Ilga Paluch

Ilga was born in March 1934 in Riga, Latvia, to her mother Olga (an eye doctor) and father Karlis (a pharmacist). Her early years were spent between Riga and Saldus, where her father's family was from. Her mother practiced from home, and Ilga remembers having to occasionally open the door to patients and escorting them into the waiting room.

Their comfortable life was upended by the annexation of Latvia by the Soviet Union in 1940, followed by an occupation by Germany during World War II. Like many others, the family became refugees. They were eventually able to immigrate to the United States, arriving in Des Moines, IA in 1950. After some time, the family moved to Ohio, where Ilga finished high school. She then enrolled at Ohio State University for her Bachelor's and Master's degree in Nuclear Physics. She was oftentimes the only girl in her classes, and as she cheekily remarked - "I got a lot of attention, and I didn't mind!".

Not quite sure of next steps, and a beatnik at heart, she moved to San Francisco to pursue art. She met Stanley at a poetry reading in North Beach and they became a couple, eventually marrying prior to moving to Edmonton for Stanley to obtain his PhD in Sociology. Stanley got a job teaching at the University of Colorado, and the couple moved to Boulder in the late 1960s.

Finally leveraging that physics degree, Ilga joined the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder. Much as in college, she was one of the very few women in a traditionally-male dominated field. The years rolled on. Their daughter Ingrid was born in June 1971. There was travel to professional conferences (usually accompanied by Stanley and Ingrid), and also family visits to Europe - frequently Ireland, where Stanley's family came from.

While at NCAR, she published a large number of papers, the most famous of which explained what is now known as the Paluch plot or Paluch diagram (Paluch, I. R., 1979: The entrainment mechanism in Colorado cumuli. J. Atmos. Sci.,36, 2467-2478). Ilga retired from NCAR in 1999.

Post retirement, she traveled with Stanley and enrolled in pottery classes - eventually all the plates, bowls and coffee mugs at home were made by her. Sadly, Stanley passed away in 2004.

Ilga loved wild mushrooms (boletes were a favorite), and Ingrid fondly remembers many childhood foraging trips to the mountains. Ilga made pottery mushrooms of many shapes and sizes, now visible all around the house, and even sold a few of these at the local hardware store. Another interest was bird figurines - handmade pottery ones by the front door (an owl in a bathtub!), wooden birds with long beaks on the mantelpiece and on the fridge, and colorful metal birds in the backyard.

On pleasant days, her favorite spot was her back porch, where she could look out over her deliberately wild yard and hear the birds, watch the rabbits, squirrels and the occasional raccoon, and play with the visiting neighborhood cat. Colder days would find her inside, in her favorite chair, listening to classical music, reading the New Yorker, and enjoying a glass of wine. She loved the holidays, especially Easter, when her grandson Steve would visit, and they would make Latvian Easter eggs.

Ilga passed away on August 9th, 2024 , with her daughter by her side. She will be missed by her daughter Ingrid, her grandson Steve, and friends.