pappalardo was born August 5, 1964 in Syosset, Long Island and grew up in nearby Jericho. His father Sal was a psychologist for the Queens County School system; his mother, Gloria, was a proofreader and taught Special Education in NYC – she was also a poet and hooked rugs. As a 4 and 5 year old, they took their son to The Hayden Planetarium in NYC as well as Vanderbilt Planetarium in nearby Huntington, Long Island.
“I was hooked. At age five, I made planets and solar systems out of crumpled up masking tape. I suspended their moons on toothpicks. At my elementary school library, I took out Isaac Azimov’s ABC’s of Space. Between 1969 and 1972 – when I was five to eight – I watched every minute of TV coverage of the moon landings. At age 7 my dad took me to a Vermont convention of homemade telescope makers.
“When I was six, my Dad and I drove to Vermont to Stellaphane, a site between Chester and Springfield, where amateur telescope makers from across the country convene for a week or so, as they have been each year since 1926. We hoped to observe the aurora borealis. As it happened, it was one of the most glorious displays anyone there had even seen. (Stellaphane will be open July 24-27, 2025.)
“In 10th grade I took an astronomy class at Jericho H.S. In 11th grade the Voyager spacecraft had just passed Jupiter and was sending back information to NASA. Around then Dad took me to The Universe, a cultural institute near Lincoln Center in the city. In 11th grade I became an usher at The Vanderbilt Planetarium in nearby Centreport, LI but my main job was to get people into and out of the dark. As a high school senior, I signed up for a Saturday class in astronomy at Columbia University in NYC.
“Starting in 1982 I studied at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY where Carl Sagan, the most important planetary scientist in the world, was teaching. I learned planetary imaging and began to get more and more interested in geology as applied to planets. I had a very heavy schedule, but I still audited Sagan’s classes with only 10-12 graduate students. I took a class from Frank Drake who developed The Drake Equation related to extra-terrestrial intelligence. I graduated from Cornell in 1985 just as Voyager passed Uranus and left our solar system.”
Bob helped train Apollo astronauts who went to the moon. He taught at The University of Arizona for eight years but in 1988 took a break and returned to Long Island. He again worked at The Vanderbilt Planetarium when, one day, his phone rang. It was a colleague at the U of Arizona. “Come back, finish your doctorate on Ridge and Trough Terrain on Miranda and other satellites of Jupiter.” I did. It was 1994. I finished my dissertation, taught at Brown University from 1995- 2001 with Jim Head who had knowledge of Europa.
“During my time in Providence, my friend Rachel Cohen from my Cornell days (who now caretakes our Westminster West House)- and who was living in Hartland, Vermont - invited me to come up for contradancing at the Gibson Aiken Center in Brattleboro, especially the Brattleboro Dawn Dance. I only made it until 1:00 AM.
“In 2001 I went to the University of Colorado, Boulder where I taught in the Astrophysical and Planetary Science Department. In 2006 I was headhunted the Jep Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, CA, NASA’a center for planetary missions, to work on the Europa Mission to Jupiter. In 2015, the mission to Europa really got going. I became lead scientist.
“In 2010 I met my now wife Mabel. The first question I asked her was “Do you like planets?” She said “Not particularly but I have a feeling you REALLY LIKE planets.”
“I continued working at The Jet Propulsion Labs but I was getting overwhelmed. “That’s it,” I said. Let’s move to Vermont and open a General Store. Mabel started a home search in southern Vermont. We looked all over, and then I remembered Rachel Cohen. Maybe if we bought a place in SE Vermont, she could move from Hartland to live in our new home, caretake and we could visit when we had time.
“When we saw the house for the first time in 2016, we virtually bought it on the spot: the dirt driveway through the woods, the house there in the woods surrounded by a three-acre meadow, a simple house with a caretakers house…. We realized our closest neighbors were in large part sheep grazing at Vermont Shepherd Cheese. We signed on the dotted line.
“And as we lived in the house we learned about southern Vermont: contradances, peace, woods, dirt roads, progressive attitudes, no billboards, genuine people. And over the years we realized the Putney/Brattleboro/Bellows Falls area is like a cultural vortex: music performances of all kinds, film, art, artists, a grand movie theater built in 1938…. We even found a woman who taught my Mom in college who lives in Rockingham. An author whose books I had read – also an expert on the Apollo mission - lives in Manchester, VT.
“Now that we have lived here on and off since 2016, now that we have friends in the area, we’re finding more and more connections. I lectured on my work at The Rockingham Library in Bellows Falls. A graduate student at Arizona State told me she went to the Westminster West School (when Mary Hayward was teaching there with Claire Oglesby.) Even tiny Westminster West is a vortex.”
“We realized Vermont is like a city with a similar population size to that of Detroit: around 640,000 people, but unlike Detroit, Vermont’s population is spread out over almost 10,000 square miles of woodland and mountains, small towns and villages, a few small cities and a deep history that goes back centuries. It’s safe, friendly, neighborly. There are caring, vibrant communities here. That’s why we live here when we can. That’s why we were here for all of COVID. Our neighbor Catlin Adair’s daughter-in-law even taught me to contradance in Brattleboro in 1995.”
This is one of a series of some 30 profiles of working people from southern Vermont and adjacent New Hampshire that I wrote and then published in the Brattleboro Reformer newspaper every Friday from Jan 1 - May 30. Do the same with your local newspaper.