Albert Wheelon, known as Bud, was a quiet man who lived with his adored wife Cicely on a side street in Montecito without drawing attention to himself.
When asked what he did for a living, Bud would say he was a physicist. This was a bit like Plácido Domingo saying he was a singer. Bud Wheelon was in fact one of our country’s most distinguished theoretical physicists — and much more. His success in developing the first U.S. spy satellite, code named Corona, provided President John F. Kennedy with vital aerial photos during the near-miss Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Bud might have become a national hero had this been public knowledge at the time, but Corona remained top secret until President Clinton ordered its photos declassified 30 years later.
Perhaps it was a lifetime of secrecy as he developed successor satellites for the Central Intelligence Agency that encouraged Bud’s reticence even after programs on which he had worked were declassified. For whatever reason, Bud was by a light-year the most unassuming man I’ve ever known. Once he told me he was going to Washington to attend the Goddard Medal ceremonies. What he did not say was that he was receiving the prestigious Goddard Medal. Bud had received many such awards without being defined by any of them. I learned of the awards by following the advice of the colorful and long-gone baseball manager Casey Stengel, who said about statistics and records, “You can look it up.”
