Dr. Larry Vardiman, PhD, (1943-Present) - Career in Science
Illinois, Texas, Missouri, Colorado, California, Washington
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Photos:
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Content:
Age:
Occupation: Atmospheric Scientist (Paleoclimatologist)
State: Illinois, Texas, Missouri, Colorado, California, Washington
# of Children: 4
See narrative below:
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Links:
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Larry born 13 January 1943 Litchfield, IL
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Litchfield, Illinois Father's Veterinary Practice
1942-1949
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House in town
123 East Union Avenue Litchfield, Illinois
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Larry in a pram and his first
Teddy Bear
History of the Teddy Bear |
Phil & Larry in Litchfield, Illinois
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Louise & Larry in Litchfield, Illinois
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Larry
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Larry
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Larry in front of house outside town off
Route 66
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Larry and sister Billie in front of Litchfield house
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Litchfield, Illinois (1942 - 1949)
Phil and
Louise decided to go into practice and moved to Litchfield, Illinois in
1942. Phil was in his own veterinary practice for about nine to ten
years. "That was one of the best things we ever did." (Louise Carter
Vardiman Robinson, 21 April 1997)
The family
moved out of town to a small country house where Phil Vardiman had his
private practice.
The Vardiman family of
five lived in a relatively small house off highway 66. They had a big
yard with a cherry tree. There was also a storm cellar for storing
roots from the garden and to escape into when a tornado came. Phil
Vardiman had a large building in the back for his veterinary practice
with tables and cages. Litchfield was in a large milk producing area
and much of the milk was shipped to St. Louis and Chicago.
Phil and
Louise liked to go fishing at the Lake of the Ozarks.
Phil and Louise had a
total of eight children, six of which survived. They ended up with
three boys and three girls. |
Moved to Marfa, TX
1949-1952
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Lab in Marfa, TX
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Father -
Phil at the lab
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Larry & Billie in front of
House in Marfa, TX
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Family of 5: Phil, Louise, Larry, Billie,
Steven
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Cowboy Larry in Marfa, TX
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Marfa, Texas (West Texas) (1949 - 1952) Phil’s health was continuing to
fail and the doctor said they needed to get to a warmer climate so they
moved to Marfa, Texas in 1949 when Phil was 34 years old. So Phil decided to work
on his masters at Texas A&M. He bought a hay wagon and loaded it with
all the families possessions and hauled it behind their old willie
station wagon for the 1500 plus mile trip from Litchfield, Illinois to
West Texas.
Phil got a job at an
experimental station in Marfa, Texas while he was going to school for
his masters in veterinary science at Texas A&M. The experimental
station was on an old airport. There was a circular drive with a group
of buildings, an old barn, an office which was used for the experimental
station and two houses. One house was for the Vardiman family and the
other house was for Phil's assistant.
Hundreds of cattle were
dying at that time and autopsy's revealed extremely hard, yellow livers.
Phil did research to diagnose the problem. He began to identify all the
poisonous plants the cattle were eating out on the range as the source
of the problem. To help educate the ranchers on what the poisonous
plants looked like, Phil built "Poison Hill" as he called it in a garden
area in the middle of the circular drive which was about 50 feet in
diameter. He brought in dirt and built a little hill then planted all
the different types of poisonous plants that he had identified in West
Texas. When ranchers came over Phil would take them out to Poison Hill
and show them what the plants looked like so they could better protect
their Herfer and Long Horn cattle. Phil mixed up a concoction of
poisonous plants and fed it to some cattle a little at a time so they
eventually were inoculated so that if the cattle ate the poisonous
plants on the range they wouldn't die. Phil did his master thesis on his
research on the poisonous plants in West Texas. |
Moved to St. Louis, MO
1952-1956
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St. Louis Christmas 1954
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St. Louis Christmas 1954
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St. Louis, Missouri (1952 - 1956)
In 1952 they moved the
family to St. Louis, Missouri where Phil worked for Ralston Purina as a
large animal veterinarian. On their way to Missouri Louise went into
labor and had to be dropped off at a hospital in Hays, Kansas where
their fifth child was born. While in St. Louis their last
child was born, David.
Phil and Louise purchased
a fantastic, beautiful house in St. Louis on Dale Avenue in Richmond
Heights. It was about one block from St. Lukes Catholic church. They
lived in that house for about three to four years.
It was four stories
including the attic and basement. Larry has very vivid memories of the
house. It had a front porch with a big beautiful glass door with
beveled edges. Inside the door was an entranceway and to the right was
a settee and a place to hang hats. On the right beyond that was a
stairway leading to the second floor. Left of the entrance way was a
sitting room with sliding mahogany doors that opened and closed like
going into a drawing room. The ceilings on both floors were 14 feet
tall with very fancy wall boards on the floor and ceiling. In the
drawing room to the left was a beautiful ornate working fireplace with
white enameled columns. It had a metal cover to keep out the draft when
you weren't using it. There were also big old casement windows around
the room. Beyond that was a dining room that also had big sliding doors
between the rooms to petition them off. The dining room also had a
fireplace on one end and big windows. Off to the right of the dining
room was the kitchen or you could get to the kitchen from the front door
by going straight down the hallway. It was a gigantic farm kitchen with
a cupboard off to the side and white cabinets. There was a big screened
in porch in the back.
The second floor had four
bedrooms and one bathroom. The front room was a children's room that
looked out onto the street where you could see traffic and buses going
by. There was a wooden window seat that lifted up for storage. In the
back was another children's room which Mom and Dad painted the walls
black so the kids could write on the walls with chalk. The other front
bedroom had a fireplace as it was above the drawing room. The back
bedroom on that side had fancy cabinets and closets. The bathroom had a
big tub with a shower. The porcelain sink was from the 1930's or 1940's
and had a column as the base.
There was a very narrow
stairway with only one lightbulb from the second to third floor. It was
kind of creepy to go up the stairs but once you were in the attic it was
bright with lights and windows in the front and back. The attic had
sloping ceilings and was one big room. There was storage up there but
still plenty of room to ride a tricycle around on rainy days.
The basement had a coal
furnace with pipes running along the ceiling that you had to duck under
at times. There was a coal room and the floor was uneven. There was
also a back door that led outside from the basement.
"Dad often changed the
houses we lived in. Our family joked how we always lived in sawdust." (Larry
Vardiman, Glimpses of My Childhood, tape #1B) Phil didn't like
eating in the dining room so he cut a hole in the wall between the
kitchen and dining room about a foot high and made a table/bar
situation. Half the family would sit in the kitchen and the other half
in the dining room to eat but couldn't quit see each other. Dad did a
similar thing in another house in Pacific, Missouri with a pull down
table on a pulley arrangement.
Phil did the carpenter
type changes in the house and Louise did more of the painting and
papering on the inside. She wanted the house to look sophisticated and
wanted a patriotic theme in the front hallway. She had Larry, who was
in his upper grade school years, fifth-seventh grade, paint the ceiling
light blue and use a roller with a star pattern to roll on top. Then
they painted the walls burgundy or dark red with blue stripes running
vertically up the walls. We "ended up with a front hall that was very
unique with a patriotic theme with stars and stripes and red, white and
blue." (Larry Vardiman, Memories of My Childhood, tape #2A)
While in St. Louis, Phil
worked for Ralston Purina Company. He worked downtown at the veterinary
center before going to the Ralston Purina farm full time. He did
research projects with cattle. He got an idea from a Swedish man to
operate on a cow and cut a hole in the side of the cow and into the
stomach and install a pipe with a plug in it. He could insert feed into
the stomach and see how long it would take to digest food.
"I remember occasionally
helping dad when I was out on the farm when he would remove the plug
from that cow. Unfortunately the cow had built up a bit of steam from
the digestion and when he would remove the plug it would squirt all
kinds of nasty fluid out of the cow as well as all the gases and stinch
that came with it. Anyway that was quite an experience." (Larry
Vardiman, Glimpses of My Childhood tape #1B)
Phil also drove out to the
Ralston Purina farm for buckets of raw, non-pasteurized milk on
Saturdays. He would take three gallon buckets and put wax paper with a
lid on top. Some milk still spilled so the car always had a spoiled
milk smell. |
Moved to Columbia, IL
1956-1959 Phil & Louise
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John Deere Model A Tractor
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International Harvester Farmall H
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Columbia Illinois, (1956 - 1959)
They got tired of living
in the city and decided to move out to a rustic farm in Columbia,
Illinois in 1956 where Phil did a lot of fixing up of the place. The
farm was on 102 acres of land. Fifty of the acres
were full of trees and sinkholes and had a creek running through it. It
wasn't possible to farm that area but it was great for rabbit hunting.
The other 50 acres were tillable and Phil and Larry put in hay and
corn. Since Phil was still working full time at Ralston Purina Larry
did most of the farming. He learned a lot about repairing farm tractors
and equipment. "It was a real neat experience. Probably one of the
formative experiences of my life to be able to work on a farm like that
and to learn how to do things that you just wouldn't get if you were a
city kid." (Larry Vardiman, Glimpses of My Childhood tape #1B)
The land and two story barn were
o.k. but the house was in pretty bad shape. It was a 150 year old log
cabin that someone had put electric wiring in it that ran along the
ceiling and down to the switch box. The prior owners had used the
kitchen as a barn for their sheep or goats. The "first thing we had to
do was shovel out three inches of goat manure out of the kitchen. It
stunk to high heaven. After we shoveled it out, washed it down and
disinfected it then we painted it the color mom selected, pea green. It
looked pretty sad but it was a gigantic kitchen with a big farm table in
it." (Larry Vardiman, Glimpses of My Childhood, tape #1B) There
were only two bedrooms in the house. Their parents used one bedroom and
all six children shared the other large room. It actually had six beds
in it!
There was no running water or
septic system. To go to the bathroom required a walk about a block long
down to the outhouse behind the barn. Phil put in a pressure pump
system for running water and a heater for hot water. Then he built a
septic system from bricks. Larry remembers helping dig the hole in the
ground and standing at the bottom laying bricks for the septic tank.
"It was kind of a strange way to live but that's the way my dad and mom
did it and it worked. They got it built into a nice home." (Larry
Vardiman, Glimpses of My Childhood, tape #1B)
When Phil and Larry plowed one of
the fields for the first time it was rather challenging as the weeds
were over ten feet tall in one area as that field had probably not been
plowed in over five years. They used an international cub tractor
which was actually only a garden tractor with one plow. Since they
couldn't see from one end of the field to the other Larry
said, "The first time we
plowed that field the way we had to do that was Dad got on the tractor
and started at one end of the field and I stood up on top of the tractor
and looked at the trees at the other end of the field and told him which
direction to head because he couldn't see even if he stood up on the
tractor… So I had had to stand up on the hood of the tractor and look
out across the field and see above the weeds in order to be able to plow
the first furrow straight. Once you got the first one in it was pretty
easy after that." (Larry Vardiman, Glimpses of my childhood, tape
#2B)
It typically took Larry about a
month to plow ten acres of land with the small tractor going about the
speed of a mule. There was a
steep hill behind the barn and the tractor didn't have enough power for
hauling large loads of hay and would buck up in front or slip in the
mud. "Grandma Mollie Vardiman was visiting one time and I was kind of
showing off and I popped the clutch a little bit and the front end of
the tractor went up in the air like a bucking bronco and she screamed
and about scared the daylights out of me from her scream but then it
settled back down and we were ok." (Larry Vardiman, Glimpses of my
childhood, tape #2B)
Phil later bought a
1938 or 1939 John Deere model A tractor with a big flywheel and two pistons. It made lots
of different noises depending on what type of terrain it was on and it
just kept on going. One year rain got into the exhaust pipe and into
the oil shortly after Larry had overhauled it in shop at school in
Columbia. When Phil started it up the oil was frozen and it burned up
the engine.
Phil bought a used International Harvester Farmall H
four-cylinder tractor which they used for the last year and a
half they lived on the farm.
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Moved to Pacific, MO
1959-1968
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Larry played French Horn in the high school band about 1960
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Back Row: Steve, Billie, Phil, Louise, Larry, Mary Phil
Front Row: David & Ann Lueece
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Pacific, Missouri (1959 - 1961)
Phil’s
health was getting worse so Ralston Purina gave him a job transfer to a
research farm near Gray Summit, Missouri. It was too far to commute
from Columbia so the family once again moved to Pacific, Missouri in
1959.
They
bought a house on a dead end street on the East side of Pacific up next
to limestone cliffs. It was close to a factory that made roofing
materials, toothpaste and cleanser using ground up limestone. It was at
the edge of town and in the woods.
Larry went to Missouri School of Mines in Rolla from 1961- 1965 to get his bachelors degree in Physics. He joined the Baptist Student Union (BSU), which was a Christian ministry to University students.
Phil died from heart trouble on 23 February 1968 at 53 years
old. Phil and Louise had been married a total of 27 ½ years! |
Nov. 1962
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6 June 1965 Wedding
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Jeannette's Mother and Brother and Larry's Parents
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Larry's Grandparents, Carters and Mollie Vardiman
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Newspaper Wedding Announcement
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B.S. in Physics from Rolla University, MO Summer 1965
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Dating, Engagement & Wedding (1962-1965)
In April 1962, Larry's
Sophomore year of college (Missouri School of Mines in Rolla), Larry attended the Southern Baptist convention that is held every year. He worked in the kitchen to help pay his way to the conference. That year it was at the Lake of the Ozarks in Southwestern Missouri. The camp was held on one side of Lake Windemere.
Jeannette Santen went to the same conference. She was a student nurse at Jewish hospital in St. Louis and was also active in the Baptist Student Union. Larry and Jeannette ended up sitting next to each other in service and sharing a hymnal. Larry remembers Jeannette coming by the kitchen to say goodbye where he was working to help pay his way to the conference.
Larry called Jeannette and asked her out on a date. She couldn't remember who he was but she agreed. When he drove up to her mother's house on a motorcycle and wearing a beard Jeannette remembers thinking "Oh no, it's the Physics guy!" She wasn't very good at math. They still had a mutual attraction though and they began long distance dating for the next three years (1962-1965). They mainly saw each other in the summer and on holidays. The rest of the time they wrote letters.
They also attended each other's school functions such as Christmas parties and Baptist Student Union parties.
Larry played the French horn in
the Missouri School of Mines marching band and performed
at the New York
World's Fair in 1964. He consistently enjoys watching the
marching bands in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV every
year while preparing the turkey for the Thanksgiving meal.
Larry and Jeannette were married 5 June 1965 in a Baptist church in East St. Louis. Neither one attended there but Jeannette liked the church for a wedding. After they returned from their honeymoon Larry continued his last summer of undergraduate classes at Rolla. He received his best grades after they were married then any time before. They lived in a rented upstairs apartment of an old ladies house that Larry had been renting her downstairs apartment previously with three of his buddies. The upstairs apartment was only available during the summer so they had to move in the fall.
Larry always wanted to be a college professor but he was not as satisfied with Physics as he originally thought and wasn't sure what he wanted to pursue immediately so after Larry graduated with his B.S. in Physics at the end of the summer in 1965 he decided to join the Air Force. He had always wanted to travel. It was the middle of the Vietnam war and there was a waiting list for Officer training school so he took some Master level courses for one semester during which time he taught Physics to undergraduates. They lived in a downstairs apartment near the campus and were still active with BSU parties. Jeannette worked at Phelps County Retirement Center as a nurse.
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Larry graduating from Airforce Officer Training School
May 1966
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Military Housing Oct 1967 Scott Air Force Base, IL expecting first child
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Larry & Jeannette Vardiman family in Dec.
1969
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U.S. Air Force (1966-1970)
In February 1966 Larry entered the Air Force's Officer Training School, which took three months, 6 weeks for basic training and 6 weeks of advanced training. Jeannette moved back home with her mother in Fairmont City, Illinois where she worked at Christian Welfare hospital in East St. Louis. Larry went to Officer’s Training School in San Antonio, Texas. The Air Force recruiter sent Larry and about 30 other guys via train. About 5 of the guys were going to officer school and were given Pullman cars to sleep in while the other 25 guys who were enlisting had to sleep sitting up in the chairs. So there was already class discrimination even before school. Larry graduated in May 1966 as a Second Lieutenant. His parents and Jeannette came down for the graduation. "It was a great time. By that time I had been trained so stiffly I kept calling your mother "Sir" and I was saluting everything except the fireplugs. They kind of get you drilled." (Larry Vardiman, Family Tape #3A)
Larry had signed up for a four-year commitment and the Air Force decided because of his Physics background to make him into a weatherman. They sent him to school for one year at St. Louis University. It was only ten miles across the river from Jeannette's mom's house and about 20 miles from Larry's family in Pacific. Larry took a couple extra classes over and above what the Air Force required in order to obtain a second Bachelors degree in meteorology. They rented an apartment in St. Louis just off of South Grand Avenue. It was a one-bedroom apartment with a swimming pool. Jeannette worked at the Catholic Children's hospital, Cardinal Glennon. After Larry's one year of school was over they thought they were going to be assigned to Washington D.C. but at the last minute the orders were changed to Scott
Air force Base which was again close to both their parents. "I joined the Air Force to see the world and got assigned 20 miles from home." (Larry Vardiman, Family Tape #3A) They again made some lifelong friends while stationed at Scott
Air force Base.
The reason Larry was assigned to Scott Air base was because “they needed someone in the Aerospace Modification Division with Cloud Physics Application Research. There were a group of men who helped design fog dispersal systems. “It was really a neat assignment. One I really enjoy thinking back about today.” (Larry Vardiman, Tape 3A)
In the winter of 1968
into 1969 Larry was assigned temporary duty for six months to Travis
Air base in California to head up the division for cloud dispersal
on the runway in order to let the airplanes take off and land during
foggy conditions. They designed a system with a big archer blower
that blew salt in the air to try to take out water and reduce clouds
in the air to leave a big hole for airplanes which was also used in
Spokane, WA. |
Fort Collins, CO - Larry went to Colorado State University
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4 August 1972
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Oldest grandson, Spencer, visiting
501 Columbia St Fort Collins house
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Graduate School in Fort Collins, CO (1970-1974)
After he finished his military service Larry became a graduate student at Colorado State University.
“We moved to Fort Collins, Colorado in June 1970 and rented a house at 501 Columbia Street." Fort Collins is a flat area at the base of the Rocky Mountains and smells like cows!
The Rocky Mountains are on the West side of Colorado and the East side of Colorado is flat plans. Horse tooth Reservoir is the main view from Fort Collins.
Larry had two week reserve duty once a year for four years.
Larry's story about collecting
snow samples for his graduate research on Wolf Creek Pass, Colorado
Larry graduated with his PhD in Atmospheric Science and started working with the Bureau of Reclamation in Denver.
He had seen a beautiful green valley in the mountains when flying in an airplane one time.
When Larry and Jeannette checked it out they discovered Evergreen, Colorado. It is located in the mountains about 30 minutes
from Denver with gorgeous green pine trees and Blue Spruce. This small country town has a lake that freezes over in the winter
and is used for ice-skating.
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Moved from Fort Collins to Evergreen, CO 1970
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House in Evergreen, CO
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Evergreen Guest House
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View from road in front of house in Evergreen, CO
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Evergreen Lake
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Downtown Evergreen, CO
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Evergreen, CO (1974-1977)
In November 1974 we moved to Evergreen, Colorado where Larry and
Jeannette purchased their first house. "As a family we went ice-skating on the lake in the winter, and walked down the road from our house to a great hill for sledding! When
"Grandma Lou", Louise Carter Vardiman, visited she would go for walks with us and point out all the beautiful flowers and trees and tell us all their names.
The Colorado State flower, the Columbine and the Indian Paintbrush were prevalent in our area. We had a choke cherry bush in our back yard and we made homemade jam. That was delicious!
The chokecherries were extremely sour though and would make your lips pucker if you ate them straight off the bush!
We had one acre of fenced
land, which had many pine trees when we arrived. Unfortunately some beetles
infected most of the trees and Larry had to cut a lot of them down by the time we
left.
There was
an old outhouse on the property that had old newspaper cartoons covering the
inside walls. It was kind of fun to be busy playing in the backyard and use
that facility instead of going back into the house.
We also had
a separate one-room guesthouse on one side of the property that was attached to
the garage. It had a bed and a porta-potty. The house
itself was a one story, 3 bedroom, 1 bath log home. The front door opened into
the living room, which had an orange fireplace and an orange shag carpet. To the left were three stairs
that went up into the kitchen. The laundry room and back door were off the
kitchen. At the other end of the kitchen was a bedroom and one had to go
through his room to get to the bathroom which was on the other side of the wall
from the kitchen. On the other side of the house to the right of the living
room was a small hallway with two doors coming off of it. The bedroom
to the right had pink carpet and the windows faced the front and
side yard. The master bedroom across the hall had purple carpet and a purple headboard
and it's windows faced the backyard." (Michelle Vardiman Fansler's memories)
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September 1976
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Moving to Northern California Spring 1977
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House in Lake of the Pines, Auburn, CA
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Lake of the Pines, CA
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Larry Vardiman Family 1979 at Combie Bible Church
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Family Photo in 1982 in Northern California
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Auburn, CA (1977-1982)
Larry received a promotion with the Bureau of Reclamation. He became the Director for a cloud seeding project in Northern California to help end a drought out there.
Larry and Jeannette sold their house in Evergreen for a small profit and bought a house in a fenced community with a guard gate called Lake of the Pines, 30 minutes north of Auburn, California. |
1982 Moved to San Diego
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1984 House in Santee (San Diego County East)
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1986 Family Photo in La Jolla, CA
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San Diego, CA (1982-2006)
Larry moved his family
to San Diego County California in order to become a college
professor at Christian Heritage College
(now called San Diego Christian) in El Cajon, California.
He taught upper division math courses (advanced calculus) and
science courses (physics and occasionally physical science courses).
He became Academic Dean from 1987-1989.
During the summers he
worked for Institute for Creation
Research (ICR) to teach and write science articles in his
specialty of atmospheric science. In 1989 he transferred to
ICR full-time.
From 1997-2005 he coordinated six
scientists and one theologian as administrator for the eight-year
research project called RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the
Earth). Results revealed scientific evidence of a young Earth
around 6-10,000 years old based on helium concentrations in rocks,
radiohalo diffusion documenting accelerated nuclear decay, and the
fact that coal and diamonds still contain carbon-14. From 2004-2006 he acted as Chief Operating
Officer for ICR. |
1993
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1996
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1999
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2000
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2001
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2005
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2009
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2019
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Mt. Baker, WA Feb. 2009
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Written by Michelle Vardiman Fansler
compiled from interviews of Louise Carter Vardiman Robinson and Larry
Vardiman's Glimpses of my childhood cassette tapes and
personal interviews.
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