Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program (17 page)

Bill was brilliant, enthusiastic, energetic, and he completely engaged all viewpoints in this process. Bill’s approach was to systematically start through all the mission phases and then on to the missions themselves that exercised different rendezvous techniques. This process reduced complexities to easy-to-understand building blocks. He would announce his subjects for upcoming meetings, for example “how much plane change correction to use from the launch vehicle”, “what data source to use for each of the rendezvous burns,” “what it is the most conservative rendezvous phasing sequence for the first mission attempt at rendezvous,” among others. Like a court hearing with many representatives for all points of view, Bill would orchestrate the discussion and arguments surrounding each step along the way. Since these decisions were often sketched out on a blackboard as the subject evolved, this was the root of the preferred method for winning, or at least controlling, the debate – “Let me have the chalk now,” or “He who has the chalk wins.” Vigorous and spirited are the descriptors that begin to capture the rough and tumble arguments of the day as each participant pressed his case. Almost a miracle of competence combined with the sincere search for the “right” answer, this worked for us. Bill would record the result by dictating the same to Patsy Sauer, his secretary, who would then have the draft minutes available for team review within hours. These “Tindallgrams” became mandatory reading, study, and a widely recognized record of the progress of flight techniques.

Bill’s enthusiasm was infectious. He was a master at blowing off some wild proposal without terribly offending the offerer, changing his mind as he came to accept another viewpoint, or strengthening his original position with new inputs from the team. In this regime of resolving the details of flight operations for all of these mission activities, Bill has to get significant credit for enabling the success of Gemini. Again, as typical of those times, he was unheralded in the larger picture, and that was just fine with him. The hundred plus participants went on to execute these plans and techniques superbly. He truly was one of the MVP’s for Gemini.

Not only did Bill contribute so much to the success of Gemini and later Apollo, with the same integration planning activity, but he was superb role model for accomplishment and leadership for our young engineers. And they soaked it up. You could see the growth in newcomers, like Ed Pavelka, Phil Shaffer, Dave Reed, Chuck Deiterich, Gran Paules, Steve Bales and others as they lived this education. The FDB-ers who went on to the most success, consistently employed this Tindall model, much more useful than a theoretical course on leadership. They learned to take command, tackle the problems, enlist all the necessary help, test all the options, decide and build support to go forward.

If the preparations and the flights were intense, the traditional but informal debriefings were a raucous release of emotion by a group of men having just accomplished something big, very difficult, important to the country, and loaded with risk. Sometime in the immediate aftermath of the crew returning to Houston, we scheduled our unofficial debriefing at the HofBrau Garden in Dickinson, along I-45 and about ten miles south of Clear Lake. In the back of the property, the Hofbrau had an outside open area, with trellises and vines surrounding picnic tables and benches. The restaurant served German food – sausages, sauerkraut, potato salad, black bread and an unlimited supply of beer kegs. It seemed that we always had the place to ourselves and there were not any outsiders. The people at the HofBrau garden seemed to love having us there for these events, so they probably had closed off at the least the outside areas for us.

The only protocol was that there was no protocol. And the present concept of political correctness was nowhere in sight. With the first beer, the debriefing centered on any mistakes, slips, and character flaws of each of us. It was common to see our space heroes, standing on the table shouting insults at each other. Llewellyn and McDivitt were especially good at this. And whoever it was at any given moment that was leading the attack was either booed or goaded on to even louder and more extreme expressions of ridicule and insults. It was a great way to celebrate our work together.

The Clear Lake region was a much different place in those days – a lot fewer people, and much less traffic. Since these sessions ran past 9 p.m., we were the only ones who were out. That made it easier for God to find us and look after us. My brother-in-law, George Kurtz, joined us for one session. Even with being a “people person” and a superb salesman, he was not sure how he would fit into this setting. It didn’t take George long to claim a good niche for himself, as he sprang for the first keg of beer of the evening. From then on, George was an insider. George ran a sales organization with many sales people. He could not get over the dedication (almost obsession) that our people brought to their work. He asked how I managed that and wanted to transfer “it” to his staff. “It” just didn’t travel that way.

Marilyn’s dad, the first George Kurtz, also loved the HofBrau debriefings. When he and Mom Kurtz visited us, he was always excited to learn that we were having another debriefing. I gathered that Dad Kurtz did not have too much opportunity to float free like that in Cleveland. I used to make a point of telling my mother-in-law, Lillian, that NASA and the astronauts requested his attendance. That was always sure to get us out of the house. Besides the comradeship, George was from Pennsylvania Dutch country and he loved the food and beer at the HofBrau. We were always looked at a little suspiciously when we returned home. Later in life, George and young George always talked about these excursions with fondness and wonder.

During these years, we had many occasions when members of the branch visited our home for food, drink and whatever frivolity was on for the day. Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day were big football days and one of our gathering times. Many of the guys were still bachelors and so it became something of a tradition to gather at our house for these occasions. Not only was January first Marilyn’s birthday, but on one of these New Year’s days Marilyn was also twelve days away from giving birth to our fourth child, Bryan. Marilyn’s description of these days was “the guys come early and leave late.” Sometimes they even needed a little nudge when we got to the late side. I believe Marilyn must have kept watch for shock material that she could use to hasten the exit and to inject a little humility into our outspoken guests. This happened after a day where they all sat around drinking, watching the games, or knocking our little kids over by throwing a football at them so hard no one could catch it.

Jay Greene somehow became Marilyn’s target on one of these January first holidays, just before Bryan’s birth; maybe it was the long day of cooking, serving, and hostessing into the late side of the day. But she started to quote Redbook, which was a woman’s magazine with presumably very accurate woman’s viewpoint articles. And, so she confronted Mr. Greene, “Jay, I have been reading recent research which shows that plumbers are better lovers than engineers.” I don’t know if Jay had been bragging or just talking to bring down this indictment on his ego. But, his jury of peers obviously thought that he had and they piled on with glee. (They seemed to forget that they were engineers too.) Eventually, Jay surrendered the debate. We have revisited this story many times since with Jay and his supportive buddies.

I had hired Jay when he was working in the wire room at Downey, California, the home plant of the CSM. This recently graduated engineer from Brooklyn had moved to California to cut various types of wire in various lengths, and put them in a plastic bag for the manufacturing floor. To his credit, he did not see this job as the high point of his career and he joined the FDB. But that was the only time that Jay needed rescuing. Once here, he excelled at all of it.

At one point, Phil Shaffer brought live lobsters back from one of his trips to Boston on a visit to MIT Draper Labs of flight software fame. Everybody wagered various numbers of the house beers on the lobster races. I believe our kids enjoyed the races most and were unhappy when their favorite racer had to go in the boiling pot. I don’t think they really cared for lobster eating at their age.

On football days, our boys took the most punishment. Football on television provokes the amateur observers to see how hard and far they can throw a football, especially at small moving targets. Our little boys enjoyed football and went out to innocently play with these men only to be blasted by their hard throws.

On a very hot humid day in the first days of July, our family was driving on NASA Road 1 in front of the Center. Walking along the side of the road was a young man wearing heavy corduroy pants and a long sleeved wool shirt. I told Marilyn, “This could be the kid I just hired from Wyoming. It looks like he doesn’t know how to dress for Houston but we better pick him up before he melts.”

Allegedly, Bill Stoval had a fiancée back in Wyoming. But it took so long for Ruth to show up in Houston that we began to suspect that this was just another Stoval story. But, there really was a Ruth and she was the complete antidote to Bill, delightful and charming. Later when we had the twins from Montana and Wyoming, Reed and Stoval, at the gatherings, we were able to send two each of our kids home with each couple for one night. Stoval found fruit loops in his beloved Corvette for a couple of weeks afterwards. Stoval always went out of his way to give his gracious hostess grief about over populating our corner of the world. (He and Ruth went on to contribute three of their own to our world once Bill caught on.) Although Bill left Houston in eight years to return home and take over the family business after his Dad died, our family had grown close to Bill during his short stay. Bill came as a bachelor and joined the regular gatherings. He was full of it and our kids – “rugrats” to him – loved to rally with him at the house. They liked Bill so much that he was their special target as they grew a little older for water balloons when he visited in his shiny Corvette. One day he showed up in brilliant yellow slacks and they did manage to get a couple of direct hits with eggs and water balloons on his slacks. He was not pleased, but he was thirsty and hungry so he stayed.

Bill became a protégé of Phil and he went on to be a FIDO for many launches up through 1975. We visited Bill, Ruth and their overpopulating three children when Jenny was in Vet School. Bill had arranged for an “internship” for a month during the summer. The “clinic” was an old place that couldn’t even be called a barn, and it must have dated back to the early 1800s. They had a gigantic bull that looked like it weighed five tons tied up in a small pen. We guessed this was Jenny’s first patient. Jenny’s room was in the attic of the clinic with about four to five feet of clearance in the center of the sloping room. The place had all the amenities that you could imagine from the 1815’s. Marilyn asked Stoval if there were any other college age kids around for Jenny to get to know, and his comment was, “The Indian boys would love to get to know her. They have never seen a redhead.”

We actually left our girl-child there and Marilyn seriously cried almost the entire drive back to Texas. Jenny toughed it out, did fine and eventually escaped from that medieval place.

As a reward, God gave her another internship in Kentucky. She had a friend at A&M who invited her to work on his Dad’s ranch for the summer. What Jenny didn’t know until she got there was that this was a fabled breeding ranch in Kentucky racehorse country. With neither the dad nor the son there, Jenny had a room in a Tara-like mansion that included a chef for all her meals, served in an opulent dining room, and a butler who drove her back and forth to the stable in the Mercedes. Stud fees at this ranch were between $100,000 and $200,000 and all performed in a stable of rich paneling and chandeliers. Makes a regular male feel inadequate.

Our family, all of us, always felt a strong bond with Bill and then Bill and Ruth. We served as godparents for their oldest son and Shawn invited Bill, who came to his wedding in 1987, to be in his wedding party. I was always proud of how our kids bonded with many of the members of the branch.

Marilyn and Glynn at NASA Picnic

The yard parties eventually moved on to become oyster feasts. Our boys were good at hosing off and cleaning the muddy shells, though they were not so wild about consuming the oysters.One of our bachelor sailing friends, Hal Beck, had a charming chuckle whenever he walked into one of our parties. He always carried a signature four-foot-wide ice chest from his sailboat, and his line always was, “You never know when you might run aground.” Hal was a North Carolina guy, and when STG was moving from Virginia to Texas, Hal decided he was not going to move that far away. He proclaimed his position for several weeks vowing that he would never see Texas. As move day approached, Chris called Hal in for a fifteen-minute discussion. Hal came out loving the idea of Texas and the big move.