Charles K. Anderson, Colonel (Ret.)

Col. Anderson was born in Rochester, Minnesota on February 2, 1920, but grew up in the town of Baraboo, Wisconsin, graduating from Baraboo High School in 1937. From there he attended the University of Wisconsin where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce in 1941. He worked as an accountant for General Electric in Schenectady, New York until joining the Army Air Corps in 1943. He became a navigator on bombers in the 459th Bomb Group, flying missions out of Italy.

After the war, he returned to GE, but shortly returned to the Air Force for training as a meteorologist at MIT. He flew as the weather officer on hurricane hunter airplanes flying out of Bermuda and Miami. His first marriage, to Doris Michell of Madison, Wisconsin, ended in divorce. While stationed in Bermuda, he met Pearl Tracy of New York Mills, New York and they were married in 1950. He returned to MIT where he earned a Master of Science degree in meteorology in 1953. After tours of duty in Tokyo, Japan, the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama, weather work in Andrews AFB, Maryland and Hanscom Field, Massachusetts; he attended the University of Colorado where he earned a PhD in Astrogeophysics in 1965. His dissertation involved writing some of the earliest computer models of the solar wind. He then headed the Air Force’s first Solar Forecast Center at ENT AFB in Colorado Springs (which shortly moved into NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain Complex), setting up a network of observatories around the world in order to maintain round-the-clock surveillance of the sun, the solar wind and space environment around the Earth. In 1968 he transferred to Alexandria, Virginia to run the Ionospheric Division of the Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC). When AFTAC moved to Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, in 1972 Col. Anderson followed but then retired in Satellite Beach in 1973.

Among his service decoration are the Distinguished Flying Cross, Presidential Unit Citation, Air Force Outstanding Unit Award and the Legion of Merit.

He is survived by three sons, Stephen, Grady and Dewey, one daughter, Donna, four grandchildren, Thor, Sigrid, Cory and Kelley, and two great-grandchildren, Nicholas and Spenser.

There will be a graveside service held at 10am on Tuesday, October 20, 2015 at Florida Memorial Gardens, 5950 South US Highway 1, Rockledge, FL.