Remembering Grady Norton
Older folks may remember the television show Man Behind the Badge. Actor Milborne Stone played the great forecaster that had passed away on this date in 1954, just three months earlier after a grueling twelve hour shift tracking Hurricane Hazel in the Caribbean. Here is the transcript of the introduction to that show:
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Hello. I am Charles Victor.
That quotation about the weather might have been true once, but it no longer holds, because one man did do something about it. One man spent his life fighting the fury of the wildest of winds – the hurricane. And he was the first to learn how to track it from its birth to its death. What does that mean?
Well, a hurricane leaping in from nowhere used to mean one day of unbridled power. The next was a day of mourning for five hundred dead. Yes, that was the death rate not so long ago.
But the hurricane with its next move forecast cut that rate to five. This then was the life work of one man. And this is his story. A story? No, it’s a tribute. Because the man we are speaking of tonight died a short time ago.
He will never be forgotten by those who live in or travel through a hurricane area. But can he ever be thanked enough by future generations? And so, our tribute. Our salute to Grady Norton. Tonight’s Man Behind the Badge.
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