William Gerrish (Gerry) Metcalf was born in New York City on August 2, 1918, the second child of Keyes DeWitt Metcalf and Martha A. (Gerrish Metcalf). The family was living in the Bronx at the time but soon moved to White Plains, New York, where Gerry spent his childhood, graduating from high school in 1936. At the time he enrolled in Oberlin College, he was told that he was the 84th member of his family to attend Oberlin (including his older sister Margaret—aka “Moo”—and both his parents who met while students there in the first decade of the 20th century). Gerry graduated from Oberlin in 1940 and went on to earn a Master’s Degree in biology from Amherst College in 1942.
Gerry first came to Woods Hole in 1939, when he joined the Collecting Crew at the Marine Biological Laboratory. He spent four summers working on the Collecting Crew, and in 1941 met the woman who would become his wife, Elizabeth Carpenter, a graduate student at Mt. Holyoke. Within 2 weeks of their meeting (filled with walks to favorite spots in Woods Hole and boat trips to the nearby islands), he professed his love for her. When she suggested it was too early to say that, he told her “These things don’t have to run off a schedule.” Thus began a romance that would last for almost 60 years until Gerry’s death in 2001.
Gerry’s last summer on the Collecting Crew was shortened by his entry into the Navy at the beginning of World War II. He was commissioned as a lieutenant and served in the Pacific, participating in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, before coming home to get married in December 1944. He was awarded a Bronze Star with Victory Ribbon for his service, and was discharged from the Navy in 1945. Soon after, Gerry began his career in physical oceanography with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
In December 1946, Gerry and two fellow scientists were invited by the Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department to travel to the Antarctic aboard the Coast Guard icebreaker North Wind as part of a 13-ship, four-month Navy expedition. The group was part of Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s Operation High Jump.
The group’s mission was to test equipment and ships during periods of extreme cold. Gerry and his colleagues were assigned to collect temperature and salinity records and other oceanographic data. The scientists returned to Woods Hole in April 1947.
In the summer of that same year, Gerry joined a Navy expedition, this time to the Arctic. The purpose of this voyage was to bring food and fuel to weather stations at the North Pole. Gerry was among the first oceanographers to work with the Navy’s Hydrographic Office at the North Pole.
Gerry was to return to the Arctic several times during subsequent expeditions. During one expedition, to Cornwallis Island, he found tons of marine fossils on the shore. When samples were examined back in Woods Hole, it was determined that they were 200 million years old.
Gerry’s work in the 50’s and 60’s, chronicled in his logs, took him all along the Gulf Stream, from Brazil to the coast of Africa and as far north as Iceland and Greenland. In 1969, he received a grant from the National Science Foundation to continue conducting hydrographic survey work, this time in the Caribbean. He also spent a year in Puerto Rico establishing an oceanographic station in San Juan. Gerry retired from WHOI in 1979 but participated in a number of cruises after his retirement.
Gerry and Betty had five children: Michael, born in 1946; Martha, born in 1948 (deceased 1949); Margaret, born in 1949; Christopher, born in 1952; and William Jr. born in 1953. Although his work kept him at sea for many months at a time, when he was home, Gerry was an active parent. His children have fond memories of boat trips to Martha’s Vineyard, Cuttyhunk, and Naushon (in the days when pitching a tent at Tarpaulin Cove was allowed), “tickle fights” in the family den and games of cribbage and “Solo,” weekend hikes in the White Mountains, and family vacations to Vermont, Maine, Long Island, Oberlin, and Ontario, most of which involved hiking or canoeing.
Two of Gerry’s life-long passions were gardening and hiking. He kept an organic garden throughout his time in Falmouth (and even raised chickens for awhile to take advantage of the manure), and after his retirement spent many happy hours in his backyard tending his garden. Once his children left home, he grew more vegetables than he and Betty could use, and he enjoyed the opportunity to visit with neighbors as he brought baskets of fresh vegetables to share with them. He also started a small roto-tilling business, and while it paid for his gardening equipment and supplies, the appeal of the work was the chance it gave him to meet and talk with other gardeners and old friends in the Falmouth area.
The hiking and mountain climbing that Betty and Gerry began doing when their children were young extended to more serious hiking later on. They hiked all the 4,000 foot peaks in New England as well as the entire Appalachian trail over a 13 year span, finishing on July 8, 1979. Gerry and Betty talked of hiking the entire trail once more, end-to-end, but this was not possible after Betty suffered a serious head injury in a fall in their home in June 1982. Following her recovery, they enjoyed biking and hiking closer to home.
In his mid-50’s Gerry was diagnosed with Type I diabetes, which he was able to manage successfully through daily insulin injections for many years. By his early 80’s, however, the neuropathy began to restrict his mobility. This prevented him from maintaining his garden, which was a great disappointment to him. In the last few months of his life, Gerry bought a motorized wheelchair that allowed him to get out of the house and travel nearby streets and the bicycle path to Surf Drive, a source of pleasure for him.
Gerry died on January 31, 2001, as a result of complications arising from diabetes. As of this writing, his wife, Betty, is a resident at Harborside Healthcare in Falmouth.
Compiled by Peg Metcalf Dawson.
