Weeks go by, and once in a while I think about the e-mail, so mysterious and cryptic. I fail to see this as the sign it was; a woman who led as mysterious a life as my mother would probably be the kind of person who would generate mysterious e-mails, even after her death. Still, I keep putting “Ruth E. Fichter” out of my mind. After almost a month goes by, I open the e-mail again and dial the number. It's early evening in California, around eight o'clock. I don't recognize the area code, so I have no idea where I'm dialing.
After about four rings, a sleepy voice answers.
“Hello?”
“Hi. May I speak to Ruth Fichter?”
“This is Ruth.”
“You sound tired. Did I wake you up?”
“I wasn't asleep yet.”
“Sorry. Where am I calling?”
“Detroit.”
“Oh. I'm sorry. This is George Morgan. You sent me an e-mail.”
“Yes, George.”
“You said you had some information about my mother I might not already have.”
“Yes. I have some information about your older sister.”
“Right. There's a lady in Arizona named Dorothy Hegstad who claims our mother gave birth to a daughter many years ago, before she moved to California. Most of us out here are dubious about that story, but I'm looking into it.”
“What have you found so far?”
“Not much. Dorothy gave me a name: Angela Hibbard. Whoever this person is I guess she's my sister.”
“No. I'm your sister.”
I'm standing in my backyard at that particular moment and almost fall over. What does a person say when, at the age of fifty-seven, they suddenly discover they have an older sister, and that her existence has been intentionally hidden? And what does that person say when they suddenly find themselves talking to that sister on the phone? The entire experience feels like a plot ripped from a Lifetime movie. We talk for a little while, then she excuses herself—time for bed. She tells me she had found me through the blog I had set up; some Sherman family member had told her about it. Ruth and I promise to stay in touch, and then we hang up.
So what do I tell my family? What do I tell my father? Or should I tell anyone at all? I walk back into the house, close the sliding-glass door, then spend the evening pretending to my wife and children that my life has not just changed dramatically.
A few days go by, and I summon the courage to call my father and tell him what I have discovered. I know it will shock him, perhaps hurt him. But it has been six years since my mother passed away, and I'm hoping time will help heal any wounds he might incur. When I call his phone, he picks up after about five rings.
“Hello?”
“Dad, it's me.”
“Hey, George. How are things?”
We make some small talk for a few of minutes, and I ask him a couple of research questions about North American Aviation (a subject that always puts him a good mood). Then I hit him with it.
“Dad, you're not going to believe this, but I just found out mom had a daughter out of wedlock before she met you, and that she gave the baby up for adoption.”
His answer is not what I expect.
“I know,” he says. “But how did you find out.”
I had created the blog with the intention of bringing to light accomplishments my mother made in the field of aerospace. Two years after first posting it, the blog yields almost none of the information I hoped to obtain. Yet were it not for the blog, I might never have discovered that all these years, I've been a little brother, and never suspected a thing.
A few months later, Ruth Fichter flies out to Southern California, and we have a rare Morgan family reunion. We take her to the beach (she had never seen the Pacific Ocean before), the Getty Museum, and the Griffith Observatory. We do lunch, we do dinner, we hang out. We talk, we laugh, we get to know each other. She spends a week with us, and it's as if we'd all known each other forever.
By the time she flies back to Detroit, I realize I'm not going to be able to write the book I intended.
There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program: your tax dollar will go farther.
—WERNHER VON BRAUN
Wernher von Braun sat alone in a darkened room. General Medaris had ordered him to Washington, DC. In the unlikely event the Redstone succeeded in launching America's first satellite on its very first attempt, the army wanted its most public cheerleader to be in the nation's capital. They would need a trusted public figure to make the official announcement before the media, and who better for that than Walt Disney's Dr. Space?
In a few hours, all of his life's work would be gambled on a single rocket launch. It seemed as if every waking moment of von Braun's earthly existence since age 12 had been prologue for this night, and now he would not be allowed to watch the launch. There would be no closed-circuit television or real-time voice link with the Cape. Hundreds of miles away, someone's pulse would quicken as they announced “Ignition!” and that person would not be him. When the Redstone engines fired and rumbled, he would neither see nor hear nor feel any of it. It was disconcerting. It was borderline humiliating. It was unquestionably depressing. Wernher von Braun was a smoke-and-fire man, but on the most important smoke-and-fire night of his life, he was writing a PR speech in a dimly lit room 800 miles from the launch site. There would be no phone calls from friendly colleagues; for security reasons, the announcement of the success or failure of the rocket would arrive in the form of an impersonal printout from a rat-a-tat teletype machine installed in the next room. Teletype was as far as coded technology had progressed in January 1958.1
Wernher's pen stopped moving as his thoughts began to wander. There was an image that suddenly invaded his mind. He was seven years old and obsessed with building things. He wanted to build a tree house in the yard of his family's Berlin home. He had neither money nor materials, so he took a number of books an aunt had just purchased for him and attempted to return them at the bookstore for cash.2 Before he could consummate the deal, his mother showed up and threw him and his books into the car.
The memory made Wernher smile.
I would certainly enjoy a nice tree house now.
Wernher's attention refocused, and his pen resumed writing.
A mere thirty miles away from North American Aviation, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena had set up a room where a group of its engineers could gather to hear the results of Explorer 1. Worldwide satellite-listening stations would one day be set up, but in 1958, there were only three: Cape Canaveral, Huntsville, and JPL. As the westernmost station, JPL would be the first to have an opportunity to hear the satellite's signal, so it would be the first to know whether America had succeeded or failed in its latest satellite-launch attempt. Because of its close proximity to NAA, several engineers had arranged a real-time audio link between the two organizations; NAA would know what JPL knew, and at the same moment. Such a link-up was an easy arrangement for two organizations heavily loaded with electrical engineers and amateur radio licensees. As the time approached for launch, dozens of engineers filtered into the room, coffee mugs in one hand, cigarettes in the other.
The Redstone had been scheduled for launch on January 29, but high-altitude winds, at speeds of up to 175 knots, delayed the firing for two days.3 They finally succeeded in getting a green light to launch at 10:30 on the night of January 31.
General Medaris watched from a crowded bunker 100 yards away. As the gantry pulled away from the rocket, Medaris would later describe what he saw:
“The missile stood like a great finger pointing to heaven—stark, white, and alone on its launching pad.”4
There were a couple of minor delays, but finally at 10:48 p.m. General Medaris told the launch crew, “Firing Command.”5 A member of the crew pulled a pin that initiated the top-stage spinning (the poor man's guidance system before better methods were invented). Once the upper stage had reached its proper RPM—a wait of about thirteen seconds—the bottom-stage en
gines were fired. The massive rocket stood motionless for three seconds as the engines built up thrust. Once that thrust reached the point where it overcame the rocket's weight, the Redstone began a slow, upward movement. Its ascension seemed impatient at first, as if it wanted to take its time leaving Earth. But it continued to accelerate, gained altitude, climbed steadily, and before long became a mere speck in the nighttime Cape Canaveral sky.6
The man assigned to track the satellite and determine its level of success or failure was Al Hibbs, an engineer from JPL on loan to the Cape. Despite the fact that it would be ninety minutes before they could be certain orbit had been achieved, General Medaris could not wait. Thirty minutes after launch, he approached Hibbs and demanded to know if the satellite was in orbit. Hibbs’ reply—a classic display of engineering ass-protection—has become part of early Space Race lore.
“Hibbs! I need to know. Is the satellite up?”
“I can tell you with 95 percent confidence that there is a 60 percent chance the satellite made orbit.”
“Don't give me any of this probability crap, Hibbs! Is it up or not!?”
“It's up.”7
America had launched its first satellite and in so doing let the world know there was more than one competitor in the game.
I'm five years old and sitting in a chair in our garage in Reseda, watching my dad work on the forest-green VW with the small rear window. He's underneath the car, fiddling with something. I don't know what he does under that car, but he's always under it. He's the consummate grease monkey. Suddenly mom runs in. She's wearing an apron smudged with spaghetti sauce.
“Dick! It's up! The satellite. Von Braun just launched our country's first satellite. It's on the TV—right now.”
My dad gets out from under the car and they both run into the house, leaving me alone.
What's a satellite? I ask myself. I get off the chair and follow them inside. It would be another twenty years before I was told why this event was so significant to my mother.
A reporter from the Washington Post raised his hand.
“What is the name of your satellite?”
Wernher von Braun was hosting his first post-launch news conference. With that one simple question, he realized what a mistake it had been to spread himself so thin—to micromanage so many different aspects of the Redstone's design, construction, and testing. So obsessed had he and everyone else been with the nuts and bolts of putting a satellite up that no one had given a moment's thought to naming the thing. Now he was being asked a question so unassuming and fundamental, yet he had no answer. At moments of historic significance, it was crucial for the right people to say the right things. Such comments would become part of history—they had to be thought out, not improvised.
The Russians were smart enough to name their satellite; why weren't we?
Wernher knew he should have learned this lesson by now, yet here he was reinventing the wheel. If he had been facing a roomful of engineers there would have been not a single question he would be unable to answer. But this was a media event, not a symposium.
What is the name of your satellite?
This was exactly the kind of question he should have anticipated. Naming things was one of the perquisites of the human race. Cats had names. Dogs had names. Even cars and dolls and breakfast cereals and rocket propellants had names. Certainly America's first satellite should have had a name. Assigning names to people and animals and objects and things both animate and inanimate was an integral part of being human. Science and humanity, could they coexist in harmony? Could they coexist at all?
To the reporter, Wernher gave the only answer possible:
“The satellite has not yet been given a name. It will have one shortly, and we will let the media know.”
After the press conference, an army corporal drove Wernher back to his hotel. As he rode quietly in the back seat, Wernher pondered what kind of name the satellite should be given. He had a few ideas, and he would pass them along to General Medaris. It would, after all, be up to the army. That's what Wernher had failed to remind the reporters at the press conference; that the Redstone/Jupiter C launch vehicle and its satellite, like himself, were property of the US Army. It was a military project bathed in secrecy and paid for with a weapons budget. The Redstone rocket that had so dramatically lifted America's spirits and its first satellite was nothing more than an ICBM gussied up with a party dress and makeup. Like the German V-2, the Redstone was a weapon designed to kill. Yet in the morning, Americans across the country would be celebrating “their” rocket, “their” satellite, “their” success, as if the whole venture had been a civilian, rather than military, endeavor. Over the next few weeks, there would be speeches, parades, award ceremonies, talking-head correspondents, kudos, congratulatory backslapping, and endless parties. Like throwing a baby shower for a girl who had been gang-raped, the whole circus would turn a blind eye to what got them there in the first place.
I know why the satellite doesn't have a name. It doesn't have a name because an army funded it, and armies only give names to weapons.
The lights of the nation's capital twinkled near and far, but Dr. Wernher von Braun barely noticed them. He had helped America regain its Sputnik-besmirched reputation; he was a national hero. But heroism is almost always transitory. A soldier loses a leg in battle, gets a medal and a warm welcome home, then spends the rest of his life in the waiting room of some dingy VA hospital. For now, Dr. von Braun put aside thoughts of what to name America's satellite; there was a much more important question demanding to be heard.
What happens next?
It was a question he could not stop thinking about.
Fate had steered his life in so many unexpected ways. Fate: Wernher felt like a puppet at the end of its strings, yet the strings had been of his own making. Would he ever have the freedom to pursue the goals and dreams that had always been in his heart? Would Fate make way for Destiny?
Will I ever be allowed to get out of the goddamn weapons business?
A hotel valet opened his door, and Dr. Wernher von Braun, former Nazi weapons designer and new American hero, stepped onto the sidewalk. He shuddered; it was Washington, DC, in January, and he was still wearing Huntsville clothing. He opened his wallet and tipped the valet.
In his room that evening, he fired off a letter to North American Aviation. America's first satellite had only been possible due to the invention of hydyne. Without it, the United States would have continued to trail the Russians for months, if not years. The only thing he knew about its creation was that a woman at North American Aviation had cooked it up. It was a curious cocktail of two little-used chemicals, and it had done its job perfectly. He did not know her name, but he wanted to thank her. Von Braun took out pen and stationery and wrote, Dear Unknown Lady.
People, like satellites, sometimes go nameless.
Ten years later, as more information about Sputnik came to be known, von Braun would discover that Sergei Korolev and the Soviet Union, rushing to win a race that only they were in, hadn't thought of naming their satellite either. The name Sputnik, like Explorer 1, turned out to be a post-orbit appellation.
Three days passed, then the mail hit like a hurricane. Von Braun's office was deluged with sacks of mail from young boys and girls across the country and around the world. They wanted to know how they too could become rocket scientists and participate in the new world of satellites and space travel. Over the coming weeks and months, it became apparent that von Braun and his engineers had achieved something far greater than merely putting a satellite into orbit; they had inspired a future generation of engineers. Though it would not be well acknowledged, overshadowed as it was by the spectacle of launches to come, the real legacy of Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun was the inspiration they afforded a generation of youth to pursue careers they might otherwise never have considered.
Time marched on, and in June 1971, I graduated from Chaminade College Preparatory in Canoga Park. I graduated with hon
ors, but far from the valedictorian status my mother had earned at the same point in her life. For four years, I had been an active member of all the nerd alliances: Amateur Radio Club, Electronics Club, and yes, the Rocketry Club. In the Radio Club, I earned a general class amateur radio license: WB6ZUV, which I keep active to this day (though I rarely get on the air). In the Rocketry Club, I frequently joined with eight or ten other students for weekends in the Mojave Desert, flying homemade zinc-and-sulfur solid-fuel rockets. I would usually invite my parents to come. My father would often make the trip, but my mother never did. Other than a week or two of summer vacation, she hated leaving the comfort of the dining room with its coffee, cigarettes, morning paper, and deck of cards.
In 1980, I decided I wanted to build and fly a liquid-propellant rocket. At that time, I still had almost no idea of the vast amount of experience my mother had in the subject, otherwise I would have sought out her help. My father was still working full-time as an engineer, and he gave me some encouragement and technical advice. I then called Dan Ruttle, a friend of mine who worked in the aerospace and rocketry field. Together we sketched out a design of an ultra-simple concentric tank rocket four inches in diameter, six feet long. It would use nitric acid as an oxidizer and furfuryl alcohol as a fuel (a combination that is hypergolic—these chemicals ignite by simply coming in contact with each other). As I would find out many years later, this design held many similarities to a project my mother worked on at North American: the NALAR air-to-air missile.
Eventually my brother Stephen signed onto the project. Design, construction, and testing took seven years (not a hobby for everyone), and in July 1987, the three of us flew the rocket in Nevada's Smoke Creek Desert, an alkali sink just west of the Black Rock Desert. It is a place so desolate that if you saw it, you would swear no human would ever go there for any reason. Yet a few years later, the annual ritual known as Burning Man would bring 40,000 people to it every summer for a week.
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