The following was posted by Mark Haas on July 7, 2025, 1:28 p.m. PDT under Favorites and moved to Memories - Story on July 25, 2025 by SG:

Hi Sharon, I'm so sorry for your loss. But in my mind know I smile fondly thinking of your husband. If you remember he hired me out of Space Park in 1982.... Well Hap told him to.

My relationship with Norm was very unique professionally.

I'll tell you a story he never knew. I never wanted him to be disappointed or not see the tremendous importance of the work he did for Peacekeeper. Heck, even Schelin doesn't know this story. Only Hap, Strickler and John Templeton.

Before I came out to San Bernardino I ran a math computer model on Linear programming optimization called the Arsenal Exchange Model. They used this math and computer code to optimize allocating nuclear weapons in their weapon planning system. I was asked a year before Norm and Hap to apply that linear programming optimization code to turn around and be the Russians attacking the US. Meet all the required damage levels to targets all based on green book Nevada testing and such. After a series of scenarios where Russian weapons are allocated in this math model....it's not really flown in a model or anything just a classic math supply and demand math with optimizations like cost and price and transport and risk elements along the way. You get the idea. Or maybe not, it hardly matters. We determined where they would attack and then drew off weapons to go attack Peacekeeper. The "bag of bombs" lay for Norm and his team to allocate in a full force flyout envelope based on where we told the PK's to fly back agains the Russian targets. Of course i'd already done that part for a year or so before.

We did a quick look at SAC in Omaha at the "bag of bombs" and roughly figured how Norm's team (we didn't know who it would be at that time) would allocate and what hostile environments would be seen at the electronics in the weapon system. Whew, it was close to the industry levels achievable in the initial PK designs. So Norm's team would have to be a little less "conservative" in assumptions and rigorous to hit right around there. To have required levels much higher to the electronics meant things like the Guidance system would have to have a series of shunts and hardened places to store while the events flowed over the missile in flight. Lot's of money. Clunky design.

Hap got briefed on this and decided to bring me out to work with Norm and the team. I was just a screwy analyst for Norm that he kept getting frustrated that I wouldn't stay focused on his needs. I felt terrible. Hap kept stroking me. Norm did beautifully and with Terry Simpson and Dick Plebuch hit the levels on right in range. Science and rigor won without Hap or someone having to step in. A23 in flight hostile environments and all that went with that was Norm's shining moment. Little did he know more ways than one.

I never once let a staff review go by after that if Norm didn't have something he wanted on his plate I tried to get something challenging to chew on. He wasn't my fave Sharon. Little too controlling. But he delivered. I offer this to you and the kids. He was in his own way a national hero. We've lived from those late 70s to now without a nuclear weapon going off....Perfect Deterrence. It's what he spent a career focused on. We'll be safe and better through the next century in our Nuclear Posture of this nation because of him.