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respected engineer, who was comfortable with both technical and headquarters policy matters. Later in the ‘60s, George became the Apollo spacecraft program manager after the Apollo fire on the pad, which killed three astronauts. This turned out to be a relatively short but very intense period for George, who was one of the group of leaders who made Apollo a success.
    In George’s branch, my section head was John Disher whose hobby was to help with the racecars that ended up at the Indy 500 each year. John’s section was exploring the new subject of the very high-heat loads on entry vehicles into the earth’s atmosphere at extreme speeds. In our small group, our testing was carried out by the air launch of multi-stage solid rocket propellant rockets with a small instrumented re-entry model on top of the stack. The first stage was used to accelerate the stack to higher altitudes and then fire the rest of the stages to propel the model down towards entry conditions of very high speeds. The air launch was from under the wing of a B-57 and flew over the Wallop’s Island test range off the coast of Virginia. There was another group from Langley exploring similar research and using ground launched solid propellant vehicles, one of which became the Scout launch vehicle. I co-authored a NACA technical report with Ken Weston on the heat transfer results on one of these flown models. Writing a NACA report was a rigorous and humbling process, with many reviews of the technical quality and one’s use of the English language to capture the essence of the subject. All young engineers should go through this process at least once.
    As a research center, there were always classes of new graduates coming to work at the Center. And the average age at the Center was on the young side. I roomed with two older hands in Lakewood. One was Jim Useller, older by twenty years and full of experience to pass on to me. Jim was a mentor in many ways, but especially in the lore of NACA and what it took to succeed there. He was also the chef in the house. Pete Wanhainen was the other roommate, and his passion was iceboat racing on frozen Lake Erie. He also liked regular sailing, but that speed was tame compared to his iceboat.
    There was a large group of younger folks still finding their niches. We had a great softball field on the Center grounds and it had a small-truck-size building, refrigerated and well stocked with beer and soft drinks, and a center of competition and fun during the summer months. There was an established softball league and we always had trouble beating the team from the rockets group. Bowling was the game for the colder months. Organized into leagues, bowling competition was a serious business. Some few did not even have a beer till after the frames were done. There were some good bowlers, and then there were most of us who were not so good. One of the friends in our crowd was Pat O’Donnell, who worked at Lewis in fuels and lubes. Her husband, Wally, owned the Fairview Park bowling alley. Pat and Wally hosted parties at their home. And, if you ever wondered what to do with damaged bowling pins, they made great fuel for the fireplace.
    Into this sporting arena came one of the NACA nurses, Marilyn Kurtz. I had already met Marilyn during visits to the clinic and at lunch arranged by a friend. She was the junior nurse of the two at Lewis; the other, Ruth Elder, was more senior by a bunch. Marilyn was much prettier and more fun. Dr. Sharp, who was the center director and a very likable person, often asked Marilyn if the crop of young men was satisfactory to choose from or whether he should hire more. In the winter of 1959, a dozen or so of this intrepid band of bowlers went off to the mountains near Rome, New York, to try their hand at snow skiing. Marilyn taught water skiing as a hobby on Lake Erie, and transferred some of that to snow skiing. Most of the rest of us were complete amateurs. Marilyn was more accomplished with her