Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program (3 page)

Certainly, my early years were very strongly influenced by my family and the environment in which they lived. My Dad, my uncles Stanley and Steve, like so many others, worked in the mines of northeastern Pennsylvania. My two grandfathers also worked in the mines in their earlier times. My grandfather on my father’s side was always called Pop by everyone, and he lived with us occasionally. My maternal grandfather also worked in the mines but he had died six months before I was born. We believe that all of the generations of men in our family who came over from Ireland beginning in the mid-1800s worked in the mines at some point in their lives. It was the primary industry in the region and there was not much other work available.

As a young boy, Dad started working in the breakers where the coal was separated from the slag by boys straddling the conveyor. He started this work when he was about twelve to fourteen years old, leaving school sometime in junior high. Being a coal miner was very difficult and dangerous work. It required the miner to quickly develop a wide range of skills. They had to be equipment operators, explosives experts, structural engineers, electricians, carpenters and safety experts who were always conscious of the environment around them. They also had to be pretty tough. No, very tough.

These early years in the ‘30s before World War II were a time when people were not really recovered from the Great Depression. There were many aspects of life which were much more difficult than circumstances today. I never remember parents complaining about what had to be done. They simply did what was called for and conveyed those lessons to us by virtue of their example.

Everything that was done took considerably more effort than it did later. For example, the simple act of heating the house required a regular routine of shoveling the ashes out of the stove, carrying the ashes to wherever we were dumping fill at the time, refilling the pails with coal from the garage and then replenishing the fire. In the Old Forge house on River Street, the coal stoves were on the first floor. One was for cooking and heat in the kitchen and another stove on the first floor added heat to the living area. This encouraged a very fast run downstairs in the morning to get near the stove. In the area of food, meals were pretty simple and basic. Meat and potatoes were a staple along with pasta and stews. I don’t remember eating out at a restaurant until perhaps I was in high school and that was only on special occasions.

The River Street house was a family property on Mom’s side with a deed dating back to 1860. When we first moved into the home on River Street, it did not have an inside bathroom. This was one of Dad’s first major projects in the first home of which we were the owners and not renting. We were very willing and motivated workers on this project for obvious reasons. We had to add framing to create enough space for the extra room. And then Dad had to instruct us on lights and plumbing. Family transportation was never more than one car at a time and, at first, it was a 1930s something with a roll up front window for air conditioning. Later, Dad got a 1936 four-door Buick with a big straight eight engine and manual shift on the floor. This was the car I learned to drive on. Usually, there was no family ride available for us kids and the order of transportation was to walk, to bike or to hitchhike.

When we did get that one car, it was generally in need of regular repair and maintenance. So, Dad was very sensitive to any driving faults causing a problem to his only car. And, God knows, we had them. Despite his caution, it seemed that we were always dealing with flat tires, failure to start or run and I even had a battery fall out of the car through a corroded case to the ground. Seeing it in the rear view mirror, I knew I was in trouble. A contributing factor to this failure was that I was driving through a field with lots of serious bumps; that fact was best left out of my accident report to Dad. Bill was pretty good about the driving. In addition to being a pretty good driver, my brother Bill became an expert on fixing cars. He usually had a carburetor on the kitchen table and he got pretty good at all kinds of repairs. Throughout our careers and into retirement, Bill is the Lunney go-to brother if you want something fixed. But, we all live a thousand miles apart. Jerry, on the other hand, came near to serious bodily harm from Dad for some of his driving antics, such as losing the car. That was a father-son “interrogation for the age” and it got even more memorable as Jerry “lost” the car several more times, each time he was out late with his buddies. Dad could not comprehend how one of his own flesh and blood could do this.

Our parents had a common division of roles for family administration. Dad was in charge of the big D for all around discipline; he was project management and operations for the work to keep our facilities – house, yard and cars – in order; he provided training and direction to our small work force; he certainly assured quality; he provided encouragement to our sports endeavors and our progress in school. And, he provided example constantly. When he left us with a job, he came back later with a clear idea about how much should have been accomplished. We either got a nod for okay, or a frown and a suggestion that meant “increase your productivity.”

MOM AND DAD

Dad also had a continuing series of projects at his work at Niverts where he worked, after the mines, from about 1951 on. Niverts was a company that gradually became a metal supply and fabrication company, from an early beginning in the junk car parts business. These projects ranged from taking down a high smokestack, building retainer walls, designing and constructing a warehouse and learning to weld aluminum before it was a common technique. Dad always displayed a sense of pride in doing any of these jobs well and he had little patience for fellow workers who could not organize an implementation as well as he did. He usually did things in his head and knew what would work and how strong to make it. Dad was also big on sports, loved his Phillies and Eagles. He always encouraged us to play ball and do well. When we were of the age, he came home one night with three different baseball gloves – fielder, first baseman and catcher – probably far more than he could afford. And those gloves smelled just the way I imagined a new leather glove would. We learned to “perform” on projects and to “play” with spirit.

Dad and Mom were always so proud of my opportunity to be part of the manned space program. They probably did not appreciate how much their example flowed through all of their children’s accomplishments and would downplay it, when we pointed out that connection.

Two of Dad’s projects stand out as examples. In the summer of 1951, we were newly living at the old family homestead on River Street in Old Forge. The house sat up on a hill – overlooking a cemetery on the East Side and with an elevation drop of about thirty feet to River Street on the North Side. Under a thin covering of soil barely enough for grass, the hill was made of layers of rock gradually sloping down from the house to the street. Dad wanted a garage down near the street and its location would be such that there would be a forty to fifty feet run of driveway, running east towards the cemetery, climbing about ten feet in elevation above River Street. Nearest to the street was the beginning of a driveway of about twenty feet in length. The job was to excavate a volume about twenty-five feet in length, twelve feet in width with a rock shelf about two feet high on the side where our house was and tapering to about the right elevation on the street side of the driveway. The tools were wedges and sledgehammers. The workers were three. There was plenty of room to dump the fill in the low spots. The job took all summer and Dad approved, and was probably even proud of us for the job.

Then, one Saturday, Dad came home with sections of a garage on a flat bed. It took a few more adult friends to wrestle the pieces into a garage, with a roof sloping front to back. With the heavy lifting done, Dad was able to package the completion into doable sized work packages for the three of us. During the driveway job, we began to call ourselves the Coolie Labor Union. Finishing the garage was easy for the Union. Now we had a garage with a lift up door and a storage area for coal.

Mom tended to the nurturing side of life. As Dad had projects, Mom had passions. She was committed to education, which she saw as a way to change the direction and prospects of one’s life. She loved achievement and encouraged us to do well in school and all of our studies. She continued to write poetry throughout her life. We were consistently reminded, “You are not going to work in the mines, you will get an education and make something of yourself.” This became an expectation that we tried very hard to satisfy. To do less would be to disappoint Mom and that was not anything we would choose.

Mom was God’s steward of the Roman Catholic faith in our family. It was simply expected that we would attend Mass every Sunday, as well as days of obligation, and live in accordance with the teachings and precepts of our faith. No discussion. Even much later when we visited back home, Mom still preferred to get to church early by at least thirty minutes. It brought a smile to report the ritual to my siblings so that they knew it would be the same on their next visit. That faith was very much at the core of most of the people that we knew. It certainly was on display by the womenfolk, and perhaps less so by the men who did not say very much. But they did go to church every Sunday and they made sure that the kids did and that the kids behaved.

And in this time in March 1947, we gained a sister, Carol Ann, to complete our family picture. It took a while for brothers to grow to be fun. How long would it take a baby girl, I wondered. That too worked out in time.

In high school, Mom won a scholarship to Marywood College, a local school for girls. Graduating in 1934, she was not able to attend for reasons of supporting her parents. In her mind I’m sure, we had to take her place. She constantly reviewed our schoolwork and grades and was kind with praise for our achievements.

Sometime in the eighth grade, I participated in a spelling contest. I was pretty good at the subject. However, I did not win but came in second. I do not know how it happened but I was offered a half-scholarship to the Scranton Prep high school. Looking back, there was more to this than I realized at the time. The spelling contest had no apparent connection to the Prep. Someone with authority or access to it had to have noticed and pushed my name forward. The Prep was (and is) the most highly regarded academic high school in our region and there was a tuition fee to attend. I never saw any hesitation on the part of my parents in urging me to accept. I wonder now what they had to do to swing the fee. But it was a decision firmly consistent with one of Mom’s passions. It was decided that I could go. The Prep is a Jesuit school – Jesuits being one of the most notable teaching orders in the Church. At the time, it was not co-ed, although it is now. And it was a life-changer and a new gateway.

It was not a large school. At the time of graduation in 1953, my class was forty-three young men. Most of my classmates were the sons of professional or business fathers. The Prep was the first time in my school life that I had to stretch to compete. I was behind on several fronts. I was only age twelve starting freshman year, about two years behind my peers. Physically, I was small in the extreme, perhaps a hundred pounds. And I had limited social experience in comparison. It was obvious I was in a new league. But, I have to give credit that everyone was fair to me, even welcoming. I never was made to feel like an outsider except for my own awareness that this was an impressive group from a different world than mine and with much academic talent and two years of maturity on me. I did fine on the academic side, participated in debate, the newspaper, track, and enthusiastically in the outside basketball games even when the snow had to be often shoveled off the court to play. I never played inside on a real basketball court until I was at Langley field with the Space Task Group, circa 1959. But basketball was a passion even if played outside. We had the blacktop court in the schoolyard where play went on throughout the school year. We had one rock surface court at home and the Old Forge kids that we played with had several. Lots of hoops, but some barely had nets. Another new insight on life came when I visited the home of a classmate, Rob Newton, and was surprised to discover that Rob actually had ice cream in the freezer at home. Ice cream in the freezer – that was a new thought and it seemed like a good idea.