Van der Woude, Jurrie., 1935-

In 1945, the U.S. Army funded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory by pouring $3 million into new JPL facilities that included an administration and office building; complementing the expansion of personnel. JPL 's connection to Caltech was vital to staffing the organization, which counted about 385 employees. In January 1958, JPL and ABMA, (Army Ballistic Military Agency) launched Explorer I, the United States' first satellite, under the Lab's Directorship of William Pickering.

Public demands for information about JPL activities, which had always been there, suddenly increased when JPL first considered the idea of launching missions to other planets. However, JPL timetable of eighteen flights in five years after1958 was exceedingly optimistic. In October 1958, NASA drafted an outline to support a long-range program for space exploration with JPL. By this time, the Laboratory's growth tripled its staff. Due to popular demand, also in 1958, JPL develop its first Public Relations Office headed by Chris Clausen. JPL realized it was necessary to find someone to serve as liaison between the Lab and news services, newspaper personnel, magazine reporters, radio and TV, with regard to news releases, interviews and public appearances of scientific personnel as well as various requests for photographs.

This new department was set-up to handle internal as well as external public relations. Its primary purpose was to tell the story of JPL to the public, the story of the Lab's interests as well as its employees. During the early 1960s the Public Information Office, Section 181, was establish, managed by Frank J. Colella. He handled all JPL activities in relationship to disseminating information to the general public and the JPL community.

In August 1969, Richard B. Philips was appointed manager of the Public Affairs Office, Section 180, which was responsible for the publication of Lab-Oratory, the employee magazine, as well as other related operations. The Office originally included two sections, Public Information Office (181) and Public Educational Services (182). In July 1976, with the retirement of Phillips, the scope and responsibilities of the Public Affairs Office was expanded, and a greater emphasis was placed on its role in management activities. Frank J. Colella, manager of the Public Information Office, was named as the new manager of the Public Affairs Office and Jurrie van der Woude joined the office after transferring from the JPL photo lab in 1976.

In 1998, under the Lab Directorship of Dr. Edward Stone, the Public Information Office became what is known today as the Media Relations Office, Section 181, managed by Franklin O'Donnell. With its new emphasis, the Media Relations Office managed how JPL communicated with the general public via mass media. This included external news, information, advertising and entertainment media, as well as JPL's own mass communication channels such as public web pages.

Media relation's specialists such as Jurrie van der Woude followed JPL's engineering, science and administrative activities in different "beat" areas including solar system exploration, Mars exploration, Earth sciences, astronomy and physics, and new technology in search of events, people, discoveries and developments of interest to the news media and the public. Jurrie handled queries from the outside news media to JPL that were directed to the Media Relations Office, which worked with JPL staff in arranging interviews, providing answers to questions, and preparing news and background text and supporting visuals. The office also worked in close coordination with the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs and coordinated its activities with those of the Caltech Office of Public Relations.

Jurrie van der Woude handled the public release of photographs for Mariners 4, 6, 7 and 9 missions to Mars and Mariner 10 to Venus and Mercury and participated in preparing NASA's atlas of Mercury. In the 1970's, while a part of the Public Affairs Office, he worked with the worldwide press corps, especially during the 12-year mission of the Voyager spacecraft to the outer planets.

He co-produced "Twenty -Five Years of Space Photography," an exhibit of 150 images that toured Asia and Europe and was seen by millions of people. He was the voice of JPL through many images and captions of planetary exploration for more than 20 years. This collection is just a small accumulation of his personal selection of captions he retained during his employment at JPL. Van der Woude retired in March of 2001.