Robert (Bob) Simpson, along with his wife, Joanne, are both meteorological pioneers and icons, particularly with respect to tropical meteorology. Bob was the first director of the National Hurricane Research Project in the late 1950s, and a former director of the National Hurricane Center 1967-1974. Along with Herbert Saffir, he was also the creator of the widely used Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale (Categories 1-5). Simpson is an Honorary Member of the American Meteorological Society, the highest honor that is bestowed by the Society. His memoirs cover his adventurous early life in Texas, including his family s encounter with the Mississippi Flood of 1927, which would prove formative. His training took him far and wide to domestic and international centers of meteorological study right at the time the field was developing and burgeoning, where he intersected with other colleagues who would become the pioneers in a host of specialties in the weather enterprise.