The Unbroken Chain

Chapter 14 - A new chain...

With transfer papers in hand, I began the rather enjoyable task of packing up for my move back to Florida. My daughter, Norma, had flown out to California to help me with the transition. We crammed all my belongings into the same Datsun station wagon in which I had driven out to Palmdale, two yean, earlier.

The day we were scheduled to leave, the Air Force was conducting a big air show at Edwards. Tom Stafford arranged for VIP seating for Norma and me. After the flight demonstrations, we had a sumptuous lunch at the officers dub and then proceeded on our long journey east. The eight day trip included stops in Las Vegas and New Orleans. When we finally pulled into our driveway on Merritt Island, I felt the overwhelming relief of being home.

The following week I reported to work at KSC and was assigned to flight and ground crew safety. The Shuttle program, as I looked at it, was a brand new ballgame. It would be the first spacecraft flight test program that would not start out with unmanned missions. The first time the orbiter was launched, it would contain two live astronauts. Obviously, this would add considerable safety requirements. We would not have the luxury of working our way into the program in small steps. Everything had to work properly from the very beginning. Since, ultimately, there would be no escape system for the crew once the two solid propellant boosters were ignited, a lot of new considerations were needed.

The Shuttle was broken down into three distinct sections: the orbiter itself, the huge external tank, and the pair of solid rocket boosters. The orbiter's main engines, fed by liquid hydrogen and oxygen from the external tank, could be throttled by the astronauts. But the two massive solid rocket booster rockets -the SRBs - were a different animal altogether. Once they were lit, there was no stopping them. For the next two minutes they would each deliver approximately 2.9 million pounds of thrust. The only “off’ switch was the Range Safety Officer’s destruct button. If the flight had to be terminated during this boost phase, the harsh eventuality was that the orbiter and its crew would have to be sacrificed. As it remains even today, there would be no means of crew escape and recovery.

Once the Shuttle was in space, it would be controlled by fore and aft hypergolic pods containing the maneuvering motors. Three hypergolic auxiliary power units were installed in the orbiter’s aft compartment to produce the 3,000 pounds psi of hydraulic pressure needed to operate the control surfaces that were used for maneuvering while inside the atmosphere. The obvious conclusion is that we had an extremely complicated vehicle, full of new systems.

There were also extensive modifications to the pad and the mobile launcher. No longer would we use the Apollo mobile service structure or umbilical tower. Two new connected structures were designed and constructed at each of the two Launch Complex 39 pads. The stationary part contained the swing arms and fueling lines which would connect to the Shuttle’s left side. It was called the Fixed Service Structure, or usually just the FSS. Once the Shuttle was delivered to the pad, its dorsal surface would be covered clamshell fashion by the moveable part called the Rotating Service Structure. The RSS gave primary access to the orbiter’s payload bay. The concrete surfaces of the pads were modified with reconfigured flame trenches and a new water deluge system was designed to cut down exhaust flame damage and to reduce the deafening sound from the ignited engines.

Our old slide-wire system was replaced with a new version having expanded capacity. Now there would be five separate cars ready to streak down the cable away from the tower. The goal was to be able to evacuate the flight and closeout crews from the structure in less than two minutes. Another new feature at the pads was the large servicing facilities for hypergolic fuels and oxidizers located inside the perimeter fence.

Orbiters returning from space would land at one of two primary landing facilities, based mainly on weather considerations. At KSC, a new fifteen thousand foot runway with a rough north-south orientation was constructed. Ideally, an orbiter would glide to a landing there and then be towed the short distance to Complex 39 for post flight processing in the new OPF building. Since the Shuttle is a reusable system, it would then be refurbished and processed for its next mission prior to its move into the VAB where mating with the external tank and SRBs would occur.

My return to the Cape involved a major shift in my professional activities. My role in flight and ground crew safety fit neatly into a new group that Rockwell had created. It encompassed safety affairs not just for crews at the pads, but for most of the workers at KSC. Additionally it dealt with environmental, EPA, and OSHA issues. Dick Beagley was selected to manage the organization under the joint direction of Rockwell and NASA.

Dick was a very good manager and a talented politician. He was quite adept at dealing with the many factions within Rockwell and NASA on a daily basis. His adversaries were the operations managers and shop supervisors who had tendencies to bend or ignore rules in order to meet their schedules. He also had to negotiate many of my disputes with the home plant in Downey when I requested procedural changes or replacement of equipment. Dick and I got along quite well and our working arrangement was simple. He would take care of all the bureaucratic problems. My job was to build up a safety group that could handle the day-to-day operations and keep him out of trouble with Rockwell and NASA management. Specifically, this meant Tom O’Malley. If we had a problem, be it day or night, I made sure that Dick knew about it before anyone else.

While reviews of new procedures and facilities occupied most of our time, two areas gave us particular trouble after orbiter 102 arrived at KSC.The orbiter had been delivered with over 1000 open work items and a 24-hour won schedule had to be initiated. Although a major portion of the work effort involved the installation of the thermal protection tiles on the outside of the spacecraft, tasks required inside the orbiter created significant access problems for our technicians. This was most pronounced in the lowest reaches of the aft compartment. We immediately went to work developing extraction procedures for incapacitated workers from the labyrinth of pipes and struts. We also had to figure out how to install and remove working platforms in the sixty five foot Ions payload bay. But the dangers to personnel would increase tenfold once an orbiter was returned to the Orbiter Processing Facility after a spaceflight. Tanks, lines and thrusters would have been wetted with hypergolic fluids. Any exposure of personnel to the fumes or fluids could cause serious injury. Most of our accident incidents would end up being caused by these propellants.

While the slide-wire system was being installed, I worked with astronaut^ and suit technicians to develop new emergency egress procedures to be used while the Shuttle sat on the pad. There could be seven flight crew members and six ground crew members on the structure or in the spacecraft during the final phase of a launch count. Since there are two levels of crew stations within the orbiter, a panicked escape attempt could be devastating. The answer to this problem was, and remains today, to practice as a group and make the procedures reflex operations. A simple egress trainer was built and a procedure created to extract seven crewmen, as always, in less than two minutes. At the same time, the fire department developed their own procedures to rescue incapacitated crew members at the pad or at a crash site on the landing facility. This type of activity was complicated, difficult, and dangerous. Individuals training for these roles never made the newspaper headlines, but their work was as necessary and important as that of anyone. Without these people and the procedures they employed, no launch would have ever been attempted.

One day after orbiter 102 had arrived, I received a special assignment from Mr. O’Malley. Each morning at the 7 o’clock status meeting, he was getting called on the carpet by NASA management for problems occurring on second and third shifts. My job was to assemble the facts and report to him between 4 and 6 in the morning. The first night was relatively easy. There were just a few minor problems that I could resolve easily. I made my list and turned it in to Tom. The second night things were worse. There was a complete work stoppage and no manager I called was willing to make a commitment without O’Malley’s blessing. And unfortunately, he could not be located. Most of the managers agreed with a proposal I had come up with, but none were willing to stick their necks out and present it to the NASA manager, Kenny Kleinknecht. The next thing I knew, Kenny had me on the phone. Now he and I had known each other ever since the early Mercury days and I always considered him a stand up sort of guy. Knowledgeable and fair. Within the hour I was in his office and he and I went over the problem and my proposed solution. We looked at all the facts. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but given the situation it was the best we could do. Kenny gave it his approval and sent me on my way to implement it.

Before I could hand my problem report to O’Malley the next morning, I got a call from my director.

“You have talked to NASA!” he accused.

I agreed that I had. I thought he would be pleased that I had solved such an important problem to everyone’s satisfaction and had averted a fourteen hour work stoppage.

“Just wait until O’Malley hears about it,” was the last thing he said before hanging up the phone on me. I knew that I was in trouble.

When O’Malley showed up, I handed him my report. He read it in silence, then looked me squarely in the eyes.

“You don’t seem to understand,” he growled. “I want a list of problems and the names of the people responsible. I don’t want the solution to the problems. Just the list and the names so that I can chew ass in the staff meeting."

Well, I still did not understand this. I think it is referred to as management by fear, but it was a topic I had apparently missed during Management 101 in college. Under the circumstances, there was really not much he could do to me. How would it look for him to fire the man who had just saved the day? But 1 knew that Tom marked up one more notch against me and that I had better be very careful with him for a while. Once again, I had narrowly dodged a bullet.

After considerable delays, we got our first Shuttle launch off in April of 1981. The era of the reusable spacecraft had finally begun. Superstar veteran John Young commanded the flight of the orbiter Columbia. His co-pilot was Bob Crippen. My office was in Complex C, located next to the press site. So, for the first time in my career, I watched a manned launch from among the crowd of reporters and film crewmen. Ignition and liftoff looked fairly similar to that of a Saturn V. The main difference was the increased amount of smoke and the speed at which the vehicle cleared the structure. Compared to a towering Saturn V. the Shuttle seemed to leap off the pad. In a few seconds it was high in the sky and the freight train rumbling and fiery' crackling sound smacked us in the face and chest. And for the first time in nearly six years, I felt the welcome trembling of the earth under my feet.

The first four flights of Columbia were designated as Orbital Test Flights. On these, the orbiter was equipped with SR-71 ejection seats like the ones installed in Enterprise. About the only time that the seats could have been used would be during the glide phase at speeds below Mach 3. In fact, the only real reason pressure suits were even worn by the crews was for protection in the event of an ejection.

Landings on these initial flights were scheduled for Edwards. A small group of us from KSC was assigned to assist in the recovery and ferry operations. It was a very popular assignment and we had no trouble recruiting volunteers.

Joe Engle and Dick Truly took Columbia up in November after a series of scrubs due to propellant spills, and APU and fuel cell problems. This mission. STS-2, marked the first time that a manned spacecraft had made a second flight. In spite of the fact that it was cut short by the failure of a fuel cell, Joe and Dick had a great mission. It was a true milestone.

STS-3 had a smooth countdown and got into space in March of 1982. The crew, comprised of Jack Lousma and Gordo Fullerton, stayed on orbit for eight days in a highly successful test flight. Unfortunately, the press decided to focus in on a problem with the orbiter’s malfunctioning toilet. They seemed to always have a way of ignoring the important aspects of a mission in favor of the silly.

Rains at Edwards had once again flooded the dry lake bed so the landing was diverted to White Sands, New Mexico. We rushed to pack up our equipment and get it loaded onto a train for the alternate site. I had never been to White Sands before, but I quickly found out from where it got its name. When we arrived, it was very windy. So windy, in fact, that the flight had to be extended an extra day. When Columbia finally came roaring in the winds had subsided, but still, drifting clouds of fine white sand were everywhere. We greeted the orbiter wearing goggles and facemasks with the sleeves and pants cuffs of our coveralls taped shut.

Wind continued to be a problem as we processed the vehicle. We had to build a makeshift windbreak out of plywood and shipping crates to protect it as it hung on the cranes. Cleaning up the orbiter after it returned to KSC was an extremely time-consuming process. The white stuff was everywhere and there was substantial contamination in every imaginable opening.

By the end of 1983, we had nine successful Shuttle flights under our belts. We were getting in the groove and many of the operations were becoming routine. It was very satisfying to see the time between launches getting shorter and shorter. It was just about this time that another major reorganization of NASA and KSC took place. Processing of the Shuttle was awarded to a new company called United Space Alliance. Again, I had to dismantle a dedicated group of people. While many were taken over by USA, others had to leave the area to find employment elsewhere. This is the part of working in the space program that leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. People who have sacrificed large parts of their lives, doing a hard job and doing it well, being discarded as excess numbers. I understood that it was a simple business decision, dictated by the harsh bottom line of the balance sheet. But that still did not make me feel any better about it.

Although I had been in a number of television interviews and documentaries over the years, I had never gotten to see how a movie was actually made. In the spring of 1984, I got a chance to do that. James A. Mitchener had written a very popular book entitled Space and some Hollywood people decided to produce a TV adaptation of it. They came down to shoot a number of scenes at the old Cape Canaveral pads and invited me to join them. It turned out that they wanted me to play a bit part as an anonymous German rocket scientist.

On my first morning out there, the movie company treated us to a very nice catered breakfast at the abandoned Complex 34 site. This was the same place where Grissom, White, and Chaffee had lost their lives in 1967 and the site where Wally Schirra had commanded the first manned Apollo launch in 1968. Fifty tons of white beach sand had been trucked in from Melbourne to cover over the concrete. The food was great and I figured this was a pretty good beginning. It looked like it might be some fun. Soon I was introduced to a number of the stars including Bruce Dem and Michael York. Now Dem turned out to be someone I would not be too fond of. Very arrogant and snippy. But Michael York and I hit it off very well. He was playing the role of a German scientist who had escaped to join the Americans at the close of World War II. Although his character was fictional, the group that he was a member of was very real. They were the engineers and technicians who had developed the German rocket program on the shores of the Baltic Sea. It was from this group that Wernher von Braun emerged. After surrendering to the Americans, they continued their research under U.S. Army sanction in White Sands, New Mexico and Huntsville. Alabama. They ended up being absorbed into NASA in 1959.

Although I had not been a part of the rocket program in Germany, I did emigrate to the United States after the war and joined the space program much as York’s character did. He was fascinated by all of that and wanted to model his character after me. He said that I was his “prototype - passionate, enthus'astic, and likable.” Well, that certainly seemed to describe me very accurately. He was obviously an astute judge of people.

One of the first scenes we were going to work on involved the launch of a fake German missile, the one known to Americans as the V-2.1 had witnessed quite a few launches from the early days and had a pretty good idea of how it ought to look. Michael’s job in the scene was to run away from the pad, hop into an awaiting truck and quickly escape to the blockhouse. After it was shot, the director asked me to take a look at the raw footage and give him my comments.

When Michael was running for the truck, his tie was flapping in the breeze and his pencils were jumping out of his shirt pocket. Sure, he had a white shop coat on, but I explained to the director that no self-respecting German scientist would ever be dressed like that. His tie would be clipped in place and all his pencils and pens would be neatly secured in his pocket. The director decided to re-shoot the scene, but no one around had a tie tack. The closest thing they could come up with was a paper clip, so that’s what they used.

At lunch time, Michael invited me to his trailer where 1 met his darling wife. We spent time discussing the German rocket program and looked over some of the NASA launch photos 1 had brought with me. After a good meal, the director reappeared and took us over to one of the staged crash sites they would be using. The Air Force had provided a few truckloads of scrapped rocket parts and other equipment to be used as props. The film crew did a pretty good job of parceling the wreckage around, but one thing caught my attention. In a direct line from where the camera would be shooting, there was a pile of old freon bottles used to service air conditioners. Since we did not have air conditioning during the V-2 period, I suggested that they might want to remove them. We spent the rest of the day working on a few other historical details. They wanted to know what the scientists and technicians would be saying after a successful launch. I taught them how to say “Sehr Gut, Sehr Gut!” All dressed up in white shirts, heavy tweed pants, and white lab coats, we shouted that out during a scene where we were supposed to have just witnessed the launch.

They spent a few more days filming at the Cape before moving on to complete the $30 million project in California. All in all, I think they did a very good job on the dramatization. The film accurately captured the period and I thoroughly enjoyed my little insight into the film making business.

By the end of 1985, our entire fleet of four orbiters was operational. We had flown twenty three missions since 1981 and things appeared to be going very well. Perhaps too well, in some respects. Although we were behind schedule in a number of areas, a certain amount of complacency had settled in. I worried that some people might have gotten just a little too trusting of the technology.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan had made a surprising announcement: A school teacher would be selected to ride as a passenger on an upcoming Shuttle flight. While this worried a lot of people in the program, the public loved the idea and over 11,000 teachers applied for the job. By the summer of 1985, that group had been culled down to ten finalists. After two weeks of testing, a NASA panel selected a 36 year old teacher from Concord, New Hampshire. Vice President George Bush announced the winner in a White House ceremony. Her name was Christa McAuliffe.

In September, Christa arrived in Houston to began training as a Payload Specialist. Her 114 hour course was nothing like the intensive training that astronauts went through. In fact a Payload Specialist was technically not considered to be an astronaut. The position was primarily designed for foreign dignitaries, American politicians and scientists conducting experiments for private companies. Senator Jake Gam had already taken a flight and Congressman Bill Nelson was slated to fly one mission ahead of McAuliffe on STS-61C.

Christa was manifested to fly aboard the orbiter Challenger. It was a good ship and had already flown in space nine times. Bob Crippen had commanded Challenger in the flight that put Sally Ride into the history books as the first American woman in space. McAuliffe’s flight, STS-51L, would be commanded by Dick Scobee. It would be his second flight aboard Challenger. Dick and I had worked together on a number of special projects and had become close friends. Joining Christa in the role of Payload Specialist was an engineer from Hughes Aircraft named Greg Jarvis.

After several postponements and scrubs, launch day for 51L arrived. The date was January 28, 1986. It was unusually cold. Temperatures during the preceding night had gone well below freezing and the service structure was festooned with a collection of glistening icicles. Many of us had concerns about launching in such cold conditions. There was the possibility of an icicle breaking free and doing some type of random damage. But of possibly greater importance, rubber and plastics, substances in abundance on the Shuttle and the structure, behaved differently under extremely cold conditions. There were too many unknowns. Launching in such frigid weather just seemed like a plain bad idea and most of the people I was with hoped the launch would be scrubbed.

By 8:30 in the morning, the crew members were strapped inside Challenger. Fifteen minutes later, a group called the “ice team” did a visual inspection at the pad. After their report was delivered, the bosses in the LCC decided to give the ice a little more time to melt and a hold was called. At 11:15, the ice team made another inspection. This time, conditions were considered acceptable and the countdown resumed. The minutes ticked off and as we neared the T minus 3 minute mark, I stepped outside of my office to watch. A normal sized crowd huddled together at the Press Site to witness the launch of the first teacher in space.

At 11:38 a.m., the NASA commentator broadcast the final seconds of the countdown.

“10..., 9..., 8..., 7..., 6..., we have main engine start,” he said.

“4..., 3..., 2..., 1..., and Liftoff! Liftoff of the 25th Space Shuttle mission... And it has cleared the tower.”

The sky was a brilliant blue and I craned my head up to watch the familiar sight. The thick column of white smoke shined brightly in the sunlight.

Before the Shuttle could reach max-q, the designator for the part of the boost phase where maximum aerodynamic pressure is produced, standard procedure was to throttle the main engines back. The solid rocket boosters, however, would continue to blast away unabated. At approximately one minute into the flight, max-q was passed and the main engines returned to full power. The last thing we heard was the crackling of commander Dick Scobee’s voice. “Roger, go at throttle up.” Standing in the Press Site with the large crowd of viewers, I saw my worst fears come to life. STS-51L was replaced by a huge fireball which quickly transformed itself into a giant cloud of smoke. As the two SRBs launched off in their own trajectories, they trailed columns of white smoke and looked like the horns of a pitchfork. It was a terrifying and sickening sight. While stunned viewers looked for signs of salvation in the cloud, I knew that the crew was lost.

In the days following the disaster, there was little information available to the public. There was much speculation that some type of fuel leak in the Shuttle’s external tank had triggered an explosion. But the news broadcasts were quick to say that the real cause might never be determined. Internally, though, it did not take very long for the source to be discovered.

Film taken of the launch from remotely operated cameras captured the first premonition of disaster. Immediately after SRB ignition, a series of puffs of smoke were seen near the base of the right booster. Engineers quickly concluded that a rubber o-ring in the joint between two sections of the booster had failed. The smoke puffs were the first clues that the o-ring was being burned and eroded by the hot propellant gases. When it finally burned through some seventy seconds later, the blowtorch of flame from the SRB burned directly into one of the brackets that attached the external tank to the orbiter.

The frightening thing was that NASA had been aware of the possibility of o-ring failure for some time. The solid rocket boosters were designed to be reused. After they burned their fuel during a launch, the boosters were jettisoned. Parachutes deployed from their noses and the two rockets would drift safely into the Atlantic where they were recovered. It was a standard routine. Over the next few weeks they would be refurbished and loaded with solid propellant, ready for another use. After some earlier launches, significant erosion was noted on several o-rings from recovered boosters. Although it was a sign of a very dangerous situation, the decision was made to continue using them.

The problem involved the joints between the booster rocket sections. With each use, they got slightly looser and more distorted. This allowed a flexing motion which rocked and compressed the rubber o-ring seals. To compound matters, Morton Thiokol engineers had warned NASA managers in the summer of 1985 that the rubber rings lost their resiliency at temperatures below 50 degrees Fahrenheit. This could easily prevent them from keeping a tight seal. These issues all came together that cold January morning when Challenger disintegrated in flight.

After months of investigation and recovery of large portions of the orbiter from the ocean floor, NASA management had to accept the major blame for the accident. But the story was not over yet. The crew compartment had been recovered largely intact. It had fallen into the Atlantic in one piece, with the seven crew members inside. When investigators noticed that three of the emergency air packs had been turned on by hand, the chilling fact became obvious. At least some of the crew, and possibly all of them, were still alive after the orbiter broke apart. It was reasonable to believe that they were alive and cognizant during the two and a half minutes of free fall before the final impact with the ocean. A horrible revelation and not one that anyone wished to contemplate.

The country grieved, NASA was in a shambles, and the Shuttle program was placed on hold. Major personnel changes were made. Communications channels between NASA Headquarters and the individual centers in Houston, Huntsville, and Merritt Island were revamped. As fallout from directives to make corrections, a new paper trail was created that became more of a burden than an asset. A work order that previously had required two signatures - those of the contractor and the NASA customer - was now required to be reviewed and signed by as many as six people. Meetings that were previously conducted by individuals were now held by committees. Individuals shied away from decisions that required their signatures. The great CYA - cover your ass - program hail started.

In my own little world, Tom O’Malley had retired from Rockwell. It was a comforting reward to know that I had outlasted him. And I imagine it galled him to no end to see me still at work. Dick Beagley had also left the company and my new boss was John Tribe. He was an Englishman and a terrific engineer. John became the backbone of the Rockwell engineering contingent at KSC and was possibly the most knowledgeable orbiter expert at the Cape. He was the man that NASA engineers called on when critical orbiter decisions had to be made. He and Horace Lambert were the two people who established the new guidelines for the handling of hypergolic fuels. John was as professional and as smart as they come. I enjoyed working for him a great deal.

I became a part of the KSC Accident and Incident Review Board. With the help of my NASA counterpart, Malcolm Fuller, I was able to make some meaningful changes which I believe helped to prevent many future accidents and to correct a variety of equipment and facility shortcomings. If we found resistance from other managers, John Tribe would go to battle for us.

In September of 1988, the Shuttle returned triumphantly to flight. As STS-26 cleared the tower, it appeared on the surface to be the same vehicle we had sent into space before. But the similarity was only skin deep. In reality, over $2 billion had been spent in redesign and replacement efforts. Over four hundred changes were made. In particular, over 150 modifications were made to the SRBs alone. The joint that had failed in Challenger was completely redesigned to incorporate a third o-ring and a significantly beefed-up inter-segment linkage. The time for a new era in spaceflight had arrived. I had been a part of it all from the earliest unmanned experiments, to the glorious missions to the moon. I had worked with the Shuttle from its first test flights and had seen the catastrophic failure caused by arrogance and complacency. And I was there to see the new NASA emerge, triumphant in its return to flight, but in a program different from the one in which I had spent my career. It was time for me to begin considering my own retirement. But there was one final project, dear to my heart, that I wished to complete.

Early in the Shuttle program, while Rockwell was still the processing contractor, we had an accident that killed two of our technicians. The two men had entered the aft compartment of the orbiter as it sat on the pad. That compartment was filled with 100% nitrogen gas to prevent any outbreak of fire during fueling operations. Due to some misunderstanding in the Launch Control Center, the all clear signal was given over the PA system. Our techs responded by opening the compartment hatch and entering. They were immediately overcome by the nitrogen atmosphere and passed out. Within a minute or two, they had passed away.

After the Challenger accident, it was decided to erect a monument at KSC to the astronauts that had been killed in the line of duty. I approached the head of the committee that was in charge of the project with an idea. What was the possibility that the names of seven technicians could be included in the memorial? These were people who had been killed over the years while servicing vehicles for spaceflight. I was informed that, because they were not astronauts, their names could not be included. My question of whether their families suffered any less than those of the lost astronauts was never answered. The last I heard about it was, “We’ll see what we can do.”

With no satisfactory answers forthcoming, I wrote a letter to the center Director, General Forrest McCartney. The reply came back by way of our Rockwell base manager. He indicated that the KSC Director was not in favor of such a monument and that I should forget about it. I got the point.

In January of 1989, I retired from Rockwell and left the space program. But I did not leave behind my commitment to establish a monument for the fallen technicians. This time I started a letter campaign to my many friends and former colleagues. I asked them to send copies of my letter to their congressmen, and to call the center director at the Cape, and the NASA Administrator in Washington (who, by the way, was now my old friend Dick Truly) about the monument. 1 got tremendous support and it was a great feeling knowing that no one could fire me. Within a week I got calls from McCartney’s office and from the head of Public Affairs asking me to turn off the letters and phone calls. General McCartney had decided that they could, in fact, create a memorial to those workers lost in the line of duty while furthering our grand adventures in space.

Things happened quickly from there. A few months later, I was proud to be at the dedication of the new monument at the Dr. Debus Center. As I stood there in the crowd, I smiled to myself when the General publicly thanked me for making the monument a reality. I really felt like pointing my finger at him and yelling out, “Gotcha!” Some things never change.