Leta Serafim

The daughter of an itinerant scientist, was born in Wisconsin, spent the first years of her life in San Diego, before moving to Washington, D.C. when NASA was created and her father went to work for that agency. A genuine rocket scientist, he served there for twenty-five years in many capacities Director of Unmanned Space, Director of Astronomy, Associate Administrator and Chief Scientist, and supervised the American missions to Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. Their house was always littered with models of space ships and missiles and our guests at Thanksgiving spoke about thrust and payload in a multitude of tongues, it being her fathers firm belief that the language of American science was broken English.