Norman Joseph William Thrower

It´s been three years and I still think of Norman from time to time

I came to know Norman during the decade of the 1990s when we lived in Pacific Palisades and attended the Presbyterian Church. My main contact with Norman came after Sunday church services when we would usually talk. These conversations covered a wide variety of subjects but were invariably very memorable and I recall many of them to this day. Norman was among the most interesting people I ever met.

When I first came to UCLA’s dept. of Geography 20 years ago, he came to the office and Tina introduced us. As I was going to teach GIS we had a brief exchange about old and new cartographic technologies. Then he took me out for lunch at the Faculty Club, to the Powell library, and offered me a tour of the campus, and advised me to organize a couple of field trips. One could still perceive behind him the lost atmospheres of the British Survey of India. He invited me to teach to his class and...

We came to know Norman and Betty during the decade or so we spent in Pacific Palisades, at the end of the 20th century. Norman was one of the most memorable people I’ve ever known. I still remember the delightful chats we had every Sunday after church.