Page 107 - profiles 2019 working copy containing all bios as of Feb 20 final version

our shores. A modified form of these probabilities is still used today.

I acquired funding and helped develop a Natural Hazards Program for Sesame
Street to teach children about hurricane dangers. In coordination with four
local TV meteorologists and the 3M Company in Minneapolis, we produced a

videotape that went to every school in Minnesota, to teach how to save your
life during severe weather. I led a team of people composed of NWS
employees, a local TV station, and the University of Utah to provide weather
support for the Winter Olympics in 2002. I was proud to be a public servant

and to help make our country a little safer.

I am Betty Dodds Putkovich. My Federal career began as I was finishing
training at the American Institute of Business in 1964. Job interviews were a
required part of the curriculum. I had just returned to class from a job
interview with the Weather Bureau, when I was called out of class – there was

a liveried Government driver waiting and I was taken to the FBI where I was
processed for a security clearance and given instructions to report for work the
following morning. Much to my surprise, I learned I had been hired by the

Weather Bureau, but seconded to the President’s Commission on the
Assassination of President Kennedy - the “Warren Commission,” where I spent
the next five months working 10 to 18-hour days with various Commission
members in preparing the final report. On my return to the Weather Bureau, I

spent the next six years in the rather hum-drum world of hurricanes, tornados
and flash floods.

In 1971, I left the Federal Service to raise my family. I returned to Federal
Service in 1988 in time to be a part of the Modernization and Restructuring of
what was now the National Weather Service (NWS), currently part of the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). I brought the
NWS Operations Manual (WSOM) from a paper document indexed on 3 x 5
cards into the digital age. The WSOM is a 10-volume, 5,000+ page document
with directives spelling out standardized operating procedures for all aspects of

predicting and reporting weather related events to the media, emergency
managers, and the public. In addition to proofing and editing all revisions and
updates to directives, I wrote three chapters of the WSOM. I was instrumental

in its later conversion to a digital format with web-based, e-commerce type
access. I was also the NWS Records Manager and liaison to the National
Archives.

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