Image

A Life, Archived

Bill Dunkle began his career at WHOI working as a drafter on the third floor of the Bigelow Lab, but he very quickly decided he would rather go to sea. One cruise on the Caryn (see #5) with Val Worthington led to 11 years during which Bill spent time on WHOI vessels, Navy submarines, and the Institutions’s PBY aircraft. He also began organizing, cataloging, and filing data for Brackett Hersey. Eventually, that data library expanded to include data from many sectors of the Institution, and Bill took responsibility for the WHOI Archives with its 12 million photos and other images and 60,000 maps and charts. Geochemist Dan McCorkle once dubbed him “director of institutional memory,” and when Bill retired in 1994 with 41 years of service, naval historian Gary Weir said he had “preserved WHOI’s soul.” Sadly, Bill passed away on August 23. (Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)