who has devoted the past four years to deciphering Bermuda's weather will soon shift his focus to teeth.

Last week, Aerographer First Class Mr. Walter Beck officially retired from both the US Navy he has served for over 20 years and the Naval Oceangraphy Command Facility he has manned for the last four.

His new goal, which he will pursue at a college in Mississippi, is to become a dental hygienist.

"It's going to be tough to leave this place,'' Mr. Beck said of Bermuda.

"But I feel it's time to move on.'' If making such a radical career switch in mid-life seems scary, it is nothing compared to some of the perilous situations Mr. Beck has faced as a meteorologist and oceanographer for the American Navy.

"One of my most memorable times was on a ship in the Sargasso Sea,'' he said.

"We were doing exercises there and we found we had Hurricane Hugo ahead of us and Hurricane Iris behind. The sea was pretty rough and the ship was rolling pretty good. We had to do some open sea running to try and avoid both.'' As the ship's chief forecaster, Mr. Beck said he had to be at the ready on a 24-hour basis.

"I was very, very tired after that trip,'' he recalled. "I guess that's when I felt the greatest weight on my shoulders.'' Having missed Hurricane Emily in 1987, Mr. Beck said Bermuda's weather has provided few such nightmares during his four-year watch.

"It might have been luck but I've never come across a situation in Bermuda that I wasn't prepared for,'' he said.

Even so, the 24-hour monitoring that the job demands brought with it many sleepless nights -- not to mention a fair amount of stress.

"It's our responsibility to keep everyone, including the Bermuda Government, abreast of the weather situation,'' said Mr. Beck, who also contributes to The Royal Gazette 's weather page.

"It can get stressful at times, especially if there's a hurricane or winter storm bearing down on the Island.'' Before Mr. Beck came to Bermuda to work at the Weather Office, he had been here on temporary duty in 1989 -- the year of Hurricane Dean.

"This was the most prepared place I've ever seen,'' he said of Bermuda's response to Dean. "He wasn't very strong, but it could have been a lot worse without that preparation. Three days later you wouldn't even have known a hurricane had hit this Island.'' And Mr. Beck has seen his share of the world's islands, having travelled, during his years with a mobile environmental team, from "the Strait of Magellan to the Norwegian Sea.'' He even spent some time on Diego Garcia, a remote Indian Ocean island some 1,000 miles off the tip of India.

"Isolation duty is nothing new to me,'' he said.

Because he has travelled so much, Mr. Beck also said he is in a good position to proclaim Bermuda a "terrific'' place to live.

"What I'm going to miss most about Bermuda is the friendliness and receptiveness of the people. No matter where you go, you get a `Good morning' -- and I mean a sincere `Good morning.' "This,'' he said, "is the first place I've been stationed that I wasn't ready to leave.'' PASTURES NEW -- Surrounded by his weather-monitoring equipment at the US Naval Oceanography Command Facility, retiring Aerographer First Class Walter Beck will soon be leaving Bermuda to pursue a career in dental hygiene.