here's Ricky with a song that's quickly
taken over the number one spot he must
have been summoned his mother-in-law -
or a joint session of Congress today
President Kennedy gave this country a
remarkable challenge I believe that this
nation should commit itself to achieving
the goal before this decade is out of
landing a man on the moon and returning
him safely to the earth
did you hear that that message by
President John F Kennedy May 25th 1961
brings back many memories but it really
hit home for the people of South
Mississippi when the government
announced five months later to the day
that it would build a pest facility
along the banks of the East Pearl River
to test those rockets that will go into
the moon
the newspapers throughout the area
carried the announcement of the location
of the test site generally quite subtle
community was a lovely place I was
somewhat familiar with the fact that
honey island swamp between the two pearl
rivers was was sort of a no man's land
also devil swamp over to the east of the
site here was most justjust in low
timberlands the original policy for
acquisition of the test site was the the
operational area where all of the
facilities are constructed contained
thirteen thousand five hundred acres
that was bought outright including the
mineral interest the buffer zone which
was approximately another 120 plus
thousand acres the original policy was
to acquire only a perpetual restrictive
easement one of the reasons this area
was selected of course it was a number
of reasons a physical reason for one
thing this marvelous River we had here
and then low population where could you
find that much acreage and move that
smaller amount of people the project was
under overall management of the Marshall
Space Flight Center in Huntsville
Alabama and the people up there we're
really excited about the selection of
this Pearl River area for the test site
after all it's just a short distance
down the Pearl River and across the
Inland Waterways over to the me shoe
assembly facility in New Orleans and out
out the mouth of the Pearl and around
the tip of Florida to Cape Canaveral
where you would launch the Rockets and
even though the area was sparsely
populated NASA did have to move five
communities to make way for the
construction of the facility West onea
Santa Rosa Napoleon Gainesville and log
town
the Janesville community was a unique
community the loveless grocery store
mrs. Louise Lovelace who operated the
store with her husband was sort of a
focal point in the community around the
corner from the grocery store
there was a lady and I don't remember
her first name but she was referred to
as ain't blue her name was aunt blue
Davis when we acquired her home as a lot
of the others did she didn't have it
demolished but she reserved the right to
remove it and she had a house mover as I
recall his name was day lead row net
from the Gulfport area who loaded that
house and took it up around the
Nicholson area and blue Davis never left
it she said on the back porch in a
rocking chair and went down the highway
with that house and I can still see that
lady today and I think she had maybe a
nice I believe a mrs. Freeman Davis that
rode with her as that house went down
the highway up over 43 to the Nicholson
area
a lot of us look on senator Stennis was
more of a statesman than a politician he
told us that if any of you have any
trouble dealing with the Corps of
Engineers on doing the eminent domain
you call me and I'll see what I could do
and he did help people who called him it
was a daytime meeting and the way they
handled the questions and answers they
had couriers and I was one of them with
people if they had a question they
wanted to ask the head to write out the
question and then we would take it up to
the podium I don't know who the lady was
I took her question up and her question
was why do we have to go to the moon
still at the Stennis answered that
question in this way he said we have to
go to the moon but for international
prestige senator Stennis had another
quote that day that became rather famous
he said there's always the thorn before
the rose the thorn being eminent domain
the rose being the opportunity that
those people had to play a major role in
America's prestigious space program I
was the highly elated very proud of
America I felt that night I'll tell you
why I felt that way I felt that we were
part of it since we had given up our
land and move and everything that we
were actually part of going to the moon
we had the challenge of building a very
large rocket test facility it was a
swamp here there wasn't anything here
except the rushan house which is behind
us the challenge was significant in
today's dollars that would amount to a
billion dollar facility we have to build
it from scratch and when it was
completed it was going to test the
awesome Saturn 5 rockets that were going
to take men to the moon
Jerry been associated with Stennis Space
Center for almost his entire existence
in the Apollo days we used to see Jerry
once a week as he flew down from
Washington where he was responsible for
overseeing the construction of the
Mississippi test facility in those days
there were scheduled problems the s2
stand was a critical facility was
determined to be the most critical
facility in achieving the Apollo mission
and therefore there were lots of
pressure to complete the construction on
schedule
we did not know at the time what all it
took and yet all that was going to take
to really construct and to put together
the type of facility that's required to
support the space program but as time
passed and as we continue to work and
continue to lay out the boundaries and
the foundations for construction the
roads began to appear power lines begin
to appear buildings begin to appear then
then it stopped coming together we had
to clear an awful lot of land we had to
put in an awful lot of facilities many
of which were very highly technical
facility very high pressure systems and
and liquid oxygen and hydrogen that was
going to be required and then test
stands over to a little further the east
of it our responsibilities for us in the
early days was to construct the
facilities get it to a point to where it
could be operable
and all during those days it took about
three years for us to finish and
finalize all the facilities is now known
as a Stennis Space Center the
construction activation phase brought
out the very best of everyone it was
characterized by superb leadership dr.
Wernher von Braun director of the
Marshall Center appointed a navy captain
bill fortune as first project manager
captain fortune was highly respected by
his employees and especially popular in
the communities the first American flag
to fly over this site symbolizing NASA's
presence here was raised by Captain
fortune and dr. von Braun that event
brought home a reminder of dr. von Braun
early involvement with this facility he
was not merely an overseer or a visitor
he was a participant in fact he often
referred to this South Mississippi site
as his baby
you know he was a fine gentleman and a
true professional and really knew how to
get everybody a consensus to his ideas
and how to move them forward and Carl
Heinberg and Bernie Tessman his deputy
were in charge of his test laboratory up
there in Huntsville and we worked very
closely with them developing the
requirements for this facility Carl was
a hard driver but a very very tough and
fair man very focused on where he wanted
things to go
Tessman was a had a good personality at
a good sense of humor and he filled in
some of the people gaps but both of them
were fun to work with and of course we
had Henry order and gentleman named
garden art Lee was significant and
bringing together the focus to get this
place activated with three or four
thousand new employees coming on plus
three thousand contractors and get
things done Ken Riggs was outstanding
and bringing together the test
experience and requirement to our
planning team some people think I'm
kidding when I tell them that during the
month of July we had to wear a jacket a
denim
jacket or some other form of jacket that
was thick enough to prevent the
mosquitoes from penetrating you your
clothing rainy season there was a lot of
mud and so that slowed things down when
we excavated for the foundations that
will hold 40 feet deep and so you got
down to where water wanted to just
bubble in the bottom and we had to put
in more deeper and deeper wells so that
we could pool the water table down
congestion I mean there was work going
on everywhere here and just lots of
activities happening simultaneously we
had that snow about a 10 inch snow down
here in Mississippi we did have some
unusual problems during construction and
sometimes resorted to resource the
methods to solve them even to the point
of using news to do what modern machines
couldn't accomplish one of the
photographs taken of that activity
became world-famous that picture was
real family that picture went around
from coast to coast they told me my boss
asked me say do you know how to fly our
muse I told him yes I do it was kind of
wet soggy you was kind of barking but we
made
in the spring of 1965 Jackson bolts was
appointed manager of what was soon to be
officially named the Mississippi test
facility and with him he brought other
leadership from Huntsville to fulfill
the mission Jack Balch asked me if I
would come down and be the project
manager on the s2 program it just looked
like an opportunity I couldn't turn down
working for Jack was a real learning
experience to Jack box was a unique
character a lovable man in many ways a
tough taskmaster in many ways he
certainly would it would certainly would
be an understatement on my part to say
that he left an indelible mark here
again he was a hard-nosed individual but
you like Jack automatically if you like
competence because he was a very
competent individual it was just the
people more than anything people tend to
remember the hardware but it's really
the people that made the hardware work
there was considerable excitement in the
air in those days with the anticipation
of building and testing the vehicles
that would get us to the moon people
were being trained we were learning how
to handle large volumes of hydrogen it
was an exciting time for sure everything
was out of the ground facility while we
were putting in cables terminating
cables s2 was getting ready to finish
out at Seal Beach and be shipped in here
and it was just a real beehive of
activity getting ready for the first
test and you remember the s2 was
probably the most controversial of the
Saturn 5 stages and that it was liquid
hydrogen had a common bulkhead and
expected expected a lot of problems it
was pretty pretty difficult because we
were running round the clock
no days off no it wasn't anything like a
weekend you just kept right on going
coming up to the test everybody was
pretty tired but I can remember the
feeling that that they certainly wanted
to get it off and it wasn't any question
about we were going to do it
it took some twenty five hours after the
blockhouse was sealed to get that test
off lots of bugs in the system things
that had to be worked out but ultimately
we weren't successful in the test was a
major accomplishment a major milestone
and at that time they had the countdown
of the test firings on the operational
intercom site-wide and everybody would
listen to the countdown and as it got to
the last few seconds you would if you
could go outside so that you can see the
smoke and hear it
the rocket testing started in 1966 and
every rocket that was tested here
performed its mission flawlessly in
flight in freaking out meant to the moon
like all Americans I remember it well
being at home with my family keeping my
kids up for all night so that they could
see this historical moment and then
finally to see Neil Armstrong step on
the moon and having a sense of pride
that I had some little small part of
that although all the people here at Mt
F in those days as we call it the
Mississippi test facility felt an
enormous amount of pride in the fact
that we we had a major role in
the people at MTA and their neighbors
didn't have long to enjoy the laurels of
that fantastic mission even as a nation
was celebrating that first lunar landing
an ill wind was brewing in the Gulf of
Mexico that would change the destinies
of thousands of people and the
directions of the Mississippi test
facility
the meal came along devastated the coast
killed several of our employees damaged
our facilities and it was a time when
our people came together Hurricane
Camille focused the attention of the
country on this area and NASA Bogut's
back and said we want to help in this
area and NASA provided substantial help
to the area not only by continuing the
operations here but in many other ways
in the local community the MTF
management team under the leadership of
Jackson Volks was engaged in a diligent
search for new roads and missions even
before the tragedy of Camille when we
started hearing about the Mississippi
test facility and the fact that the
rocket testing was phasing down here and
we were asked to think of things that
could be done here assistant center
director at Johnson Space Center Bob
Pollin was asked to define an activity
to be implemented here and he defined
this laboratory NASA established the
earth resources laboratory at MTF and a
number of federal and state agencies
were also invited to utilize the
facilities plan was set out to convert
the Mississippi test facility from a
single agency NASA single mission
propulsion testing to a multi-agency
multi mission federal laboratory a great
shot in the arm however was in the 1970
time frame the committee met in early 71
NASA decided to put the testing for the
space shuttle main engine here
during his first term as administrator
of NASA dr. Jim Fletcher decided that
the installation should be renamed and
it's reporting changed in June of 1974
MTF became the National Space Technology
laboratories that was in recognition of
some of the application and technology
type projects that this facility became
involved in after the Apollo era I was
asked if I was interested in coming down
there was a vacancy Jack Walsh has
retired and Henry order his deputy was
acting in his capacity and NASA asked me
if I'd come down and lead this facility
and I I said yes and he served a
distinguished period of time twelve
years and really his major contribution
in my view was it he took this
installation from the fringes of
involvement with NASA programs to the
centerline and during Jays tenure we had
major improvements in our involvement
with NASA relationships with other
centers our involvement in the program's
new programs were assigned to Standish
new facilities were built Gerry's
knowledge of NASA his leadership ability
and his knowledge of how NASA
headquarters in the Congress work sure
did pay off for all of us here at
Stennis Space Center
that was a great day it was a
recognition by NASA that this
installation is part of the family part
of the family of NASA it was a day that
we honored a great Mississippian and a
great American he had a great deal to do
with this place he was like the father
of this installation he worried and
worked for its advancement in his
progress ever since it was established
and he
in addition had not only supported the
programs that were here in Mississippi
but he supported the entire national
space program he felt it is the right
program for the agency he supported
Kennedy when he announced his intention
to go to the moon and therefore it was a
great good feeling not only for me but
all the employees of this installation
we feel that Senator John Stennis got
the test site for us and I think we owe
him a great debt of gratitude farther
his effort than that John C Stennis I
call Uncle John because this was his
second home he just loved to be out here
I felt like that when they changed it to
Stennis Space Center it was a long time
coming for John Stennis because he
deserved everything every recognition
has been given him through the efforts
of Technology and through everybody
working together as a team
you know has has grown even more and the
shuttle program seems to be moving
moving forward off moving ahead with
tremendous strides the whole thing comes
to roya ever since I met Roy Estes he
has always been the guy who could exude
confidence and and everything's gonna be
alright hang in there well the people
the team but Stennis Space Center have
have made substantial successes in the
last few years and largely I think
because of the foundations that were
laid by those who came before us and we
have been successful in carrying through
those with tremendous amount of support
from NASA headquarters
starting with Admiral truly JR Thompson
dr. Lenoir all have been very strong
supporters of the emerging extended
Space Center
everybody from the people who gave up
their land to the technicians engineers
businesspeople everybody who's had a
part of this it has made in my view a
major contribution to the country's
success in space and the people of South
Mississippi of South Louisiana that work
here have been the secret to their
success
you