Exeter’s Star: John Blackwell
Our editors and writers work hard every week to tell you things you wouldn’t have known otherwise—things that could really have some sort of an impact on you as a part of the Exeter community. With this article, I share with you a very special facet of Exeter. In fact, it’s the smallest part of the Academy—small enough that you may never cross paths with it in your time here. It is Exeter’s one-man astronomy department; but more specifically, the man behind it all, Mr. John Blackwell.
It’s hard to listen to Blackwell speak without wanting to spend every minute dedicated to studying everything around our pale blue dot. His words are saturated with genuine interest in the universe. Even when writing this article, I had to fight the urges not to make every word a quotation of his; what a wonderful way that would have been to show you how intriguing Blackwell is.
For Blackwell, it all started as a kid in the late 60s—the perfect time to fall in love with space. When he was nine years old, his parents gave him a telescope because of his deep fascination that began with books he read in his local library. As the young, budding astronomer he was, Blackwell independently discovered the planet Saturn. “I think I was hooked at that point,” he said. “I had to do something with my life that involved space.” At the time, “Star Trek” and “Lost in Space” were heavily popularized as the nation dedicated itself to the quest of sending Americans to the moon. From the Cold War histeria, Blackwell found himself deeply engrossed by the mission for “humans to get out there on rocket ships and explore the universe.”
Blackwell’s heroes became—not surprisingly—the astronauts. He loved to fly, and so pursued to earn a degree in aeronautical engineering and flight operation with the “thorough intention of becoming an astronaut.” However, it didn’t work the way he had planned. At the time, the Internet was growing in its influence and since Blackwell’s skills mainly concerned computer networking, he was pushed into software engineering.
“It was neat stuff,” Blackwell said. “But literally one year I came home and said, ‘Wow, I really don’t like my job.’ So, I left it. I took a year and kind of soul-searched. People do this every now and then, but you have just got to figure out who you are and what you want to do with your life.”
To fill in the time, his wife suggested that he find a job. There were a lot of similar jobs to his previous employment, but he knew that they weren’t right for him. In the interim, he worked part-time as an educator at a planetarium in New Hampshire.
It seemed like the right fit for the moment—just one or two hours a week of planetarium shows and telling people about astronomy and the stars. Ultimately, that quiet, part-time job at the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in Concord illuminated the path for what was next in Blackwell’s life.
“I found my love for astronomy again,” he said. “This is what I want to do, I want to teach people. This was about that same time that a friend of mine pointed out that there was a job opening at Phillips Exeter Academy. I read—I’ll never forget this—I read the job description and said, ‘they’re describing me.’ This is such a bizarre thing; I said I’ve just got to apply, and they took me. I love this job, I would never turn my back on this place. I love the students, I love teaching and I’ve got an observatory to teach with.”
That’s how Blackwell found his way to Exeter. It’s a touching story for us when all roads lead to the Harkness table, but I couldn’t help myself from asking why he’s here—why his one-man department is important at all—why the universe outside of our planet is relevant to our lives? “It’s a totally legitimate question,” Blackwell said, which was not the response I was expecting.
He said, “Everything great that we have comes from our desire to get into orbit, and get ourselves to far away places. Watch as the new technologies come pouring out the door at us, and arrive as flat screen TVs that you roll up and you put into your pocket. All sorts of really strange and fair esoteric stuff, but if you put it all together the technology becomes pretty cool: like the touch screen on that iPhone.”
If it weren’t for men who daydreamed of “Star Trek” like Blackwell, our world may very well still think that the universe revolves around the flat earth. Although all of this sounds too fascinating and consequential to be just a one man department, we should all be thankful that the one man we have is one as passionate as Blackwell.