Abstract This article is a story of my career beginning in a small rural town in Missouri and culminating at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center after nearly 37 years there. Particular focus is on those who served as mentors and colleagues, studies of ocean surface waves, the “ocean color” satellite missions I was involved in, for example, the Coastal Zone Color Scanner and the Sea‐viewing Wide‐Field‐of‐View Sensor, the background of the future Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud and ocean Ecology mission, and the insights into ocean biology gained from these missions. The path was punctuated by what I call “OK, now what?” moments when the next step was unclear. At these junctures, mentors would open doors and I would need to “retool” to adapt to the science I would be involved in.