Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program

by Glynn S. Lunney

  There was one group of outlaws on our block. Five kids lived on the second floor above our unit. We only knew them by their last name – Peppy. And we called them the Peppy Kids. They had a chicken wire fence around their second-floor porch. This “cage” allowed them outside. But, it also allowed them to taunt us street dwellers, and throw ugly things down on us. The unforgivable insult was when they urinated on the clothes that mom hung out to dry in the yard. But, even worse, they managed to add their urine to our apple pie which mom had set out on our porch rail to cool. Needless to say, all of this inflamed us natives. Very occasionally, the Peppy Kids would be out on the street by themselves. It might be by choice, by parent instructions or by God – we did not care. The cry went up – “the Peppy Kids are out” – and we would find them and bang them up, appropriate for their offenses. It was good that they were as skinny as we were.

  The street fights were not always bloodless. I remember one battle against another neighborhood group of boys that was pretty intense. When I got home, I found that I was sweating profusely and, when I rubbed my hand through my hair, it came away covered in blood. Something heavy had pounded my head and split the skin open. I believe that it was my first time for stitches.

  But our great adventures were mostly on the weekends when Dad was home. Everybody in the family except Jerry had a bike. Mine was a 24-inch one and Bill had a small wheel size of 20 inches. He had to peddle like the devil just to keep up with us. Jerry rode on the bar in front of Dad’s seat. This arrangement worked pretty well most of the time. Except once, Jerry held up our ride for about an hour because he could not find his pillow. By the time we got back from our couple of hours of biking, Jerry was in considerable discomfort and unable to sit. You can imagine the outpouring of sympathy for him. By my process of elimination, the pillow thief had to be Bill, but he did not own up. Bill was fairly stubborn about things. He could kneel down and bang his head on the sidewalk when he got mad or frustrated. He did turn out okay despite this affliction.

  Many times, we biked down in the park and mom brought lunch in the basket attached to her bike. These were great times for the family. We liked to visit a park area called Lemon Hill. Many bike-riding families showed up there on the weekends and enjoyed being out of the city streets and flying kites on the rolling green hills. For the parents, it had to be a welcome break from the work routine and the concern for relatives off in military service. Mom’s brother, our uncle Steve, was out in the Pacific somewhere with the Seabees.

  I started at St. Agatha’s grade school on Spring Garden Street, about eight to ten blocks from our place. Bill followed in two years and Jerry did not start school until we moved back to Scranton after the war. Brother Bill and I walked to school every day and, with no school buses or parents to chauffeur us, we would collect a crowd by the time we got there. This gave us too much of a chance to visit with other classmates on the way home and sometimes we were late.

  St. Agatha’s grade school was run by the nuns. As anyone who went to school with the nuns back then will tell you, they were great for at least two things, one being the basics and the other being discipline. They were probably great human beings also, but in our station of life, it was all about the first two, with emphasis on the discipline part. Discipline came in the form of one of those three-sided rulers, about three-quarter inches on a side. They were designed by the devil, but the sisters used them anyway. And they were very good at it. They had our attention, so the basics could begin. And, if you got in trouble, your parents knew it was your fault, and no one else’s.

  On August 6, 1945, just eight days before the news of the unconditional surrender of Japan, Dad was inducted into the U.S. Army and served in the Army Air Corps. Dad was stationed at a number of places around the country and I remember that Mom went to visit him one time when he was stationed in Georgia. This was during the winter and Mom expected the weather in such a warm southern state to be just like summer. It was not so.

  Another problem followed Dad all of his service time. Somehow, the Army lost his papers, or at least the payroll papers. They could still ship him around to new assignments. But, the real downside was that he never got paid. Mom got a counter clerk job at the local drugstore. So, her paycheck had to support the home front and she also sent money to Dad for cigarettes and incidentals. The kids, of course, were never told any of this. It must have been about this time that Pop, my Dad’s father, came to live with us. Our guess is that it was to watch us while Mom worked.

  Dad spent his last time in service at Shepherd Field in Texas. He told us of the German POWs who were kept there. We were surprised to hear that they were relatively free to walk around the base, not in serious confinement during the day. And, they were very happy to be where they were rather than on any front, especially the Eastern one. I remember the celebrations when V-E day and then V-J day occurred, people in the streets, car horns blasting, lots of cheering and weeping. I don’t think I was aware that the next destination for Private Lunney would have been the Pacific. When Dad finally got back home, he had this big duffel bag full of standard gear, all of which we thought was really cool. Uncle Steve of the Seabees brought home koala bear stuffed animals and a boomerang from Australia. It had been damaged some, but we loved throwing it out in the field. It did not work like we saw in the movies, but it was fun trying.

  After the war, Dad bought a large truck, like you might see in the U-Haul lot today. The cargo section was accessible from the cab and was good for traveling and camping. I don’t know how Dad swung the money; maybe his Army pay finally caught up with him. Either way, Dad wanted to go into the moving business and tried to get a license to start the business but he was never successful. The story that I understood was that the local cab company blocked any approval. Whatever the reason, Dad was very disappointed and we did not forgive the yellow cab company.

  With no more submarines to build in Philly, we moved back to Scranton. Dad was going back to the mines.

  Years of Formation

  When we moved back to Scranton, we rented the middle unit of a triplex in West Scranton at 1139 Eynon Street. This was probably in 1946 and we lived there for about five years. We went to school at St. Anne’s, which was a very large parish with a twelve-grade school. The nuns had different names than at St. Agatha’s, but they all went to the same training course. They looked the same and had the same three-sided rulers. (I make fun of what has become a stereotype of the nuns, but they were selfless teachers for generations of young kids and the world is now a poorer place as they and their schools become more rare.)

  At St. Anne’s, I went in training to become an altar boy. The priest who led that instruction was Father John Mark. And he was a rigorous perfectionist and disciplinarian. But we really did learn the Mass and how to serve the priest who was conducting the service. Father John Mark drilled us on all the procedures and especially all the responses in Latin. Even today, I still find myself replying to myself in Latin to the prayers that the priest now says in English. And yes, I did get to try the wine.

  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 womenfo
lk, 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.