Otvos, John

ITAMAR WILLNER, COUA LAANE, JOHN W. OTVOS, and MELVIN CALVIN... 

My immediate supervisor was John Otvos, a skilled and patient teacher, even to one as green as I was. John was a third-year graduate student, or would have been if he had not joined this NDRC project. John had first come to my attention the previous fall. A group of eight graduate students... 

John Otvos, and I are shown in Figure 1.5. I never found a picture of Art Stosick. 

Figure 1.5. John Otvos. Photograph by Army photographer in Panama, 1944.

Team 1 John Otvos and Phil Hayward Team 2 Hal Johnston and Bob Mills... 

Twenty-one civilians in NDRC Division 10 boarded a troop ship in New Orleans in February 1944, which joined other ships to form a convoy that sailed at about six miles (10 km) per hour toward the Panama canal, a trip that should have taken between one and two weeks to complete. However, the ship crossed the Caribbean Sea several times, as Noyes said, and the confusion and amazement of the NDRC men were expressed in letters written home by John Otvos and Bob Mills. 

In early February 1944, members of Division NDRC assembled in Jackson Barracks of New Orleans, which was primarily occupied by army soldiers. John Otvos wrote letters to his parents, which I quote in part here and more later. I omit salutations and farewells ... 

For this book John Otvos submitted an accotmt of some of their activities on board the ship ... 

The convoy proceeded for three days from Cuba to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where they arrived on March 7. The NDRC group had several days of shore leave. John Otvos estimates that one hundred or more soldiers were loaded onto the ship, and two hundred goats were brought on and tied to the railing around the deck, thereby usurping the best locations on the ship. They sailed from San Juan on March 12, proceeded, not to Panama, but back to Guantanamo, Cuba, where they stayed for two days, and then on March 15, they headed for Panama. 

John [Otvos], Bill [Shand], and several others are plamiing a big sight-seeing trip tomorrow, but I guess I ll be content with just Christabel, Panama City, Balboa, Tivoli, Conmdu. 

The tents were mounted on solid wooden decks well above the ground, were roomy with provisions for good circulation of air during the day and closed by mosquito netting at night. John Otvos and Bob Mills were roommates in one of these tents. Figure 5.3.A. John reported that scorpions... 

Figure 5.3.A. NDRC living quarters. Bob Mills and John Otvos, tent mates.

Bill Gwinn, Jack Roof, John Otvos, Mike Kraus... 

Figure 5.7.B. Sand sculptors. What were these guys thinking about George Cleland, John Otvos, Ted Gilman, Bob Mills.

Through their letters back to the states, John Otvos and Bob Mills supplied information about how the NDRC personnel interacted with the environment and with their job. I give a separate section to the contributions of each of these, in which I quote selected portions of their letters. 

John Otvos family saved his letters from Panama, and he permitted me to choose portions from them. Also, John had prepared for his children an account of his early life in Hungary, his family s moving to this country, his education, and in reduced detail his experiences after he obtained his Ph.D. degree from Caltech. He let me select large portions of this material for Chapter 8. John permitted me to use pictures of Egbert or the Dickinson meter from his Ph.D. thesis, and he gave verbal accounts of his work in Panama. 

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