Re: obituary Philbrook Cushing
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obituary Philbrook Cushing
Christine Morton 9/27/04
The San Diego Union-Tribune, San Diego, California, August 19, 1997, page B-5
Philbrook Cushing; helped develop ocean research platform
OBITUARIES
Philbrook Cushing, who helped develop a revolutionary ocean research platform for the Navy in the early 1960s, has died of a stroke. He was 84.
Mr. Cushing, a San Diego County resident for 39 years, died at Palomar Medical Center in Escondido.
During his 13 years as an engineer with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Mr. Cushing contributed to the electronics used on the Navy's Floating Instrument Platform, known as FLIP.
Originally intended as a one-project research platform, FLIP's stability and virtual silence have enabled it to measure such phenomena as water circulation, seismic activity, thermal layers and sounds of marine life for more than 30 years.
Mr. Cushing's specialty at Scripps during the development of FLIP was in the design and operation of instrumentation on a Navy contract studying the directional accuracy of sonar signals.
Before joining Scripps, he worked two years as an engineer with the Convair Division of General Dynamics.
He served as chief engineer for the former Cal-U-Sonics in San Diego before retiring in 1978.
A native of Simsbury, Conn., Mr. Cushing grew up in Groton, Mass., and attended Groton School. He later studied engineering at Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and took postgraduate courses in physics and electronics at the Radio Corporation of America Institute.
He was employed by General Dynamics in New Jersey before joining the firm's Convair Division in San Diego in 1958. An Escondido resident in recent years, Mr. Cushing previously lived in La Jolla and Pacific Beach.
He was an avid naturalist, sailor and golfer.
Madeleine Duryea of La Jolla, his second wife, died in 1983. He also outlived his first wife, Frances Sanger Cushing.
He is survived by a daughter, Judith Lee Gordon of New London, N.H.; a son, Philbrook S. Cushing of The Woodlands, Texas; a sister, Elizabeth C. Wolkonsky of Lakeside; a companion, Annette Lee of Escondido; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Cremation was planned. No services are scheduled.
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Re: obituary Philbrook Cushing
Christine Morton 10/05/04