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

by Glynn S. Lunney

  GLYNN AT 14

  The Prep had a very strong influence on me and I have a hard time explaining it to myself. I just know that it did. During my space career, I often found that I was aware that I was thinking through a problem in a way different from my colleagues around me. Not necessarily better, just different. My brother Bill went to Prep three years after me, and we have had current discussions about what we got from the Prep. Bill had the very same sense as I that it shaped him for life. And he had the same difficulty in justifying that judgment, but he knew it was so.

  The teachers at Prep were a major change from the nuns. They were young men of college graduate age, some of whom had high school careers in football and other sports. They were smart, strong and athletic. They tolerated no out-of-line behavior and were physical about it. They were in training to become priests and we called them Mister Haske, Coll, Long, et cetera. It was hard to forget that they selected themselves to serve a higher purpose – certainly impressive men. They pounded Latin, Greek, German, philosophy, logic, math and ethics into our heads and reinforced the subjects with a regular regimen of two to three hours of homework every night. The Jesuits prided themselves on providing a “classical education” and preparing young men for the priesthood or to become “Catholic gentlemen.”

  Great as it was, there still was the matter of tuition. And that brings me to another unexplained chain of events. Dad was in a new job by this time and it could not have paid as well as the mines. But he did get started on a new path that was eventually better for him and Mom, and certainly safer than the mines. But there had to be less income for tuition. I wonder now if my folks talked to the Prep authorities about taking me out of school. And, if so, they were probably told to wait while other options were pursued. Here I am in my junior year, having just turned fifteen in November. During the next month, I found myself with a job opportunity perfectly fitted to my situation. The job was at the Diocesan Guild Studios, on the other end of the block from school. The store sold various kinds of religious articles to churches and individuals and was certainly tied into the organization of the Church and its workings. The job was close, part-time and somehow that opportunity found me out of all the other possible candidates when I was not even actively pursuing a job. Tuition problem solved. Fifty cents per hour. Was all that a coincidence? Again, nobody said anything by way of explanation to me. But from the perspective of sixty years later, no, it was not a coincidence. Somebody became aware of the problem and fixed it.

  Part-time was about fifteen to twenty hours per week and full-time in the summer. I worked as a stock clerk, with the stock room being on the second floor. So, the stock team had to get everything up there, unpack and store it and bring it back down for sale. I was the only part timer in the store and at least five years younger than the next in age. Again, it was a stretch for me in many ways and fifty cents per hour became a lesson in earning money and seeing how far it might go. At one point, it was a shock to hear (unsubstantiated) that the boss, Mr. Maher, made $10,000 per year, an unimaginable sum. At my rate, I had a long way to go. I kept the job at full-time in the summer and back to part-time during my school term at the University of Scranton for my first two years of college studies. By the time I left, I was up to eighty-five cents per hour.

  As another indicator of my standing in the social sphere and when it came time for this 16-year-old to get a date for the senior prom, I actually did not know any girls of suitable qualifications. I had some cousins, but that did not count. Eventually, one of the women at the Guild Studios arranged the date with her younger sister. And it worked out, but was an indicator that I had some growing up to do.

  GLYNN’S HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION

  PLUS BILL, JERRY AND CAROL

  In my senior year at Prep, I also began to focus on the pursuit of a college degree. I was pretty good at math and loved making model airplanes. I thought my choice was between accounting and engineering. My parents suggested that I talk to our local Doctor Marmo. He had been a long time doctor for our family who made house calls. He was only one of two people that we knew with a college degree. He listened patiently while I described my choices and he said, “Glynn, go for the engineering.” It was a simple, short conversation and set my course for life. Thanks, Dr. Marmo, and God bless your beloved Nittany Lions.

  After graduation from the Prep, I knew I wanted to work on airplanes and the path became apparent. Two years were at the University of Scranton because it was so convenient and I could live at home. The University of Detroit offered an aeronautical B.S. through a co-op program. And, since it was also a Jesuit university like the one in Scranton, all my credits would transfer with a minimum of do-overs.

  During my last summer at home in 1955, I had a state highway job near home before heading off to the University of Detroit for three years of their co-op aeronautical engineering program. Looking back, I really don’t know how I was offered that Prep scholarship. Somebody intervened and my guess is that it was a significant somebody from Prep. Likewise, how did the part time job at the Guild Studios come my way? Maybe someday, I will hear the whole story. I hope so.

  On that path in 1953, I found myself repeating my early experience at Prep. I was sixteen and had filled out to a robust one hundred twenty pounds. This time, half of my class was comprised of Korean war vets back to get their degree. I was five to six years behind these guys and much more than that in terms of maturity. But, my study habits were current and sharp, so I had something valuable to offer. Many of them sought me out and I earned a place on the class roster.

  There was another student from Old Forge in this pre-engineering class and his name was Tony Andreoni. Tony had a 1937 Chevy, which ran at least those two years at the University of Scranton and probably well beyond. We became close friends and did a lot of miles together. Tony had a year of chemistry in high school and I had none at Prep. College started in at least the second year of chemistry and Tony saved me. Our routine was something like this – Glynn worked until 5 to 6 p.m. at the Guild, went home, did homework for three hours while eating and then we were off to meet our other classmates for an evening of shuffleboard, the shells and lots of laughs. My peers were a college degree in themselves and it was a grand time for two years. We went to class in old barracks buildings, which the University used to handle the surge in attendance after Korea. They were comfortable and did the job. This was the precursor to another lesson from my work in the space program. We had engineers from many schools and states but not the “name” universities, and the young men did everything asked of them and more. This profession, as many others I would guess, is a matter of sound preparation, attitude and work ethic, not a school address.

  Back to the family, we just absorbed the daily lessons of family and friends and took it as standard. Folks stopped by regularly for a visit or a glass of beer. Uncle Steve walked all of Old Forge every day on his regular daily visit to family and some of his friends, even if he only stayed ten minutes. Mom took on caretaker duties for my grandfather and both grandmothers as live-ins at various times. When our folks decided to tear down the old house on River Street and build a new one in 1968 after we had all left home, their cousins (Dot and Bernie Ostroski) immediately invited Mom and Dad to live with them for the construction duration in their home in Pittston. Our parents cemented their relationship with the three Ostroski kids that carried on the rest of their lives. Such was the way of family in the Lackawanna valley.

  Relatively unspoken but pervasive at that time and in that place was the sense of patriotism for our country. It was very visible during the war years when so many went off to serve the country and the wives and mothers were left at home to care for the families. We did not have a lot of factories in the area where women went to work as in California in the aircraft factories, but there was plenty to do on the home front and women did it. And we never heard a complaint about it. Perhaps the last value that our parents worked hard to instill in us was something that I would
call ambition. This was not the crass, self-involved ambition but rather a more noble desire for her children to be able to live a better life. In our family, even though I was going to a very difficult high-performance high school, the standard always was that you will learn; you will get an education and you will make something of yourself. It was considered mandatory that we do that and that we never even consider working in the mines.

  Coal Miner

  Christmas Eve, 1950. The men working in the Pagnotti coal mine in Pittston, Pennsylvania, were beginning to think about enjoying Christmas Day with their families and friends. And then, “Cave-in, Chamber #2.” The dreaded words ripped through the miners like a chainsaw. Our Dad instantly remembered that his brother-in-law, Stanley Kulick, was working there with his buddy, Teddy. He took off for chamber #2, running as fast as he could. Dad was halfway there before realizing that he was still carrying the jackhammer he had been fixing earlier. As he approached, he saw a few other miners scrambling into the shaft while struggling to see through the clouds of dust. This was a dangerous time because it was impossible to know how much more caving was imminent. The miners slowed their pace while calling out for the men in the chamber. Soon, a choking voice was heard, hard to understand but coming nearer. Then, the light from his helmet flickered through the dusty gloom and one of the miners emerged, so covered with black and dust that Bill was not sure who it was. And then he recognized Stanley’s voice, “Teddy’s still in there. The cave was on his side.” One out, the other still unknown. More miners arrived, more lights to see with. Carefully, they advanced, calling for Teddy. No answer. More calls, still no answer. And there would not be an answer from Teddy on that Christmas Eve or any other time.

  The feeling of having little control over one’s fate had to be compounded for Stanley by the fact that he and Teddy switched sides of the coal car to shovel from on this particular night. Some of the other miners questioned that choice until Stanley explained that Teddy had asked to work on the side of the car where the roof later caved in. No matter, some measure of guilt must have attached to Stanley, although he never spoke of it. It was just one more burden that these brave and stoic men were accustomed to enduring, with never a complaint.

  My Uncle Stanley left the mine that night and never set foot in the mines again. He moved his family to Connecticut, the closest place to our home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he could find work. Stanley and his family did not move back for many years. Stanley never did return to the cold, dark, dangerous network of shafts and chambers under the valley, some only a few feet high and often with a foot of cold water.

  Stanley did not return, but my Dad did and worked in the mines into 1951. I absorbed this experience without much discussion from either of our parents directly with us kids. This was a time when kids did not ask questions of their parents, especially when it was a serious matter. Much later in life, I learned more about the fear that gripped my Dad during his years as a coal miner. Mom told me how Dad hated to go to sleep at night. He knew that when he woke up, he would return to that fearful, dark place again. It never got any easier for him. But, he did it, like thousands of other men in Pennsylvania and other mining regions. He did it because it was the only way he had to take care of his wife and family. Now in my seventies, the more I reflect on those times, the more I appreciate the simple human dignity, even nobility, of these men and their wives. It was only later that they became known, also to others, as our “greatest generation.” We already knew that.

  The coal mines of the Lackawanna and Susquehanna valleys are gone now. Their demise can be traced to the Knox mine disaster in January 1959. At that time, mining operations were continually being extended to chase the coal seams, but got too close to the ice-swollen Susquehanna River. The subsequent cave-in of the river through the roof of the River Slope mine flooded a major part of the interconnected mines. The flooding could not be slowed even by dumping coal cars, truckloads of gravel and fill and some eight hundred railroad cars into the whirlpool. Sixty-two fortunate miners were able to escape, but twelve more were swept away by the deluge. After more than a century of commercial coal mining, Mother Nature finally ended this period in the history of our region.

  But the mines continued to deliver more pain to the decent people of this area long after they were closed. The process of separating the coal from the useless slag resulted in large dumps of waste that still contained some coal. It is believed that these dumps eventually caught fire and the fire spread by burning exposed coal near the surface and then beneath the surface. This burning emitted a foul smelling gas (hydrogen sulfide) strong enough to peel the paint from houses and making it appear that, in many places, the ground was burning. It also was responsible for the deaths of families as the gases leaked into basements at night and filled the home like a silent killer. Or the erosion collapsed the support for the structure of the house.

  And, finally, many of the miners – some of the toughest stock you can find – died early because of the damage from coal dust to their lungs. This condition took my Dad in 1985 after years of fighting to breathe. We were told that his heart was like a marathon runner but his lungs were simply unable to perform.

  This awareness in my early years left me with many feelings and convictions, some of which I can identify and some are just baked into who I am. However, there are at least two occasions, which always trigger a response directly from the legacy of this experience:

  First, any news report of a mine cave-in or trapped miners anywhere on the globe, immediately and with an emotional punch, causes me to stop, reflect and pray for their safe recovery and for their waiting families.

  Second, much later in my life, and long after my time in MCC, I was occasionally confronted by employees who wanted to talk about the stress of the work in our comfortable offices. Stress? I could never muster any sympathy for the initiators of these discussions. I knew what my folks did for us. I could only guess what their parents and grandparents did for them. I wondered if they really understood and appreciated it.

  Chapter Two: Leaving for The University and The Co-op Experience

  For finishing my last three years, the University of Detroit co-op program was a great way to earn the college degree. Besides the fine academic preparation, it was also a chance to experience the real world of aero engineering in the nation’s pre-eminent aeronautical research organization. Besides that, the NACA pay was just about enough to live on, and then pay for the upcoming school quarter of expenses. Based on the three-month rotation, I was only in Detroit in summer and winter. That was only three months during the regular University school year. As a result, we did not really attach to the University or its other institutions such as the sports teams or any other students outside of aero engineering.

  In attending several of my wife’s high school reunions, I was impressed by the closeness of so many of the men and women in her class. Also, Marilyn’s classmates lived very close to each other at the time, and walked to school, which was all in the same neighborhood as their homes. As a group, they were closer to each other than my Prep class because the Prep students came from a radius of up to thirty miles around the region. There was no common “place” except for extracurricular activities. These were relatively limited and not like living next door. In retrospect, it was the same scene at the University of Detroit, not really connected on the emotional level. It was almost more of a business relationship. The University provided a service and we paid for it. That is not a criticism; it was just the circumstance at the time. Detroit was about a fifteen-hour drive from the Scranton area, subject to car breakdowns. The southern route went via the Pennsylvania and Ohio turnpikes. The northern passage was around the north side of Lake Erie through Canada, a long way to home. I never realized how relatively disconnected I was from high school and college until I witnessed first-hand Marilyn’s class reunions and the experiences of our kids. All four of ours went to Texas A&M and rapidly developed far, far more of a lifelong emotiona
l bond.

  Most of the guys, from the Scranton area, and those we met in Detroit were all in the same financial boat, working six months of the year to pay for twelve months of expenses. Nobody else from Detroit co-oped at NACA in Cleveland, although there were a number of other University co-ops represented. Money was tight for all of us. I had two experiences that were memorable in that regard. In my first few weeks in Cleveland, I simply ran out of cash. I had no checking account. Such a thing as credit cards did not exist, and it really wasn’t much of an option to call home. So I went three days without eating any food, just lots of water. Finally, on the fourth day, my landlady may well have guessed the situation and invited me to dinner, the first real food in too many days. Whatever the menu was that night, it was the absolute best and got me over the hump.