[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh no, he was in a different group. His group ended a few months after my group. They came later and ended later. We got married after we got back.

[Assistant] So what kind of romance was it with 1,000 miles apart? How did, how did that work out?

[User] Uh, it worked out well. We've been married for 51 years, so that's, that's pretty good. That's good. But that was, uh. He and I traveled together the second Nowruz vacation that we had, went to visit southern parts of Iran that neither one of us had seen.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] Really got into some of the history and looking at things from the different dynasties. A lot of things are open now that were not open then, even, or you, you had to be in the know to know where they were. And now they're.

[Assistant] You mean ruins?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Really got into some of the history and looking at things from the different dynasties. A lot of things are open now that were not open then, even, or you, you had to be in the know to know where they were. And now they're.

[Assistant] You mean ruins?

[User] Yeah, ruins. Buildings even. People ask me if I did this or that in Hamadan. It wasn't even something on the horizon to do when we were there. Nobody went into the caves unless you were a spelunker.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And now they take tours and.

[Assistant] And after Peace Corps, did you travel to other countries or did you come straight home?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And now they take tours and.

[Assistant] And after Peace Corps, did you travel to other countries or did you come straight home?

[User] Yes. No. I fulfilled a lifelong wish and said, I'm halfway around the world, I'm going to see the other half. There's a good chance I'll get back to Europe. Who knows when I can get back to Asia. So I went overland from Iran through Afghanistan. Steve went with me, my husband, he took his leave and we traveled together overland. And across Afghanistan. Then we flew into Amritsar in India. And saw the Taj Mahal, did Delhi and Agra. Then he had to go back and finish his service. And I took, I went on, took the train across India and then went up to Nepal, to Thailand, to Hong Kong, to Taiwan.

[Assistant] By yourself?

[User] By myself. California, Honolulu, Hawaii. And California. And then home.

[Assistant] And home was North Carolina?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. No. I fulfilled a lifelong wish and said, I'm halfway around the world, I'm going to see the other half. There's a good chance I'll get back to Europe. Who knows when I can get back to Asia. So I went overland from Iran through Afghanistan. Steve went with me, my husband, he took his leave and we traveled together overland. And across Afghanistan. Then we flew into Amritsar in India. And saw the Taj Mahal, did Delhi and Agra. Then he had to go back and finish his service. And I took, I went on, took the train across India and then went up to Nepal, to Thailand, to Hong Kong, to Taiwan.

[Assistant] By yourself?

[User] By myself. California, Honolulu, Hawaii. And California. And then home.

[Assistant] And home was North Carolina?

[User]
North Carolina.

So you did go all around the world.

I went to Japan. Yes. Yes, I had, uh. By then I had learned a whole lot about being alone and being on my own and being able to travel on my own. But it was, it was a growing experience and, uh. You know, I hooked up with various people. I met up with some American teachers who were in Thailand, and we traveled around together and, uh. I really had learned how to, to be alone and still have a, oh, a positive experience. But it was a, it was a long growing period.

[Assistant] And what happened when you got back to North Carolina?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] By myself. California, Honolulu, Hawaii. And California. And then home.

[Assistant] And home was North Carolina?

[User]
North Carolina.

So you did go all around the world.

I went to Japan. Yes. Yes, I had, uh. By then I had learned a whole lot about being alone and being on my own and being able to travel on my own. But it was, it was a growing experience and, uh. You know, I hooked up with various people. I met up with some American teachers who were in Thailand, and we traveled around together and, uh. I really had learned how to, to be alone and still have a, oh, a positive experience. But it was a, it was a long growing period.

[Assistant] And what happened when you got back to North Carolina?

[User] Oh. I was glad to see everybody. I gave a bunch of talks to local groups about what I had been doing. Ran around and visited all the relatives. Went to New York and started job hunting and, uh, met Steve when he came home.

[Assistant] Why New York? Was he from New York?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] He's from Brooklyn.

[Assistant] Oh.

[User] That was our standing joke. How does a guy from Brooklyn meet a girl from the hills of North Carolina? In Tehran.

[Assistant] Obviously.

[User] And, um. So I found a job working at the Jewish Guild for the Blind. They needed a communication skills instructor, not something that anybody trained for. And they said, ah, you were in the Peace Corps. I bet you can do this. And I said sure. So I learned how to teach typing to people who had no sight and of a group of. It was a, an interesting, also an interesting challenge because basically what you were doing was working with people so that they could function. You know, how to turn on their radios, how to, how to use a template to sign a check.

[Assistant] So they were all blind?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And, um. So I found a job working at the Jewish Guild for the Blind. They needed a communication skills instructor, not something that anybody trained for. And they said, ah, you were in the Peace Corps. I bet you can do this. And I said sure. So I learned how to teach typing to people who had no sight and of a group of. It was a, an interesting, also an interesting challenge because basically what you were doing was working with people so that they could function. You know, how to turn on their radios, how to, how to use a template to sign a check.

[Assistant] So they were all blind?

[User] They were blind. And the most challenging client I had was deaf and blind.

[Assistant] Wow.

[User] And I had to teach her how to type. But what they were looking for was somebody who was willing to accept a challenge.

[Assistant] And it was a perfect training. It was perfect training.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And I had to teach her how to type. But what they were looking for was somebody who was willing to accept a challenge.

[Assistant] And it was a perfect training. It was perfect training.

[User] Then we got married and then I moved with him. We moved from New York to Saint Louis, and I taught in an inner city enrichment program as a volunteer. I taught about Iran. I taught these kids in the inner city how to make how to make Iranian rugs. We used greeting card boxes and created many miniature rugs. And I taught them about the alphabet and found one child. One of the classes there was this totally disruptive child, and the teacher was telling me she was about ready to pull her hair out. This child could read Farsi. And I realized he's dyslexic. Because Farsi is written.

[Assistant] Oh.

[User] From right to left.

[Assistant] Right to left.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] From right to left.

[Assistant] Right to left.

[User] Yeah. And so when I put the stuff up, you know, it fascinated the kids. But he, he grabbed, he got into it. It was like, okay, I think somebody needs to do some testing here. Uh.

[Assistant] Great.

[User] So and from there, we went back to New York City. And I volunteered. By then, we had one child and I volunteered in a nursery school. And then from there we went to West Virginia and I worked, I volunteered in the schools there. And then we came to Albany, New York, and serendipity. I just decided to renew my lifeguarding because it was a good way to challenge me myself. And then I picked up my WSI, which I had.

[Assistant] What is WSI?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So and from there, we went back to New York City. And I volunteered. By then, we had one child and I volunteered in a nursery school. And then from there we went to West Virginia and I worked, I volunteered in the schools there. And then we came to Albany, New York, and serendipity. I just decided to renew my lifeguarding because it was a good way to challenge me myself. And then I picked up my WSI, which I had.

[Assistant] What is WSI?

[User] It's water safety instructor for Red Cross. And then the, uh, the director of the program went on maternity leave and they asked me if I would sub for six months and she didn't come back. So 16 and a half years later, I retired from that job.

[Assistant] Great.

[User] It was like, you know, you're just prepared to take on whatever comes along.

[Assistant] People who always plan their careers, I tell them, don't get too hung up on that. It may not happen.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It's water safety instructor for Red Cross. And then the, uh, the director of the program went on maternity leave and they asked me if I would sub for six months and she didn't come back. So 16 and a half years later, I retired from that job.

[Assistant] Great.

[User] It was like, you know, you're just prepared to take on whatever comes along.

[Assistant] People who always plan their careers, I tell them, don't get too hung up on that. It may not happen.

[User] Right. And the thing is, our Iran experience has colored our lives throughout. I still cook Iranian food regularly. We celebrate Nowruz, the New Year. We, uh, we also have been very active since 1981. We've been active with the returned Peace Corps volunteer group that's in the Albany area. That's when Peace Corps tried, decided they were going to try to get volunteers together. It was a genesis. And then I'm now the president of the board of the Peace Corps Iran Association. Newly elected.

[Assistant] Congratulations. And what does that group do?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It was like, you know, you're just prepared to take on whatever comes along.

[Assistant] People who always plan their careers, I tell them, don't get too hung up on that. It may not happen.

[User] Right. And the thing is, our Iran experience has colored our lives throughout. I still cook Iranian food regularly. We celebrate Nowruz, the New Year. We, uh, we also have been very active since 1981. We've been active with the returned Peace Corps volunteer group that's in the Albany area. That's when Peace Corps tried, decided they were going to try to get volunteers together. It was a genesis. And then I'm now the president of the board of the Peace Corps Iran Association. Newly elected.

[Assistant] Congratulations. And what does that group do?

[User] It's a group that formed 2011. There have been groups off and on but. And we are. I don't have the mission statement right in my head. But we, we are making an effort to locate all the people that served in Iran. We're trying to preserve the legacy of what Peace Corps did in Iran because Peace Corps left Iran in 1976. So we're all.

[Assistant] When the Shah was overthrown?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It's a group that formed 2011. There have been groups off and on but. And we are. I don't have the mission statement right in my head. But we, we are making an effort to locate all the people that served in Iran. We're trying to preserve the legacy of what Peace Corps did in Iran because Peace Corps left Iran in 1976. So we're all.

[Assistant] When the Shah was overthrown?

[User] No, he wasn't overthrown at that point.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] But the unrest and turmoil was beginning. And, uh, we advocate for better relations between the American people and the Iranian people, the people of Iran.

[Assistant] So you have a real challenge at the moment.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, he wasn't overthrown at that point.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] But the unrest and turmoil was beginning. And, uh, we advocate for better relations between the American people and the Iranian people, the people of Iran.

[Assistant] So you have a real challenge at the moment.

[User] Yes, we have a very great challenge at the moment, but we have, we have several strains. And we are, we have someone that's writing a history of our group of Peace Corps in Iran. We're working with professors who are doing research on it. And we have a conference every two years that's a reunion and a, you know, let's update our knowledge kind of thing.

[Assistant] Excellent. So you've brought Peace Corps back to the United States, clearly.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, we have a very great challenge at the moment, but we have, we have several strains. And we are, we have someone that's writing a history of our group of Peace Corps in Iran. We're working with professors who are doing research on it. And we have a conference every two years that's a reunion and a, you know, let's update our knowledge kind of thing.

[Assistant] Excellent. So you've brought Peace Corps back to the United States, clearly.

[User] Yes. Oh, I've done, I've done lots of schools program. And I brought back, I brought back a mullah's robe, a Kurdish turban, and a chador. And the kids love to see what it's like to dress up. And I have a whole box of, not your grand art. I have a pair of shoes that were made out of recycled rubber tires. I have a set of donkey beads, and I always put it out and say, you know, what is this? You know, who would wear this? And the kids, you know, I have. What is this? Where did it come from? Kind of thing set that.

[Assistant] That's great.

[User] Kids, even adults, enjoy looking at their, their ordinary day to day. I didn't have a lot of money. I mean, there are people that came back with wonderful carpets and things. I came back with an inexpensive tribal carpet, but I came back with a lot of these sort of daily life kind of things, which are a lot of fun for kids.

[Assistant] That's great. So you've carried the spirit of Peace Corps forward?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. Oh, I've done, I've done lots of schools program. And I brought back, I brought back a mullah's robe, a Kurdish turban, and a chador. And the kids love to see what it's like to dress up. And I have a whole box of, not your grand art. I have a pair of shoes that were made out of recycled rubber tires. I have a set of donkey beads, and I always put it out and say, you know, what is this? You know, who would wear this? And the kids, you know, I have. What is this? Where did it come from? Kind of thing set that.

[Assistant] That's great.

[User] Kids, even adults, enjoy looking at their, their ordinary day to day. I didn't have a lot of money. I mean, there are people that came back with wonderful carpets and things. I came back with an inexpensive tribal carpet, but I came back with a lot of these sort of daily life kind of things, which are a lot of fun for kids.

[Assistant] That's great. So you've carried the spirit of Peace Corps forward?

[User] I try.

[Assistant] That's, that's all we can do. Anything else you want to say before we conclude the interview?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Kids, even adults, enjoy looking at their, their ordinary day to day. I didn't have a lot of money. I mean, there are people that came back with wonderful carpets and things. I came back with an inexpensive tribal carpet, but I came back with a lot of these sort of daily life kind of things, which are a lot of fun for kids.

[Assistant] That's great. So you've carried the spirit of Peace Corps forward?

[User] I try.

[Assistant] That's, that's all we can do. Anything else you want to say before we conclude the interview?

[User] I would. I would like to go back to the training. I think that when we went through our exit interviews, I think that it was significant that I was the only one that I know of in my group who was by myself. All the other women were with other women. And I think we, we made it fairly clear that there were lots of issues that, that they needed to take into consideration when placing women. It wasn't that we couldn't do the job or didn't do the job. It was that, you know, just plunking a woman down by herself without a support group, without some kind of support, was very difficult. The guys, guys ended up pretty much, some of them were by themselves. But what happened with the men is a family would absorb them. Somehow we didn't get absorbed into a family the way the guys did.

[Assistant] And that's probably cultural.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I try.

[Assistant] That's, that's all we can do. Anything else you want to say before we conclude the interview?

[User] I would. I would like to go back to the training. I think that when we went through our exit interviews, I think that it was significant that I was the only one that I know of in my group who was by myself. All the other women were with other women. And I think we, we made it fairly clear that there were lots of issues that, that they needed to take into consideration when placing women. It wasn't that we couldn't do the job or didn't do the job. It was that, you know, just plunking a woman down by herself without a support group, without some kind of support, was very difficult. The guys, guys ended up pretty much, some of them were by themselves. But what happened with the men is a family would absorb them. Somehow we didn't get absorbed into a family the way the guys did.

[Assistant] And that's probably cultural.

[User] It's very cultural. And, and of course, they could easily go out to, for dinner. It was much harder for us to go to a restaurant and there were very few and far between, at least in the small towns where I was. And in the, when I got to a city, women didn't go out by themselves to eat. It just wasn't done. So there were changes that came down because I, I think our group was fairly articulate about some of the issues that we faced. I think we were articulate about the fact that don't tell us to change your culture.

[Assistant] Well, one of the people I've interviewed has said that Peace Corps is a learning organization. Sometimes it takes a while to learn, but over time has changed a lot with each experience. So I'm sure your, your experience fed into that as well.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I would. I would like to go back to the training. I think that when we went through our exit interviews, I think that it was significant that I was the only one that I know of in my group who was by myself. All the other women were with other women. And I think we, we made it fairly clear that there were lots of issues that, that they needed to take into consideration when placing women. It wasn't that we couldn't do the job or didn't do the job. It was that, you know, just plunking a woman down by herself without a support group, without some kind of support, was very difficult. The guys, guys ended up pretty much, some of them were by themselves. But what happened with the men is a family would absorb them. Somehow we didn't get absorbed into a family the way the guys did.

[Assistant] And that's probably cultural.

[User] It's very cultural. And, and of course, they could easily go out to, for dinner. It was much harder for us to go to a restaurant and there were very few and far between, at least in the small towns where I was. And in the, when I got to a city, women didn't go out by themselves to eat. It just wasn't done. So there were changes that came down because I, I think our group was fairly articulate about some of the issues that we faced. I think we were articulate about the fact that don't tell us to change your culture.

[Assistant] Well, one of the people I've interviewed has said that Peace Corps is a learning organization. Sometimes it takes a while to learn, but over time has changed a lot with each experience. So I'm sure your, your experience fed into that as well.

[User] I'm sure it did. And, um, and Peace Corps today is so different from, from what we did. And you were in the same era as me. So I called home, in order to call home, I had to make a journey to, to Tehran, sign up to make a phone call, wait for two days, get in line for my time.

[Assistant] No satellite phones.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It's very cultural. And, and of course, they could easily go out to, for dinner. It was much harder for us to go to a restaurant and there were very few and far between, at least in the small towns where I was. And in the, when I got to a city, women didn't go out by themselves to eat. It just wasn't done. So there were changes that came down because I, I think our group was fairly articulate about some of the issues that we faced. I think we were articulate about the fact that don't tell us to change your culture.

[Assistant] Well, one of the people I've interviewed has said that Peace Corps is a learning organization. Sometimes it takes a while to learn, but over time has changed a lot with each experience. So I'm sure your, your experience fed into that as well.

[User] I'm sure it did. And, um, and Peace Corps today is so different from, from what we did. And you were in the same era as me. So I called home, in order to call home, I had to make a journey to, to Tehran, sign up to make a phone call, wait for two days, get in line for my time.

[Assistant] No satellite phones.

[User] No satellite phones, no digital age, no Skype, no Zoom.

[Assistant] It was not only in the developing world, it was just a different time.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No satellite phones, no digital age, no Skype, no Zoom.

[Assistant] It was not only in the developing world, it was just a different time.

[User] It was a different time. And so we have letters. We have letters home. We have written documents.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And a lot of people I'm wondering today what kind of documentation they're going to have of their service.

[Assistant] That's why we're doing these interviews as well.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And a lot of people I'm wondering today what kind of documentation they're going to have of their service.

[Assistant] That's why we're doing these interviews as well.

[User] Right. Well, also, there are an awful lot of us that are aging. We're looking at it. That was part of the impetus for the Peace Corps Iran group, I've talked forever, was that we realized that we are aging out and this is our opportunity to tell our story and get our legacy on record.

[Assistant] It's important.

[User] And right now, we're, we're starting to look for a place to archive the writings and things that we have. So I think the interviews are really important, but they're only one piece of trying to archive the experience.

[Assistant] Definitely. Great. So, excellent interview.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That's right.

[Assistant] Well, luckily you both avoided any incident there.

[User] We're both still alive, yes.

[Assistant] Did you tell him to watch out next time?

[User] No, I didn't say anything to him. I just went on to another parking place.

[Assistant] You worked at White Sands here initially for a few years, as you mentioned, on these various projects. How then did the opportunity arise for you to go to the Johnson Space Center?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. I might close by saying for the record that I had a fantastic career. I wouldn't take a minute for any of it. I wouldn't take $1,000 for a minute of it. I worked for the agency for over thirty-two years and I am thankful to NASA and the federal government and the space program that I got the opportunity to be involved in many of the things that I was. I will be forever grateful.

[Assistant] You certainly have had some very exciting times.

[User] Yes, I sure have.

[Assistant] If I could ask you jut a couple final questions.

[User] Absolutely.

[Assistant] Looking back over this unique career, what would you say over all of that would have been your greatest challenge? You've certainly had a lot that you've talked about.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. NASA is a very unique organization, as far as talent's concerned. There continues to be, and there certainly was in the early days, some extremely talented people.\n\n Something you asked me in a letter about the interview process when I came to work here.

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] That's an interesting story. I was at college, applied to JSC, received an offer in the mail—no, I take that back. A personnel person from Houston called me and asked me if I would accept a job at White Sands Test Facility, and I said, "Yes, I will." We talked about what is it and all. He didn't know much about it, but what he told me was enough to say, "Yes, I'll take the job." I received a written offer in the mail. I never talked to anybody at White Sands. I never talked to anybody technically at JSC.\n\n When I got to White Sands, after I'd been there a while, Mr. Gilbreath showed me a letter he wrote to personnel when they'd notified him I was coming. He protested and said, "I don't know this person, I've never talked to him, I have no idea if he's technically competent." He objected to the way they hired me. I guess when he made me deputy director of his organization, he had finally decided I was going to be okay, I guess. [Laughter]

[Assistant] I think probably so. Well, it certainly sounds like over the years enough people thought that you were okay. It certainly panned out well for everyone, it sounds like.

[User] Yes, I've had a great career.

[Assistant]
I'd like at this point to ask Kevin if he has any questions.

I'll save mine for tomorrow.

Okay. I want to thank you so much for sharing all this with us.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That's an interesting story. I was at college, applied to JSC, received an offer in the mail—no, I take that back. A personnel person from Houston called me and asked me if I would accept a job at White Sands Test Facility, and I said, "Yes, I will." We talked about what is it and all. He didn't know much about it, but what he told me was enough to say, "Yes, I'll take the job." I received a written offer in the mail. I never talked to anybody at White Sands. I never talked to anybody technically at JSC.\n\n When I got to White Sands, after I'd been there a while, Mr. Gilbreath showed me a letter he wrote to personnel when they'd notified him I was coming. He protested and said, "I don't know this person, I've never talked to him, I have no idea if he's technically competent." He objected to the way they hired me. I guess when he made me deputy director of his organization, he had finally decided I was going to be okay, I guess. [Laughter]

[Assistant] I think probably so. Well, it certainly sounds like over the years enough people thought that you were okay. It certainly panned out well for everyone, it sounds like.

[User] Yes, I've had a great career.

[Assistant]
I'd like at this point to ask Kevin if he has any questions.

I'll save mine for tomorrow.

Okay. I want to thank you so much for sharing all this with us.

[User] You're welcome.

[Assistant] You certainly had some interesting times.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] You're welcome.

[Assistant] You certainly had some interesting times.

[User] I give you the opportunity when you're transcribing this or thinking about it, if you've got any other questions, call me or whatever, and I'll be glad to give you my views on them.

[Assistant] Great.

[User] When you talk to other people some things may come up that you want to talk to me about, I'll certainly be happy to talk to you.

[Assistant] Wonderful. You'll have a chance to review the transcript, too, so if you think of anything at that time we can always add that in as well.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] > Other duties as assigned. [Laughs] I’ve said this for years and it’s almost true. You do everything nobody else wants to do. Engineers don’t want to do anything administrative, so you get all the floor space, the supplies, the job requirements, promotions, training; anything that isn’t engineering becomes yours.\n\n Managers get used to, when they say, “I want this,” it’s there. They have no idea sometimes what it takes to make “this” get right “there.” So to me that position has more duties, different duties, than almost any other; that you never get to finish one thing before you’re doing three others. You go in and look at any AO’s desk, and they’re going to have several folders that they’re working at the same time. You have to get pretty good at multitasking.

[Assistant] You had so much corporate knowledge when you came in there, because, like you said, you came in in 1962. Tell us about the great memories that you look back on.

[User] > All of them. Doing those simulations. Working at the agency for just a couple of months, and then I’m doing simulations that they’re going to use when the guys simulate the flight.

[Assistant] Did you get to witness those? Were you in the sims when they did those?

[User] > Not in the Stahl-Meyers Building, because they went somewhere else to do their simming. Once we moved on-site and once the Control Center was operational, yes. Oh yes, I was over there a lot. Moving from one program to another, each one—the Gemini Program, the first time we had two of them up there at the same time; the first rendezvous in space, Gemini 7/6. Just every single thing we did was another treasured memory. Apollo, you know, the tragedy of the fire and then how determined it made everybody to never have anything like that again. The triumph of Apollo 8 that finally went around the Moon, and Apollo 11.

[Assistant] What were your thoughts when you heard that they were going to send [Apollo] 8 around the Moon? Because that was a big moment.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] > ASTP wasn’t too different. Skylab, we had lots more recording technical capability. We didn’t go over to the Control Center quite as much. In fact, in our experiments area, we were able to put in a system, like a phone mail; it was before we had phone mails on the office phones. A recorder had the phone hooked up for when people called in—you know, the PIs [Principal Investigators] would call in from different places wondering about the status of a particular experiment. I would just go over and retrieve the tapes. So we didn’t spend quite as much time in the Control Center, but you had more telecommunications, more computer capability that you were able to do things from your office location. Still did as much, just in a different way.

[Assistant] Plus you had people now working 24 hours around the clock for supporting missions.

[User] > For the missions, yes, a few days before and a couple of days afterward, usually. Of course, once we started [Space] Shuttle and [International Space] Station, then you did have more and more of it. And of course, with the Shuttle Program, it was expected to have a launch every couple of weeks, and that didn’t happen. Not even once a month, usually. Shuttle was slower than you expected, and it never did get up to what they had thought it would be.

[Assistant] When we were doing research, there was a question about a teleprinter machine during Skylab. Did you work with those?

[User] > I didn’t do teleprinter. In fact, I was thinking about that. I’m not even sure exactly where it was and who was doing it, but it was another organization, probably an info [information] systems kind of—the network controllers or somebody who provided that service.

[Assistant] Let’s talk about the technology changes. You mentioned the Ditto machine and just the evolution of the typewriter itself. What were some of the other areas of technology that you watched while you were there?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] > Oh, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I was doing what I liked. I was successful. Just watching history in the making, the people I worked with; I just couldn’t imagine having that same satisfaction anywhere else.

[Assistant] Did much change when the Center started shifting towards supporting the Shuttle activities? Did much change for you?

[User] > The biggest change for me was doing mostly administrative kind of things and not being in the middle of the technical stuff. In the old days, doing all that typing of all that technical stuff, you were aware of what was going on technically and what was even handier, you knew the acronyms. You ask any new people to the site, and they say, “Good Lord, it’s like a new language.” Losing some of that was a change for me. I had to start looking up what is this, what is this, what is that. Especially in more recent years, because people at Headquarters didn’t know what all that was, you had to be sure that you spelled out every acronym, even though they wouldn’t even know what that was in a lot of cases. That was the biggest change for me.\n\n I was working more with management by then, the supervisors and managers, not with the guys. It wasn’t a bad thing. It was just a different level of work.

[Assistant] Through your life you were a female working in a male-oriented environment. Did you ever feel like there was a difference of how they treated you?

[User] > No.

[Assistant] Do you feel like the respect level was equal?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] > No.

[Assistant] Do you feel like the respect level was equal?

[User] > Oh yes, always equal. You know, I found that the guys always looked out for me. They really looked out for me. Even when it was a coarser environment than it is now, I never felt disrespected, never. As I say, it was like family. They were all my big brothers or dads or whatever. To this day when I see like Gerry Griffin, Gene, all the guys—when Phil [Philip C.] Shaffer died, one of the first notes I got back was from Neil Hutchinson.\n\n I didn’t feel that I finished the Neil Hutchinson story. A few years after that, Hutchinson was named Manager of the Space Station Freedom Program. He needed an Admin [Administrative] Officer, and HR asked me, “Would you be interested?”\n\n I said, “I’m really happy where I am. I don’t see any need to change.”\n\n They said, “Well, could we just put your name in just as a possible?”\n\n I said, “Okay.”\n\n Well, the next thing I know, Hutchinson went to HR, who were the middlemen between [Clifford E.] Charlesworth and Kranz, and asked for me to be his AO. So my telling him in those days—guys don’t want yes people. They want people to tell them how it is. He asked for me to be his AO, and both Charlesworth and Kranz said not only no, but, “Hell, no.” [Laughter] And that didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I was glad later, because that program was very short-lived.

[Assistant] Station does have a history of its own, doesn’t it?

[User] > Boy, doesn’t it. To this day Neil is one of the first to respond to any request.

[Assistant] What do you think has been the most challenging aspect of what you had to deal with when you were out at the Center?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh, yes. When I was working the staff at the Radiation Lab, I worked on ten or fifteen different experiments like that. If you want some more examples, I can give you. Maybe that’s enough.

[Assistant] Okay. Sure. That’s fine. We can always come back if we need to. At any point during this time, did you begin working on researching the upper atmosphere or space? Was that during this time, while you were—

[User] No. That was much later, after I left Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, you were here. For a while you also were working in the Plowshare Division.

[User] That’s after I went to Livermore [Livermore Radiation Laboratory, Livermore, California].

[Assistant] Okay. At Livermore. What sorts of projects were you involved with there? How did the projects you were working on at Livermore vary from what you had been working on when you were here?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] My work on the test ban?

[Assistant] When you said you were an advisor to the Nuclear Test Ban Conference that was going on.

[User] Yes. We were advising—the ambassador was the head of the U.S. delegation, about the technical side of what a test ban should be like. How much did that influence my work? Not at all, I think. Just a different subject.

[Assistant] Okay. As you were working at Goddard and you were working on the various satellite programs, particularly in the Theoretical Division, did you have any work at all in the Mercury or Gemini Programs, any of the experiments that they did?

[User] No.

[Assistant] Were there any other, particularly satellite programs?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. We were advising—the ambassador was the head of the U.S. delegation, about the technical side of what a test ban should be like. How much did that influence my work? Not at all, I think. Just a different subject.

[Assistant] Okay. As you were working at Goddard and you were working on the various satellite programs, particularly in the Theoretical Division, did you have any work at all in the Mercury or Gemini Programs, any of the experiments that they did?

[User] No.

[Assistant] Were there any other, particularly satellite programs?

[User] It would have been rather different if I’d been involved in the science in those things. I’ll tell you a story. I’ll tell it now. At a meeting later on, this now jumps down to Houston. I’m in a meeting with the Houston management about some part of the science business, and Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft, the head of [Flight] Operations down there, asked me something about the science program that was done on Gemini, and I said it was lousy. It was really bad. He looked very upset and said, “What do you mean, it was lousy?”\n\n I said, “It was a fiasco.”\n\n And he stomped out of the room. And he came back a minute later with a piece of paper written on it, “Fiasco: a ridiculous and utter failure.” He had gone to a dictionary and looked up the definition of “fiasco.” And he said, “Is that what you mean?”\n\n And I said, “Well, maybe it wasn’t quite ‘utter.’” And that didn’t seem to help very much. But it’s true. Science that they put together to do on Gemini was worthless, not useful at all.

[Assistant] Certainly very limited.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] By scientists. It was pulling together a variety of scientists from the community who had the proper skills to try to think through what should these experiments be and how much does a lunar seismograph have to weigh. Can you do one for ten pounds that has enough sensitivity that you can measure moonquakes okay? That kind of questions. You have to get the right kind of people to do this, but we had a good set there.

[Assistant] How was it determined who would be invited to participate in this conference?

[User] Who would be—I don’t know. I wasn’t. I guess I suggested a couple of people to come, but I’m sure it was the Houston management and plus maybe Washington management, but I don’t know. I wasn’t involved in that.

[Assistant] Okay. Before we move on to more details about Apollo, were there any other major projects that you were involved in while you were at Goddard that you’d like to comment on?

[User] [Pauses] No.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, while you were involved in planning now for the Apollo Program, or at least participated in this conference, were you involved in any other Apollo activities while at Goddard, before you moved on to the Manned Spacecraft Center [Houston, Texas]?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Who would be—I don’t know. I wasn’t. I guess I suggested a couple of people to come, but I’m sure it was the Houston management and plus maybe Washington management, but I don’t know. I wasn’t involved in that.

[Assistant] Okay. Before we move on to more details about Apollo, were there any other major projects that you were involved in while you were at Goddard that you’d like to comment on?

[User] [Pauses] No.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, while you were involved in planning now for the Apollo Program, or at least participated in this conference, were you involved in any other Apollo activities while at Goddard, before you moved on to the Manned Spacecraft Center [Houston, Texas]?

[User] No.

[Assistant] That would make sense, saying there wasn’t a lot of need for more planning since the conference went so well.\n\n How did the opportunity arise for you to accept the position as the Director of Science and Applications at the Manned Spacecraft Center?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That wasn’t my responsibility; it was the responsibility of a bunch of the engineering guys who worked with us on seeing that the experiments were put together properly and doing the testing for man-rating and that sort of stuff. It was done, but it wasn’t my personal responsibility.

[Assistant] Were these individuals that worked under you, or were they in the Engineering Directorate?

[User] Yes and no.

[Assistant] Okay. Some of both.

[User] Some of both, yes.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, if you could describe to us a little bit about how your directorate was structured, what some of the branches were, and—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, the details were put together by the teams and our people. The general idea, having the vacuum chamber and people working arms inside the vacuum chamber, that had been decided sometime before. Having the quarantine had been decided sometime before. We set up the Japanese quail and pine seedlings and stuff.

[Assistant] How challenging was it in working in the laboratory, trying to meet NASA’s standards on safety, on how the samples would be processed and then also trying to meet the scientific community’s desires, needs for wanting to get the samples?

[User] It wasn’t too bad. You knew pretty well what you had to do, and as soon as you explained to scientists what general things had to be gone through before you could pass the material out to them. We had one big meeting where we got a lot of scientists together, I guess maybe all the people that sent in proposals for analysis, that probably was who we had pulled together. We pulled them all together and had a fairly detailed discussion of what the process was for working the materials and getting them to the point where they were ready to pass out and how we did that.\n\n There were some questions about—it was at that meeting that Gerry Wasserburg came to the fore. He was representing a bunch of people who were mad about something. What were they mad about? They were made about money. Oh, hell, I’ve forgotten. That’s too long ago.

[Assistant] That’s all right.

[User] But anyway, so we talked to them in enough detail so that they didn’t get mad at us, and we had NASA engineers working with us on the project, so the safety part of it was going along as part of the ordinary business of the lab. So I guess the answer is, there weren’t very many big blow-ups.

[Assistant] Well, that’s good.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Gulp. —I remember we had one. I don’t really remember much about it.

That was where the Roy Rogers—not Roy Rogers—Buck Rogers guy flew. It sure impressed the kids.

Oh, you mean with the backpack? Yes. I must say, I’m coming up blank.

[Assistant] Okay. That’s all right. You’re allowed to say that. You’re allowed to say that.

[User] That was early, early on. I think we had gone down to Houston in May, and this was that summer.

[Assistant] We don’t expect you to remember every little detail. It was a while back. So it’s quite all right to say, “I just don’t remember.”\n\n Do you recall the Lunar Exploration Planning Group that came out of that, or is that—

[User] Nope.

[Assistant] Okay. That’s fine. Looking at lunar site selection, did you as Director of Science and Applications have or participate in the site selection for where they would make the landings?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That was early, early on. I think we had gone down to Houston in May, and this was that summer.

[Assistant] We don’t expect you to remember every little detail. It was a while back. So it’s quite all right to say, “I just don’t remember.”\n\n Do you recall the Lunar Exploration Planning Group that came out of that, or is that—

[User] Nope.

[Assistant] Okay. That’s fine. Looking at lunar site selection, did you as Director of Science and Applications have or participate in the site selection for where they would make the landings?

[User] Well, I personally didn’t have anything to do with it. The guy who was in charge of that, essentially, was Gene [Eugene M.] Shoemaker, and Gene had a bunch of guys, some of them were from Geological Survey and some other types. Gene Simmons, I think, worked with him, trying to select sites. Now, they were under fairly severe constraints. They had to select land[ing] places, where the LM could land most safely, and so that restricted the kinds of places where they could go and things they could do, a fair amount. But having said that, then I think they did a pretty good job of selecting them. I’m not a geologist, so I can’t argue. They did get highland sites. They did have mare sites. They never had the guts to land in a rill, did they? There was talk at one point about landing in Hadley’s Rill, but they didn’t ever do that.

[Assistant] They landed within a few miles of it, I think, but—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Is that right? Well, but they never got down into it.

[Assistant] No.

[User]
I don’t know if that would have been useful or not, but one of the questions that geologists had, I think they still do have, is what were the conditions which allowed you to make a river on the Moon, and what evidence is there from what’s there now, i.e., the rill, that says what it was like. But that was too ambitious for the landings.\n\n One of the whole problems with Apollo was that because safety was so important, you were forbidden from doing a lot of things you’d like to do. Like, wouldn’t it be fun to land near the polar caps and make a survey for water, which they could have done? But that’s not right in the easily available low-latitude region on the Moon, so stay away from it. Wouldn’t it have been fun to land on the backside? No, no, that’s forbidden.\n\n There was a project that JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California] had put together at about the same time as Apollo, called Surveyor Block Three, which was to do more science than Apollo would do, for a lot less money. But it got canceled because it was in competition with Apollo.

It was unmanned, however, wasn’t it?

That was unmanned, yes, very much unmanned. But it would have landed on the backside of the Moon. It would have landed—probably landed in the polar regions.

[Assistant] Was this one of the projects that included ideas of unmanned rovers?

[User] I think it had a rover, yes. And it had sample collection and it had sample return. But that wasn’t the purpose [of Apollo]. The purpose was, get a man there and get him back and then do a little bit of science on the side if you can.

[Assistant] How much did the scientific community accept that purpose for Apollo?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] How much training would the crews participate in before the mission, to be able to get them to at least try and pick up some of the rocks that were more interesting or that might generate science, or were you involved much in that?

[User] I wasn’t involved in that. Shoemaker and his group, took the astronauts on various geological field trips, and they went up to—well, they went to Meteor Crater, Arizona. They went up into Oregon where there’s a big lava flow area. I can’t think what it’s called anymore.

[Assistant] Craters of the Moon.

[User] Craters of the Moon. That sounds right. And spent time with them. These were places which were selected to —look like the Moon. I’m not sure that’s fair, but vaguely. And spent time talking with them, and, “Well, how do you sample this? What do you look for?” And all that. That was the kind of training they got, was from Gene’s group.

[Assistant] Gene Shoemaker’s group was working primarily through the USGS [United States Geological Society]. They weren’t employed by NASA, is that correct?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I wasn’t involved in that. Shoemaker and his group, took the astronauts on various geological field trips, and they went up to—well, they went to Meteor Crater, Arizona. They went up into Oregon where there’s a big lava flow area. I can’t think what it’s called anymore.

[Assistant] Craters of the Moon.

[User] Craters of the Moon. That sounds right. And spent time with them. These were places which were selected to —look like the Moon. I’m not sure that’s fair, but vaguely. And spent time talking with them, and, “Well, how do you sample this? What do you look for?” And all that. That was the kind of training they got, was from Gene’s group.

[Assistant] Gene Shoemaker’s group was working primarily through the USGS [United States Geological Society]. They weren’t employed by NASA, is that correct?

[User] True.

[Assistant] How was that structured between the NASA science side, the USGS side, but yet all coming together to accomplish the same mission?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Craters of the Moon. That sounds right. And spent time with them. These were places which were selected to —look like the Moon. I’m not sure that’s fair, but vaguely. And spent time talking with them, and, “Well, how do you sample this? What do you look for?” And all that. That was the kind of training they got, was from Gene’s group.

[Assistant] Gene Shoemaker’s group was working primarily through the USGS [United States Geological Society]. They weren’t employed by NASA, is that correct?

[User] True.

[Assistant] How was that structured between the NASA science side, the USGS side, but yet all coming together to accomplish the same mission?

[User] Well, —Gene’s group was given the responsibility for all of the planning-related landing sites and all of the training of the astronauts and taking them to interesting places looking for things that might be similar to the Moon in some sense. How was that related? It was just done. I don’t think there was a contract or anything like that. I’m not aware of any. And we watched it going on. I talked to Gene a lot and worked with him some. Toured Meteor Crater, Arizona, with him one day, but we never gave him directions what to do. He was one of the team.

[Assistant] So the relationship there was pretty good then between—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, —Gene’s group was given the responsibility for all of the planning-related landing sites and all of the training of the astronauts and taking them to interesting places looking for things that might be similar to the Moon in some sense. How was that related? It was just done. I don’t think there was a contract or anything like that. I’m not aware of any. And we watched it going on. I talked to Gene a lot and worked with him some. Toured Meteor Crater, Arizona, with him one day, but we never gave him directions what to do. He was one of the team.

[Assistant] So the relationship there was pretty good then between—

[User] Oh yes, it was very good.

[Assistant] Good.

[User] And he did a good job.

[Assistant] We talked earlier about ALSEP and that conference that it had actually spun off of and a lot of the planning was done there, and not as much was needed to be done afterwards, other than fine-tuning, actually building the instruments. But on Apollo 11, they actually flew an abbreviated version of the ALSEP. It only had a couple of the instruments, rather than the full package. Do you recall the reasoning behind that, and how that came about?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh yes, it was very good.

[Assistant] Good.

[User] And he did a good job.

[Assistant] We talked earlier about ALSEP and that conference that it had actually spun off of and a lot of the planning was done there, and not as much was needed to be done afterwards, other than fine-tuning, actually building the instruments. But on Apollo 11, they actually flew an abbreviated version of the ALSEP. It only had a couple of the instruments, rather than the full package. Do you recall the reasoning behind that, and how that came about?

[User] No. I don’t even know that it was true. But go ahead. I’ll believe you.

[Assistant] Okay. I believe they flew just an EASEP [Early Apollo Surface Experiment Package] that had, I think, three instruments, including the seismometer and a couple of others, whereas the larger package was with all of the instruments which flew on later flights. I was just curious about your input on that, but we can move on.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And he did a good job.

[Assistant] We talked earlier about ALSEP and that conference that it had actually spun off of and a lot of the planning was done there, and not as much was needed to be done afterwards, other than fine-tuning, actually building the instruments. But on Apollo 11, they actually flew an abbreviated version of the ALSEP. It only had a couple of the instruments, rather than the full package. Do you recall the reasoning behind that, and how that came about?

[User] No. I don’t even know that it was true. But go ahead. I’ll believe you.

[Assistant] Okay. I believe they flew just an EASEP [Early Apollo Surface Experiment Package] that had, I think, three instruments, including the seismometer and a couple of others, whereas the larger package was with all of the instruments which flew on later flights. I was just curious about your input on that, but we can move on.

[User] Don’t remember.

[Assistant] Okay. That’s fine. Were you involved at all with the Apollo Program Control Board that would make decisions about what aspects of the missions, if there would be changes, especially on the science side of things?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No. I don’t even know that it was true. But go ahead. I’ll believe you.

[Assistant] Okay. I believe they flew just an EASEP [Early Apollo Surface Experiment Package] that had, I think, three instruments, including the seismometer and a couple of others, whereas the larger package was with all of the instruments which flew on later flights. I was just curious about your input on that, but we can move on.

[User] Don’t remember.

[Assistant] Okay. That’s fine. Were you involved at all with the Apollo Program Control Board that would make decisions about what aspects of the missions, if there would be changes, especially on the science side of things?

[User] I sat in on some of the meetings, but I wasn’t a member of the board, and I only sat in when there was something involving science programs and that sort of thing.

[Assistant] Do you recall any major incidents—or not incidents, —but events around the science aspect on that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Don’t remember.

[Assistant] Okay. That’s fine. Were you involved at all with the Apollo Program Control Board that would make decisions about what aspects of the missions, if there would be changes, especially on the science side of things?

[User] I sat in on some of the meetings, but I wasn’t a member of the board, and I only sat in when there was something involving science programs and that sort of thing.

[Assistant] Do you recall any major incidents—or not incidents, —but events around the science aspect on that?

[User] No. My memory is that that was set up after the fire to be a control of materials and a control of what went inside the vehicle to make it harder to make changes so that they would have a more carefully controlled vehicle. And we didn’t interact very much. Inside our constraints, the weight constraints, the space constraints, we were left pretty well alone, do what we wanted to do, and then we were going to try to do something to change the things that science was allowed to do. We didn’t interact with them.

[Assistant] Okay. Going back to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, you talked a little bit about the development, about the construction, that that was still in process as you came, and the development of the procedures, the ways to decide how the samples would be studied and allocated. Do you recall running actually simulation of walking samples through to test out some of those procedures?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, assuming that this average day isn’t when the samples had just come back to the labs, an ordinary day during the year, I’d go to the office and do the things that you do in an office. You take care of the problems that have come up about people and space and money. I don’t know, being the director of a lab is a whole bunch of little jobs that you just have to keep on top of. People keep coming and giving you problems. They come to you with their problems; they’re never solutions to problems. Not very exciting. Just the ordinary hum of business.

[Assistant] Okay. That’s all right.

[User] Could I speak?

[Assistant] Sure.

[User]
It impressed me that, once or twice, I went to the office and there was Bill in his office, and there was a line of about eight people waiting outside the door, so as part of the day, each one had a little problem, and Bill was able to switch his mind, which I can’t do, to answer all of these different people with different problems, just, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and I was amazed.

Well, that’s what an administrator has to do.

Well, yes, but I thought it was pretty impressive.

[Assistant] It’s certainly an important ability to be able to have, to work in so many different areas within the science field and had to tie in the engineering as well, and the NASA needs, science community needs. Those take a unique individual to be able to do that, which is why we’re here talking to you today.\n\n Another responsibility that might have fallen under your area is working with the mission control room.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, we could warn them that an active sunspot region was coming around the side of the Sun, getting to the area where if particles were emitted, they come toward the Earth. They don’t fly directly toward the Earth. They come along making field lines projected from the Sun, but we can tell them where the field lines are connected to the Earth, what direction the particles will come from, and we could give them several days’ warning of an active region that looked like it might produce a flare. And then if a big flare did occur, we could tell them right away, and after some minutes, I don’t know how long, maybe an hour, we could say whether that flare had produced high-energy particles or not. That was the important thing to know. So we’d give them a couple of days’ warning.\n\n I don’t know if they ever did a simulation of this or not. If they had had warning of a solar event, what would they have done? I don’t know if they simulated that.

[Assistant] Certainly something that we could ask the simulations people when we talk to them.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And how much time would it take for—and I’m sure we could look this up as well, if we needed to, but how much time would it take for those particles to reach the Earth?

[User] From the Sun to the Earth? The high-energy protons, a couple of hours.

[Assistant] It definitely would have to be moving fast.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And how much time would it take for—and I’m sure we could look this up as well, if we needed to, but how much time would it take for those particles to reach the Earth?

[User] From the Sun to the Earth? The high-energy protons, a couple of hours.

[Assistant] It definitely would have to be moving fast.

[User] I think I’m right on that.

[Assistant] That’s about right, I think. Well, another connection with mission control and a monitoring room was, there was a science room for the missions where a lot of the scientists would gather to watch what the crews were doing on the lunar surface. Were you involved in monitoring that and setting that up, as well?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] From the Sun to the Earth? The high-energy protons, a couple of hours.

[Assistant] It definitely would have to be moving fast.

[User] I think I’m right on that.

[Assistant] That’s about right, I think. Well, another connection with mission control and a monitoring room was, there was a science room for the missions where a lot of the scientists would gather to watch what the crews were doing on the lunar surface. Were you involved in monitoring that and setting that up, as well?

[User] I was in and out of it. It was just an observatory, if you will, to watch what’s going on. There wasn’t any feedback from that into the Mission Control Center, any action items, but the seismologists were always involved in that, wanting to know what was going on. I was in the solar monitoring area more than I was in there.

[Assistant] Certainly a critical area for you to be monitoring, watching for the flares, and it’s good that it turned out there weren’t any.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I think I’m right on that.

[Assistant] That’s about right, I think. Well, another connection with mission control and a monitoring room was, there was a science room for the missions where a lot of the scientists would gather to watch what the crews were doing on the lunar surface. Were you involved in monitoring that and setting that up, as well?

[User] I was in and out of it. It was just an observatory, if you will, to watch what’s going on. There wasn’t any feedback from that into the Mission Control Center, any action items, but the seismologists were always involved in that, wanting to know what was going on. I was in the solar monitoring area more than I was in there.

[Assistant] Certainly a critical area for you to be monitoring, watching for the flares, and it’s good that it turned out there weren’t any.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Throughout your career at the Johnson Space Center, you worked with a variety of different people in many different areas, from engineering to management, to the scientists. Were there any of those individuals who had a significant impact on you personally or that you felt were key to the Apollo Program, to the science part in particular?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I was in and out of it. It was just an observatory, if you will, to watch what’s going on. There wasn’t any feedback from that into the Mission Control Center, any action items, but the seismologists were always involved in that, wanting to know what was going on. I was in the solar monitoring area more than I was in there.

[Assistant] Certainly a critical area for you to be monitoring, watching for the flares, and it’s good that it turned out there weren’t any.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Throughout your career at the Johnson Space Center, you worked with a variety of different people in many different areas, from engineering to management, to the scientists. Were there any of those individuals who had a significant impact on you personally or that you felt were key to the Apollo Program, to the science part in particular?

[User] Well, George Low, the guy who got me to come down there, was a very good man, and he was the guy who, as I said, got me there. But he moved on to Washington [D.C.] later on, so I didn’t see him that much. People in the Center, not so much. I was pretty much on my own. Low man on the totem pole.

[Assistant] You eventually decided to move on from your position at the Manned Spacecraft Center. What brought you to that decision?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Yes.

Was PROFS the Doppler business?

PROFS. Good lord, what’s PROFS?

Oh, well, all right.

I don’t remember.

[Assistant] What had led to you moving to NCAR from NOAA?

[User]
Bob White, who is my ex-boss at NOAA, asked me if I would—the head of NCAR had left. Who was he, Wester, the guy before me?

Walter. Walter something. He was a skier and he quit skiing, and he wasn’t known for that.

You don’t mean Walter Monk?

No, not Walter Monk. They had musical evenings.

Walter Orr Roberts.

Right. Correct.

Yes. That’s right. He retired, and so the job was open, and Bob White suggested me for the job, and he was senior enough guy in Washington, so I could get it. And the question was, did I want it? Why did I go to NCAR? I’m not sure I know. Because Bob White asked me.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, that’s a good reason. You had worked closely with him, and knew that he—.

[User] It was a new challenge, and I’d been at NOAA for some years.

[Assistant] Well, eventually you moved on to work for the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Research. What sorts of projects were you involved in there?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. I wandered all over. Couldn’t hold a job. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Well, but you had several very interesting experiences.

[User] Yes, I did. I had an interesting life.

[Assistant] Did you at all follow any of the Apollo program after you had left NASA?

[User] Not really. Tell me about them.

[Assistant] Well, there were a few, and they did bring back—they were able to get, as you said, more science on some of the later missions with carrying some in the command module bays.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, I did. I had an interesting life.

[Assistant] Did you at all follow any of the Apollo program after you had left NASA?

[User] Not really. Tell me about them.

[Assistant] Well, there were a few, and they did bring back—they were able to get, as you said, more science on some of the later missions with carrying some in the command module bays.

[User] Yes, yes, yes.

[Assistant] They were able to stay on the surface longer. They were able to achieve a few interesting things with it.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not really. Tell me about them.

[Assistant] Well, there were a few, and they did bring back—they were able to get, as you said, more science on some of the later missions with carrying some in the command module bays.

[User] Yes, yes, yes.

[Assistant] They were able to stay on the surface longer. They were able to achieve a few interesting things with it.

[User] I, at one point, said the only thing we ought to do with man in space, after the Apollo game was over, was to go back to the Moon and set up a permanent observatory. There are a lots of good things. —It doesn’t really have to be manned. Manned would probably help; I don’t know. There are lots of good things you can use the Moon as a platform. No atmosphere, so you don’t have all the problems we have here, and build big telescopes and big infrared systems and things like that, and open up astronomy in a way that you can’t do it on the Earth. It would be nice to do it, but I don’t think it will ever get done.

[Assistant] Certainly would be very interesting.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, yes, yes.

[Assistant] They were able to stay on the surface longer. They were able to achieve a few interesting things with it.

[User] I, at one point, said the only thing we ought to do with man in space, after the Apollo game was over, was to go back to the Moon and set up a permanent observatory. There are a lots of good things. —It doesn’t really have to be manned. Manned would probably help; I don’t know. There are lots of good things you can use the Moon as a platform. No atmosphere, so you don’t have all the problems we have here, and build big telescopes and big infrared systems and things like that, and open up astronomy in a way that you can’t do it on the Earth. It would be nice to do it, but I don’t think it will ever get done.

[Assistant] Certainly would be very interesting.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Well, looking back over your career, particularly at NASA, both at Goddard and at Manned Spacecraft Center, what would you consider your biggest challenge, but also your most significant accomplishment?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. Right.

[Assistant]
Well, I’d like to, at this point, ask Rebecca if she had any questions.

I just have one, because you mentioned it a couple of times. While you were at the Manned Spacecraft Center, you had the opportunity to interact with so many scientists and investigators that wanted to be involved with the Apollo Program. Could you share with us, for a few minutes, their reactions and maybe some of their questions? Was there anybody who ever hesitated at becoming involved with the program, or were they all very enthusiastic and energetic about wanting to be part of what was going on in the country at this time?

[User] I don’t remember anybody being hesitant about getting involved. Essentially, all of the people we were working with, having access to lunar samples, something like this, was a next step in whatever their scientific program had been. A geologist or geochemist who’s working on terrestrial samples, meteorite samples, meteorites from Antarctica, there were a bunch of guys who went down to collect meteorites in an interesting situation in Antarctica where there’s one particular area where the meteorites will collect on the surface or near surface of the ice, and then they would gradually flow into one particular region and then sort of stop, and it’s a natural place for going and collecting a bunch of them. Maybe you know more about this than I do.

[Assistant] I know a little bit about it, yes.

[User] And there were several of those guys who worked with us, and they were all very keen on getting lunar materials. I can’t think of anybody who was unhappy or hesitant or didn’t like what was going on with the samples. They just wanted to get a hold of them and go to work on them.

[Assistant] Did you have to turn some down that wanted to be involved in the program?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I don’t remember anybody being hesitant about getting involved. Essentially, all of the people we were working with, having access to lunar samples, something like this, was a next step in whatever their scientific program had been. A geologist or geochemist who’s working on terrestrial samples, meteorite samples, meteorites from Antarctica, there were a bunch of guys who went down to collect meteorites in an interesting situation in Antarctica where there’s one particular area where the meteorites will collect on the surface or near surface of the ice, and then they would gradually flow into one particular region and then sort of stop, and it’s a natural place for going and collecting a bunch of them. Maybe you know more about this than I do.

[Assistant] I know a little bit about it, yes.

[User] And there were several of those guys who worked with us, and they were all very keen on getting lunar materials. I can’t think of anybody who was unhappy or hesitant or didn’t like what was going on with the samples. They just wanted to get a hold of them and go to work on them.

[Assistant] Did you have to turn some down that wanted to be involved in the program?

[User] Well, yes. We got proposals from some people who weren’t technically competent, and so we turned them down. And that’s the normal way that science is done, that you have to develop the capability, the competence to do a certain class of work, and then you compete for new steps in this, new projects, new capabilities. If you weren’t competent, if you haven’t demonstrated ability, you’re not going to get the material.

[Assistant] Did you receive unsolicited proposals of what other scientists thought you should be doing in space for science?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And there were several of those guys who worked with us, and they were all very keen on getting lunar materials. I can’t think of anybody who was unhappy or hesitant or didn’t like what was going on with the samples. They just wanted to get a hold of them and go to work on them.

[Assistant] Did you have to turn some down that wanted to be involved in the program?

[User] Well, yes. We got proposals from some people who weren’t technically competent, and so we turned them down. And that’s the normal way that science is done, that you have to develop the capability, the competence to do a certain class of work, and then you compete for new steps in this, new projects, new capabilities. If you weren’t competent, if you haven’t demonstrated ability, you’re not going to get the material.

[Assistant] Did you receive unsolicited proposals of what other scientists thought you should be doing in space for science?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Is there any of those that come to your mind that you maybe wish you could have suggested but knew—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, yes. We got proposals from some people who weren’t technically competent, and so we turned them down. And that’s the normal way that science is done, that you have to develop the capability, the competence to do a certain class of work, and then you compete for new steps in this, new projects, new capabilities. If you weren’t competent, if you haven’t demonstrated ability, you’re not going to get the material.

[Assistant] Did you receive unsolicited proposals of what other scientists thought you should be doing in space for science?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Is there any of those that come to your mind that you maybe wish you could have suggested but knew—

[User] Most of them were nuts. Things that we would have liked to have done? Mostly I think we had a crank file, stuff that came in that was junk.\n\n I can’t think of anything that people said we ought to have done that we wanted to do. Nothing comes to mind.

[Assistant] Did you have any ideas of your own that you would have liked to have included in there?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Why don't we do it now. Then you'll be through with me.

[Assistant] Great. Okay.

[User] Then you can do whatever you want to do.

[Assistant] All right. Well, we'll go ahead and take a quick break here then.

[User]
Okay. [Tape change.]

...and if you've seen some of the old pictures, we all had short hair, we had skinny ties, and we wore short-sleeved shirts. And we all had hair. [Laughter]\n\n Huge briefing. I guess it lasted three, four days, out at Berkeley, University of California at Berkeley. Well, we had never seen people with rope belts and barefooted in a college [classroom]. The guy that was running the machine that day, the viewgraph, he would just sleep between. They just drove some of the conservative folks right over the wall, because here they were in the hotbed of all the people from California. But there were things like that, like that same way with the thing with the face masks on to keep everybody from getting contaminated.\n\n So what else can I do to help you?

[Assistant] Well, if we could, you've given us a great overview of your career with NASA, and I thought maybe to go back and touch on a couple of things in a little bit of detail.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Then you can do whatever you want to do.

[Assistant] All right. Well, we'll go ahead and take a quick break here then.

[User]
Okay. [Tape change.]

...and if you've seen some of the old pictures, we all had short hair, we had skinny ties, and we wore short-sleeved shirts. And we all had hair. [Laughter]\n\n Huge briefing. I guess it lasted three, four days, out at Berkeley, University of California at Berkeley. Well, we had never seen people with rope belts and barefooted in a college [classroom]. The guy that was running the machine that day, the viewgraph, he would just sleep between. They just drove some of the conservative folks right over the wall, because here they were in the hotbed of all the people from California. But there were things like that, like that same way with the thing with the face masks on to keep everybody from getting contaminated.\n\n So what else can I do to help you?

[Assistant] Well, if we could, you've given us a great overview of your career with NASA, and I thought maybe to go back and touch on a couple of things in a little bit of detail.

[User] Okay.

[Assistant] Starting back with when you came on with Mercury. Now, you said you were in Hawaii on Cooper's flight?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Okay. [Tape change.]

...and if you've seen some of the old pictures, we all had short hair, we had skinny ties, and we wore short-sleeved shirts. And we all had hair. [Laughter]\n\n Huge briefing. I guess it lasted three, four days, out at Berkeley, University of California at Berkeley. Well, we had never seen people with rope belts and barefooted in a college [classroom]. The guy that was running the machine that day, the viewgraph, he would just sleep between. They just drove some of the conservative folks right over the wall, because here they were in the hotbed of all the people from California. But there were things like that, like that same way with the thing with the face masks on to keep everybody from getting contaminated.\n\n So what else can I do to help you?

[Assistant] Well, if we could, you've given us a great overview of your career with NASA, and I thought maybe to go back and touch on a couple of things in a little bit of detail.

[User] Okay.

[Assistant] Starting back with when you came on with Mercury. Now, you said you were in Hawaii on Cooper's flight?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Was that the only one that you had worked on then?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Okay.

[Assistant] Starting back with when you came on with Mercury. Now, you said you were in Hawaii on Cooper's flight?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Was that the only one that you had worked on then?

[User] No, I worked on Wally Schirra's flight earlier, which was 7. That was at Corpus Christi. Then they shut that place down.

[Assistant] So you were working at Corpus Christi during that mission.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Was that the only one that you had worked on then?

[User] No, I worked on Wally Schirra's flight earlier, which was 7. That was at Corpus Christi. Then they shut that place down.

[Assistant] So you were working at Corpus Christi during that mission.

[User] Yes. If I remember, that was just like a month after I got here, but we would have our briefing, and a lot of the things that they were doing I had done in the Air Force, so it was not a big change. It was just changing the names. It wasn't an airplane; it was a spacecraft.\n\n Of course, we had a training session where I had to learn all the sessions. Now, the Mercury systems were a piece of cake compared to the Apollo systems and the Gemini systems, but we really needed help into getting everybody to work together. I was involved in a lot of the work for Gene, Gene Kranz, and did a lot of that.

[Assistant] Looking at that and bringing everybody together and the transition from Mercury to Gemini, were there big pieces that you remember, like some of the biggest challenges of making the new program possible and building the control center?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] But we had a group of people, and those folks kind of grew and were really the people who managed the different things. The personalities of those people sparkled enough that they commanded the respect of the others. Primarily they worked harder and just did a better job than some of the other folks. We had some other folks that who were just solid in the systems and that's all they wanted to do. But we had some fun times, some good times.

[Assistant] It sounds like there was a pretty good rapport between everyone.

[User] Yes. We played hard and we worked hard.

[Assistant] Good combination.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] The move to Houston. You had mentioned earlier that you had gone back to Virginia after the Air Force, because that was your home. What did you and your family think about the move to Houston?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. We played hard and we worked hard.

[Assistant] Good combination.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] The move to Houston. You had mentioned earlier that you had gone back to Virginia after the Air Force, because that was your home. What did you and your family think about the move to Houston?

[User] We were delighted. We were just delighted. Even though I'd gone back to help my mom, it just wasn't right for what I wanted to do with my life and my family, and this was a wonderful opportunity. It was new. I had listened to Al Shepard. In fact, I was driving to Langley on Air Force business when he flew. I thought, hey, this is pretty cool. "Cool" wasn't a good word then. Cool was when you were almost cold. [Laughter] But I really thought it was neat and I looked forward to it. Then when I met some of the people that were really working on it, I thought I would fit in okay.

[Assistant] Had you, as a kid, had you had an interest?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Ed White was a neighbor of ours, and so sad, and Neil [A.] Armstrong was. Neil Armstrong's wife taught our daughter the synchronized swimming.

[Assistant] That's neat.

[User] He was a good guy. Reminded me from what I've read about Charles [A.] Lindbergh, he was about the same kind of person. Nice guy.

[Assistant] Yes, he does seem to be.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Looking at, again, some of the intricacies of the mission control room, and you had talked about the Gemini VI and VII mission, how they did the dual and the rendezvous, and that wasn't something that had originally been planned for Gemini.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, it did. Thinking about them is kind of fun, too. This is more interesting to me than it is to you guys.

[Assistant] Oh, I don't know, it's very interesting to us.

[User] I was amazed. I said, well, what am I going to do? I wrote my oldest granddaughter all the funny things that I could remember, and the good times, and my second granddaughter. Now, we've got three more, and I don't know whether I'm going to do that again. I've been looking for the diskette, because I have some time, and I'm going to keep looking for it and see if I can't find it.

[Assistant] Or you'll be able to share this with them, too.

[User] I may do that.

[Assistant] I'm sure they would get a kick out of listening to it.\n\n You mentioned the Apollo 8 mission earlier and Apollo 11, both of which were very big steps. Actually, out of all of the Apollo missions, did one of them make a bigger impression on you than any of the others?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] You just worked that in with your other duties?

[User] With everything else, yes. We went for a couple of days and that worked out fine. They would send the stuff, we'd review it at night, and then we'd listen to their briefings and ask questions, and then they kept records and told us what they had done. Like I said, the neatest thing is to have a picture of Mars. Not many people have those.

[Assistant] No, not many at all. As the mission was landing, were you able to follow it all in real time?

[User] Yes, we knew what they were going to do. It was exciting. But, you see, it takes twenty minutes, I think, or longer than that for a signal to come, so when you see it, it's too late to fix it, unless it's something that you can work around. We had similar problems with the Skylab, because if you didn't get the data in, something could have happened twenty minutes ago because of the way the orbits went around the Earth. So it worked out well, finally after their boss told them they ought to listen.\n\n Tom [Thomas E.] Young left that project and went and was the director of Goddard for a while. I think he lives on the ocean and sails a lot now. But it's good to have good memories.

[Assistant] That's very good. It's very good to be able to look back and say you were able to enjoy the times and the people you worked with. Very fortunate. Looking back like that, over all your time with NASA what would you consider to have been your biggest challenge?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I hope you do. I really do. It's a special group. Some got rewarded and some didn't. I think we tried to reward everybody in some way. We spent a lot of time giving them extra money, giving them good assignments and giving them a lot of responsibility. I think it paid off, because we're still flying.

[Assistant] That's right.

[User] And safely. Every time we have a launch, I watch it, but, boy, it makes me nervous, because that rascal's getting old. [Laughter] It's getting older.

[Assistant] Well, hopefully it and the people will be able to hang in there a while longer.

[User] Hope so.

[Assistant] I want to thank you so much for joining us today.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And safely. Every time we have a launch, I watch it, but, boy, it makes me nervous, because that rascal's getting old. [Laughter] It's getting older.

[Assistant] Well, hopefully it and the people will be able to hang in there a while longer.

[User] Hope so.

[Assistant] I want to thank you so much for joining us today.

[User] My pleasure.

[Assistant] It's been quite a pleasure. Is there anything that you think we didn't touch on?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Hope so.

[Assistant] I want to thank you so much for joining us today.

[User] My pleasure.

[Assistant] It's been quite a pleasure. Is there anything that you think we didn't touch on?

[User] I don't know. If you think you want to talk again, I'll be glad to come. I'm sure there's some other things.

[Assistant]
Do you guys have anything that we didn't—

I just have one question, actually.

Okay. Do you want to switch the tape out?

I have about three minutes.

Why don't you go ahead and switch then. [Tape change.]

The question I had concerns Mercury 8. I know that you were one of the remote site communicators on the Mercury 8, but Wally Schirra flew at a time when the United States was about to enter the Cuban Missile Crisis. The tensions had already been really high between Cuba and the United States. Did you all take any special precautions? Were there any special concerns?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Have you talked to John?

[Assistant] Not yet, but we're hoping to soon.

[User] They used to do that to John, too.

[Assistant] We were talking about Skylab. Did you work Skylab 4?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] When all the guys had the problems and [Gerald P.] Carr called down and they said, "We've got to have this meeting." How was flight operations during that time that the problems were occurring between Skylab 4 and flight operations?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] They used to do that to John, too.

[Assistant] We were talking about Skylab. Did you work Skylab 4?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] When all the guys had the problems and [Gerald P.] Carr called down and they said, "We've got to have this meeting." How was flight operations during that time that the problems were occurring between Skylab 4 and flight operations?

[User] What problem are you talking about?

[Assistant] Well, Carr and [William R.] Pogue and [Edward G.] Gibson talked about the fact that their mission was just too full.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] When all the guys had the problems and [Gerald P.] Carr called down and they said, "We've got to have this meeting." How was flight operations during that time that the problems were occurring between Skylab 4 and flight operations?

[User] What problem are you talking about?

[Assistant] Well, Carr and [William R.] Pogue and [Edward G.] Gibson talked about the fact that their mission was just too full.

[User] Yes. Well, they had signed up for that. That's what the flight plan was, and the first thing they would do is to call and get the next day's flight plan. They never complained about it until they got behind, and all they had to do was call and say, "Hey, could I have a discussion?" Once it was changed, they just narrowed it down. It wasn't a big deal. They probably thought it was more of a big deal than the rest of them.\n\n John [Llewellyn] did not care for Scott Carpenter, because John was a retro officer, and he said when he landed in Mercury, his only flight, "I didn't know where I was and neither did they." That's not true. John went ballistic. So a number of years later, Scott Carpenter became an aquanaut and he was in a submarine off the West Coast. You have to know John, and don't tell John this story, please, because he'll go ballistic, probably kill the three of you, and then come and search me down.

[Assistant] Well, we don't want that.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] They wrote in the log that night that John was not going to count down to retrofire, that Scott Carpenter was going to do it from the submarine. John went bananas, stomped around, then everybody was just like this, hysterical. Then he finally realized that he had been thrown a hook and had bit totally.\n\n But John would do things. One time he came late and he was supposed to be there for reentry. And he was really good. He was really good, but he would get things loose sometimes and he didn't have a parking spot. So he just pulled up and parked on the sidewalk. The next person that came in was Dr. Gilruth. So John couldn't drive on the center for a long time. Then he started riding a horse, you know. But John was one of the characters that worked with us. He's a real case. You might need to wear your ear defenders when you listen to John.

[Assistant] We'll be well prepared.

[User] John was a smart guy and did a lot of good. John was a veteran of the Korean War and was bayonetted in the trench. He was a Marine and bayonetted and left for dead by the North Koreans and survived. We had guys like that all the time. I could tell you a really funny story about John, but I'm not going to tell you. No, I don't think I should tell it. I will tell you, but turn the tape off.

[Assistant]
Okay.

I think Kevin had some questions first.

[User] Okay. Excuse me.

[Assistant] Well, actually, you were answering my question. I was going to ask about the flight controllers since you talked about the flight directors, so I was curious to hear these kinds of stories about any of the other flight controllers like Sy or John Llewellyn or maybe John [W.] Aaron or Steve [Stephen G.] Bales, some of these guys. So if there are any other stories you want to share.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] John was a smart guy and did a lot of good. John was a veteran of the Korean War and was bayonetted in the trench. He was a Marine and bayonetted and left for dead by the North Koreans and survived. We had guys like that all the time. I could tell you a really funny story about John, but I'm not going to tell you. No, I don't think I should tell it. I will tell you, but turn the tape off.

[Assistant]
Okay.

I think Kevin had some questions first.

[User] Okay. Excuse me.

[Assistant] Well, actually, you were answering my question. I was going to ask about the flight controllers since you talked about the flight directors, so I was curious to hear these kinds of stories about any of the other flight controllers like Sy or John Llewellyn or maybe John [W.] Aaron or Steve [Stephen G.] Bales, some of these guys. So if there are any other stories you want to share.

[User] John Aaron was a neat guy, still is a neat guy. John was a guy during Apollo 12, when we had the launch, John had been on the console when we had one of the pad tests where we interfaced with the Cape with that and had watched the fuel cell go down. When it happened during the launch, he knew exactly what to do. So there's a lot of providence, but John was so smart, he would have probably figured it out anyway. He was real laid back. You knew when John spoke, he was worthwhile to listen to. John was an excellent systems guy and real bright, just a neat person, went on and did a lot of work for the Orbiter software, really put his arms around that. I don't know whether John still works over there or not.

[Assistant] Actually, he's getting ready to retire.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] John Aaron was a neat guy, still is a neat guy. John was a guy during Apollo 12, when we had the launch, John had been on the console when we had one of the pad tests where we interfaced with the Cape with that and had watched the fuel cell go down. When it happened during the launch, he knew exactly what to do. So there's a lot of providence, but John was so smart, he would have probably figured it out anyway. He was real laid back. You knew when John spoke, he was worthwhile to listen to. John was an excellent systems guy and real bright, just a neat person, went on and did a lot of work for the Orbiter software, really put his arms around that. I don't know whether John still works over there or not.

[Assistant] Actually, he's getting ready to retire.

[User] Is he really?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] He's a neat guy.\n\n Gary [E.] Cohen was another systems guy. We called Gary "Gross" all the time. Jim [James E.] Hannigan was a sharp guy, he ran the lunar module group. Don [Donald R.] Puddy worked for him and went on to become a flight director.

[Assistant] What did you think about the trench?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Is he really?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] He's a neat guy.\n\n Gary [E.] Cohen was another systems guy. We called Gary "Gross" all the time. Jim [James E.] Hannigan was a sharp guy, he ran the lunar module group. Don [Donald R.] Puddy worked for him and went on to become a flight director.

[Assistant] What did you think about the trench?

[User] The trench was where John Llewellyn was.

[Assistant] I had from stories that they used to have matches made up that said, "The Trench."


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. I will not be among these people because I will be on the quarantine already, but Mr. Sotnikov will be instead of me.

[Assistant] Do you have a suggestion on how we need to contact these people? Is there a main person that we need to go through, to be able to do this at their convenience?

[User] Please remind me before those dates, and I'll ask them to participate in your project.

[Assistant] We will, definitely.

[User] But please don't forget to remind me. I need to tell them; otherwise, they might reject it.

[Assistant] We will remind him very soon.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Please remind me before those dates, and I'll ask them to participate in your project.

[Assistant] We will, definitely.

[User] But please don't forget to remind me. I need to tell them; otherwise, they might reject it.

[Assistant] We will remind him very soon.

[User] And of the Americans, who will participate in this project? I understand Frank [L.] Culbertson [Jr.] and who else? Nygren?

[Assistant] Yes, Rick Nygren and Tom Cremins. Jim Nise. Richard Fullerton. Charlie Brown. Jeff Cardenas. Mike Barratt, Dr. Barratt. As well as our crew members, our astronauts that were in residence on Mir.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And of the Americans, who will participate in this project? I understand Frank [L.] Culbertson [Jr.] and who else? Nygren?

[Assistant] Yes, Rick Nygren and Tom Cremins. Jim Nise. Richard Fullerton. Charlie Brown. Jeff Cardenas. Mike Barratt, Dr. Barratt. As well as our crew members, our astronauts that were in residence on Mir.

[User] Charlie [Charles J.] Precourt? [Those] Who stayed on Mir, yes?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] I believe we also can include [James D.] Wetherbee and Charles Precourt. Bill Readdy, Wetherbee, and Charles Precourt.

[Assistant] And we would also like to interview the cosmonauts who interacted with the Mir during the Mir Shuttle program.