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Book: Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module by Thomas J. Kelly
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Authors: Thomas J. Kelly
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growth. 1
I was waiting for Art Gross to arrive for our meeting when Erick Stern, grinning from ear to ear, entered my office, stuck out his hand, and said, “Congratulations!”
“For what?” I replied.
“We won! I just heard.”
About that time my phone rang; it was Joe Gavin. “I’ve just been informed that Clint Towl will be receiving a call from our local congressman in a few minutes,” he said. “It’s not quite official yet, but it sounds like we’ve won! Congratulations! I’ll call back when it’s official.”
I had no sooner relayed Joe’s message to Erick and others who had gathered around my desk with excited, smiling faces when Joe Gavin called again.It was official: we won! Representative John Wydler (R-N.Y.), Sixth District, called Clint Towl and read him the official announcement press release, which was being sent to Grumman immediately. Joe thanked me for everything I had done to make victory possible and asked me to extend his appreciation to the entire LM Engineering team. Even before I finished my conversation with Joe, my broad smile and “thumbs up” told the story to the growing crowd around my desk, and a rousing cheer shook the dusty corners of the PD mezzanine. I circled through the area shaking hands and slapping backs, hardly daring to believe the news.
The next few days were a blur of activity and excitement. There was an “all hands” meeting with our corporate leaders in which Clint Towl, Bill Schwendler, George Titterton, and Joe Gavin thanked the LM project team for their successful efforts on the proposal and promised help and support for the challenging times ahead. They hosted a celebratory lunch at the Grumman executive table at the nearby Beau Sejour 2 restaurant for the LM project, where toasts were drunk in ginger ale (no alcohol, in the Grumman tradition that work and drink did not mix), and the corporate leaders expressed their intense pride and pleasure that Grumman would be part of the ongoing national adventure. Bill Schwendler came close to making a speech, offering his congratulations and promising support as needed.
There was a frantic after-hours party for the LM proposal team at the nearby Holiday Manor catering hall, where plenty of alcohol fueled a wild victory celebration. During the day there were dozens of congratulatory phone calls from the NASA people we knew, our RCA teammates, and other subcontractors who had supported our proposal. Norm Ryker called me from North American, the prime contractor for the Apollo command-and-service module spacecraft, welcoming Grumman to the Apollo team. We had arrived into the elite Apollo fraternity.
NASA asked us to come to Houston in mid-November to begin contract negotiations. We needed to bring all our proposal backup data and our experts in every area of the program. The negotiations were expected to take several weeks. We put Art Gross in charge of the negotiation team logistics, and he took over in his authoritative fashion. Within a few days we identified a Grumman negotiation team of about eighty people, and Gross supplied them with airline tickets, rental cars (car-pooled four to one), cash advances, and hotel reservations. Someone thought to ask the hotels if the fact that two of our people were black posed any problem, and in the Houston of 1962, it did. One of the hotels, not wanting to lose our business, said that our black members could reserve a room provided they avoided the lobby and the dining areas. The hotel said that, if necessary, it could “fix them something to eat out in the kitchen” (!). Gross phoned several hotels and motels, progressively more distant from our NASA destination, until he found one that was colorblind: the Sheraton Lincoln Hotel in downtown Houston, into which he booked our whole team.
NASA had its own logistics problems with the LM negotiations. The campus of the Manned Spacecraft Center at Clear Lake was still under construction and would not be ready for several
I was waiting for Art Gross to arrive for our meeting when Erick Stern, grinning from ear to ear, entered my office, stuck out his hand, and said, “Congratulations!”
“For what?” I replied.
“We won! I just heard.”
About that time my phone rang; it was Joe Gavin. “I’ve just been informed that Clint Towl will be receiving a call from our local congressman in a few minutes,” he said. “It’s not quite official yet, but it sounds like we’ve won! Congratulations! I’ll call back when it’s official.”
I had no sooner relayed Joe’s message to Erick and others who had gathered around my desk with excited, smiling faces when Joe Gavin called again.It was official: we won! Representative John Wydler (R-N.Y.), Sixth District, called Clint Towl and read him the official announcement press release, which was being sent to Grumman immediately. Joe thanked me for everything I had done to make victory possible and asked me to extend his appreciation to the entire LM Engineering team. Even before I finished my conversation with Joe, my broad smile and “thumbs up” told the story to the growing crowd around my desk, and a rousing cheer shook the dusty corners of the PD mezzanine. I circled through the area shaking hands and slapping backs, hardly daring to believe the news.
The next few days were a blur of activity and excitement. There was an “all hands” meeting with our corporate leaders in which Clint Towl, Bill Schwendler, George Titterton, and Joe Gavin thanked the LM project team for their successful efforts on the proposal and promised help and support for the challenging times ahead. They hosted a celebratory lunch at the Grumman executive table at the nearby Beau Sejour 2 restaurant for the LM project, where toasts were drunk in ginger ale (no alcohol, in the Grumman tradition that work and drink did not mix), and the corporate leaders expressed their intense pride and pleasure that Grumman would be part of the ongoing national adventure. Bill Schwendler came close to making a speech, offering his congratulations and promising support as needed.
There was a frantic after-hours party for the LM proposal team at the nearby Holiday Manor catering hall, where plenty of alcohol fueled a wild victory celebration. During the day there were dozens of congratulatory phone calls from the NASA people we knew, our RCA teammates, and other subcontractors who had supported our proposal. Norm Ryker called me from North American, the prime contractor for the Apollo command-and-service module spacecraft, welcoming Grumman to the Apollo team. We had arrived into the elite Apollo fraternity.
NASA asked us to come to Houston in mid-November to begin contract negotiations. We needed to bring all our proposal backup data and our experts in every area of the program. The negotiations were expected to take several weeks. We put Art Gross in charge of the negotiation team logistics, and he took over in his authoritative fashion. Within a few days we identified a Grumman negotiation team of about eighty people, and Gross supplied them with airline tickets, rental cars (car-pooled four to one), cash advances, and hotel reservations. Someone thought to ask the hotels if the fact that two of our people were black posed any problem, and in the Houston of 1962, it did. One of the hotels, not wanting to lose our business, said that our black members could reserve a room provided they avoided the lobby and the dining areas. The hotel said that, if necessary, it could “fix them something to eat out in the kitchen” (!). Gross phoned several hotels and motels, progressively more distant from our NASA destination, until he found one that was colorblind: the Sheraton Lincoln Hotel in downtown Houston, into which he booked our whole team.
NASA had its own logistics problems with the LM negotiations. The campus of the Manned Spacecraft Center at Clear Lake was still under construction and would not be ready for several
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