Chasing Space

by Leland Melvin

  Back to Grad School

  During the off-season, a number of pro football players attended law school or business school. A lot of them were really sharp guys, but none of them were enrolled in the University of Virginia’s graduate school of materials science and engineering. For the first few days of the semester I was surrounded by guys wondering what it was like to play for “America’s Team.” Only a week before, I had been training with the Cowboys, and my classmates found that endlessly amusing. And then there was Marlene.

  “You played pro football?” she asked in a thick Boston accent. I was pretty certain she knew nothing about football. “What team?”

  I told her.

  “What position?”

  “Wide receiver.”

  “I guess that means you’re really . . . fast?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. I wondered if she had a clue what a wide receiver did.

  “Uh, yeah . . . I’m pretty fast, I guess.”

  That exchange with Marlene got me thinking. It was a relief to meet someone from a different world than the one I had been living and breathing for more than a year. And with that, I closed the chapter on my life as a professional football player.

  • • •

  At the university, Marlene and I formed a study group with Brenda Jones, the student who had been sending me her class notes when I was with the Cowboys. We called ourselves “The Three Musketeers.” Without them I don’t think I would have had nearly as much fun as I did in Charlottesville. We often gathered for softball games and happy hour at local pubs. I found a family in the Materials Science Engineering Department, and later on would invite Dr. Dominey and Dr. George Cahen, another of my professors, to watch my first shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral. Marlene and Brenda also showed up, though I didn’t see any of them because shuttle astronauts are in quarantine by the time their guests arrive to see the launch.

  Most of my colleagues went on to careers in manufacturing or product design, but Marlene followed a different track. She got a degree in electrochemical corrosion and ended up teaching science in the Boston public school system. Many of her middle school students came from public housing in dilapidated neighborhoods and faced steep odds in their paths to success. Years later I spoke to them about the importance of staying in school. I wanted them to know that failures in life are the building blocks for later success, and that anything was possible. Even my serendipitous path to space.

  5

  NASA Langley

  A few times a year, the Graduate School of Engineering would host a career fair near campus at the Omni Hotel. It was early in 1989, and I was planning to get a job at one of the top chemical companies in the spring when I finished my master’s degree program in materials science engineering. I had met with representatives from DuPont and Dow Chemical Company, and both were interested in interviewing me at their home offices. The fair was coming to an end and as I made my way to the exit, I saw a logo above the booth in front of me. It read “NASA.” I kept walking. It was getting late and the bear in my belly was starting to growl. I was thinking of calling Marlene and BJ about Thai food when somebody called out to me.

  I turned to see a diminutive black woman, all of five foot two with a big smile and bright eyes. Her badge said ROSA WEBSTER, NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER. She grabbed my arm. “What’s your name?” she asked. Despite her small stature, she had a huge, larger-than-life presence and a pretty strong grip. I told her my name and she said, “Leland, you’re going to work at NASA. I’ve been looking for you all day.”

  Rosa then asked me to help her move some of her boxes to her car, and I stuck around after she started breaking down her booth. All the while, I was thinking, Who is this woman in my face? And secondly, I’m not working for NASA.

  Who Works at NASA?

  By the late 1980s, NASA had made considerable strides in hiring black scientists and engineers, but Langley director Paul Holloway was under orders to further improve diversity at the space agency. Rosa was one of a cadre of employees whom Holloway had assigned to find and recruit minority candidates. Someone in the university’s engineering department had supplied Rosa’s boss, Charles Blankenship, with a list of graduate students and my name had been on it. “We were looking for really strong candidates with strong credentials who we’d have a hard time getting our hands on because of our disadvantages to private industry,” Rosa later told me. “I had spent the whole day thinking, Is Leland Melvin going to show up?”

  Working at NASA had never crossed my mind. I mean, who works at NASA? Certainly, nobody who looked like me. Instead, like most of my grad school buddies, I had set my sights on private industry, where I knew the pay would be better and I would have more opportunity.

  About a half hour after I first met Rosa, she said NASA would send me a written job offer within a few days. A job offer? I was puzzled. During that time, NASA leadership gave certain staffers, including Rosa, the authority to make verbal job offers on the spot, particularly at job fairs where there was fierce competition for qualified minority graduates of science, technology, engineering, and math programs. And they were probably right to do so. In the days following the job fair, I visited Dow Chemical and DuPont headquarters, where I got a taste of the kind of jobs I always expected to be offered after graduate school.

  Soon after I got back, NASA Langley’s offer letter was waiting. I thought of Rosa as I picked up the letter. She had pitched NASA hard as I carried her materials from the job fair to her car. If her gig as a physicist somehow went south, she’d have amazing opportunities in sales. The letter included an invitation to come to the agency. The very least I could do was to go visit.

  • • •

  NASA has nine research centers distributed all around the country. Centers like NASA Langley do basic and applied research, in contrast to operational centers like Johnson, which focuses on astronaut training, and the Kennedy Space Center, where the mission is launching people into space. NASA Langley is often confused with CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but it’s actually in Hampton, Virginia, and shares a runway with the Langley Air Force Base. My new job was about three hours from my hometown.

  On my first day, we went into this room where they gave us visitor badges and told us about the center and explained our benefits package. There were three newcomers, one of whom was a friend of mine. Four black graduates from UVA eventually took jobs at Langley, although we didn’t all come in at that same time. We all knew each other, though, and we were probably all recruited by Rosa Webster. All of us eventually reached leadership roles.

  After orientation, I went to my office in the Nondestructive Evaluation Sciences Branch located in Building 1230, one of the oldest buildings on the campus. I talked to the branch chief and the man who would become my first boss, Joe Heyman. Heyman was a physicist who had a reputation around the space agency for getting his projects funded. A former used-car salesman with a PhD, Heyman was also very welcoming and encouraged his staff to work in a collegial fashion. Having lived in the South, I was wary of being the first African American in the branch. Heyman was from New England, and he had a way of embracing everyone. Plus his team included other progressive thinkers. I liked that Heyman believed scientists did their best work when unencumbered by bureaucracy. He also spoke eloquently about NASA being a family and a family-friendly work environment. Heyman reminded me of my father.

  The visit proved to be a major turning point in my life. Rosa had been right—NASA Langley was a good fit for the kind of work I wanted to do, and my goal of the big salaries, benefits, and bonuses that came with working in corporate America fast became a distant memory. I was headed to NASA.

  At the space agency, I spent my time doing research on optical systems that use lasers and optical fibers to remotely detect damage in aerospace structures and vehicles. NASA used these sensors to help improve the safety and reliability of vehicles, like the space shuttle. The shuttle’s fragile protective tiles can withstand 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and ins
pection systems that quickly assess their integrity can save time, money, and lives.

  Our work, unfortunately, could not prevent the 2003 tragedy of the Columbia mission when a brick-sized piece of foam dislodged from the shuttle’s fuel tank during takeoff and damaged the tiles on the left wing. Once in orbit, there was no way for the crew to inspect the damage on the outside of the spacecraft except for what they could see using cameras and binoculars. After Columbia, my work in sensors helped NASA shape new methods of scanning tiles and wings while the shuttle was in orbit to help prevent future disasters.

  During my first three years at Langley, I did fiber optics research with Jim Sirkis, a professor at the University of Maryland. He came to Langley on a sabbatical, conducting research on fiber optic sensors. We started working together to make these sensors. Jim had a PhD in mechanical engineering and I was just breaking into this area of research, but he was personable and we got along well.

  While recruiting me, Rosa had told me about the Graduate Education Program (GEP) for NASA employees. She told me, “You can get your PhD, we’ll pay for it and you’ll be on salary.” That only aroused my curiosity about becoming “Dr. Leland Melvin.”

  When Jim encouraged me to come to the University of Maryland to pursue a PhD, looming budget cuts and the possible elimination of the GEP spurred me into action. But, first I had to take some prerequisite courses. For a year I took undergraduate classes in statics, dynamics, strength of materials, and differential equations across the bridge from Langley at Old Dominion University in Norfolk. NASA was great about allowing you to study and work at the same time. I would leave during the workday to take classes and go home to study.

  After completing my courses, I packed up my stuff and moved to College Park, Maryland. I was now taking not only mechanical engineering classes but also electrical engineering. With a year of courses under my belt, I began to realize my heart really was not in the PhD program. I had forced myself into it because it was something I told myself I wanted to do. People told me, “You should just stick it out. You’re being paid your full salary and your tuition is getting paid. Why would you turn that down?”

  It was true. I had an ideal situation with friends and people who cared about me. Still, something didn’t feel right, and I decided to trust my instincts. I returned to Langley to a job that would provide access to the space program and put me on my path to the stars. But I didn’t know that then. All I knew was that I needed to be still and quiet and listen to the universe. It was time to move on and return to NASA.

  I became the program manager of the optics lab at Langley. We developed glass fibers that functioned much as nerves do in the human body, detecting leaks and other forms of damage in the reusable launch vehicle designed to replace the aging space shuttle. Our work was part of an effort to update vehicle technology while also reducing operational costs and turnaround time. Each fiber is about 125 microns in diameter, roughly similar to that of a human hair. They could do the inspection work of an army of techs, helping astronauts get to space and back faster and more efficiently.

  Race, Langley, and Katherine Johnson

  Shortly after returning to Langley, I joined the National Technical Association (NTA), the oldest group of black scientists and engineers in the country. It was at an NTA gathering where I first met Katherine Johnson, the famed African American mathematician, physicist, and space scientist. She had officially retired from NASA in 1986, three years before I arrived. We exchanged pleasantries, and I recall that for her age she had such a presence. At the time, I had no clue about the woman I had just met. It would take time for me to learn about her true significance to America’s space program.

  Katherine Johnson is a living legend at NASA and, unfortunately, someone who had escaped public attention until very late in her life. Her name doesn’t grace many history books, her story is still missing from many school lesson plans, and her accomplishments aren’t praised enough during Black History Month—or any other time of year for that matter.

  We as a nation are the worse off for it.

  I wasn’t alone in not knowing Katherine’s contributions to science and society. Years after that technical association meeting, I had the opportunity to introduce Katherine to famed singer, songwriter, and producer Pharrell Williams at an event in Virginia Beach for the From One Hand To An-OTHER program. The program is a local nonprofit foundation Pharrell set up to provide science, technology, engineering, arts, math, and motivational-related tools to youngsters to ensure their success as adults. The two shared a few words, but the introduction was forgotten. Pharrell would recall it when he began work as a producer on the film Hidden Figures, the bio-pic depicting Katherine, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan—three brilliant black women who made history at NASA. I had to laugh at the movie premiere when Pharrell reminded me that he had met Katherine before he knew her story.

  “I remember seeing her,” he said. “But I didn’t know she was all that.”

  Katherine was all that and then some. She was the one who calculated the first orbital flight for the late John Glenn, the American astronaut credited with restoring the nation’s confidence in space travel during the early space race with the Soviet Union. Glenn believed in Katherine’s abilities as a mathematician so much that he requested her to check the work of the IBM computers NASA had used to calculate Glenn’s spaceflight.

  For Katherine, the trailblazing career at the space agency started with counting. As a child, Katherine counted everything in her path, from the steps leading up to the church, to the dishes she washed, to the stars she saw in the sky. Her parents knew she was different. Unfortunately, for African Americans in Katherine’s hometown of White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, school only went through eighth grade. Determined to make sure Katherine received a decent education, her parents agreed that she and her mother would move 120 miles away to the nearest town where Katherine could attend high school. They made that trek across a landscape littered with the Ku Klux Klan and onerous Jim Crow laws.

  Katherine sailed through high school in Institute, West Virginia, graduating at fourteen, and then went on to get a degree in math from West Virginia State at only eighteen. There was no holding her back—and thankfully nobody at NASA dared try for long.

  Katherine started out as a teacher, but she heard that a nearby aeronautics laboratory was looking to hire black women mathematicians to do calculations. In 1953 she became “a computer with a skirt,” one in a legion of women hired to perform calculations—before the days when electronics were ubiquitous.

  Katherine’s genius for calculations defied the norm, even at NASA. She calculated the launch window for Alan Shepard’s Mercury mission that marked America’s first manned trip to space, and assisted in calculating John Glenn’s orbit around the Earth. In her later NASA career, she worked on the space shuttle program and the Earth resources satellite. After retiring, she encouraged students to pursue careers in science and technology fields. Katherine’s contributions to NASA, however, went far beyond science. Perhaps her greatest gift involved her willingness to ignore anyone who attempted to stand in her way because of her race or gender. Charles Bolden, the first astronaut to head NASA and the agency’s first African American leader, took note of her determination. She had once said, “I’m as good as anybody, but no better,” he recalled. “The truth, in fact, is that Katherine is indeed better. She’s one of the greatest minds ever to grace our agency or our country, and because of the trail she blazed, young Americans like my granddaughters can pursue their own dreams without a feeling of inferiority.”

  Langley itself is like a small town. After work my colleagues and I would stay together through the evening, playing basketball or softball together or meeting to discuss our work or hear presentations. Though she was retired, Katherine would show up and plant herself at the center of the discussions and events. It was like a family and Katherine was the matriarch. She was brilliant and inspiring, and seeing her command of her environme
nt and the precision she brought to every endeavor served as an example at a time when I was still trying to find my way.

  In 2015 I had the pleasure of accompanying Katherine to the White House to see President Barack Obama award her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “In her thirty-three years at NASA,” he said, “Katherine was a pioneer who broke the barriers of race and gender, showing generations of young people that everyone can excel in math and science, and reach for the stars.” During the ceremony, I thought back on how much my success depended on the vision and perseverance of people like Katherine. Individuals with grit and determination—like Dr. Walter Johnson, who helped Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe break the color barrier in tennis, from my old neighborhood on Pierce Street—came to mind.

  More recently, I had another opportunity to be with Katherine in Hampton, Virginia, at a sneak preview of the film Hidden Figures, starring Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, and Taraji P. Henson as the young Katherine. It was quite a tribute to the ninety-seven-year-old Katherine and her two African American colleagues, Dorothy Vaughan, NASA’s first black manager, and Mary Jackson, the space agency’s first black female engineer. The three were the brains behind some of NASA’s most important early missions, and it was so humbling to see Katherine relive her time at the space agency. She was smiling during the whole movie.

  Katherine didn’t march on Washington, but her brilliance at NASA, the sheer strength of her intellect, and the respect she demanded from her peers made her a revolutionary in her own right. She had far broader impact for blacks at NASA than I’m sure she knew at the time. In her early days at the space agency, I do not believe she saw herself as part of a movement, but as an individual demanding to be heard in a predominantly white-male organization.