The first time I saw Dr. Vincent J. Schaefer’s name was during my student research in a library on the subject of ice and crystal growth in 1965. I was one of the team members of Dr. Seymour Hess's group at Florida State University. We were in the process of designing a very sensitive hygrometer for Martian exploration for a NASA project.

I wrote to Dr. Schaefer for advice and for suggestions on our task. He wrote back and mentioned a new Department of Atmospheric Sciences was just formed at the State University of New York at Albany, and was a newly emerging scientific field.

I transferred to Albany in 1968 and Dr. Schaefer offered me a job working ten hours a week for $1.25 an hour at the newly formed Atmospheric Sciences Research Center (ASRC). I stayed there for the next thirty-three years!

On one snowy day, I was sitting with Dr. Schaefer in his basement and with a beer in hand I talked with him about the coming new science education arrangement. He pointed to the window and said to me, "Roger, see those tiny ice particles falling from the frosty gutter on the edge of the house? I have been watching this phenomenon for many years I Just could not figure out what is going on there, why don't you look into the problem?"

Ten months later. I gave him a report showing the way that the ice crystals had been broken up and how they carried negative electric charges. He wrote a paper entitled "The production of ice crystal fragments by sublimation and electrification" and very surprisingly with my name as co-author (Dr. Schaefer had very few co-authors for his publications at ASRC). It was published as the featured cover article in the Journal de Recherches  Atmospheriques in 1971. This paper was cited later by the New York Times, London Times, New Scientist, as well as Russian television and many governmental publications this research I had conducted was later confirmed in 1991 by scientists at MIT.

This small technical report was the beginning of our ten years of research on the subject of ice crystal formation and related electrical charges generated in a thundercloud. By the order of Dr. Schaefer a laboratory to study and assist other ASRC scientists on the subject of atmospheric particulates was created and I was appointed its manager At his suggestion I began playing with snowflakes under three different types of microscopes and was the author of five technical reports. My photographs of the snow crystals and reports were all selected by the editors as the featured cover articles.

During my years with Dr. Schaefer I assisted him with his Natural Sciences Institute, one of his pet projects, (science education) and even babysat his students when he was working in the field.

His methods were clearly summed up when he said on August 15, 1960: "As long as we give young minds the privilege and the facilities to roam far and wide, and from time to time to play with unpractical things such as snow crystals, water drops, they are bound to come up with some exciting new angles on the mysteries of nature."

He always said to his students and to me as well: "Go and get your dream! Do not give up and let anyone or anything stop you! Please enjoy it and have fun!"

YES I DID!