By Cindi Pokorny, EAA Youth Education Center Educator
It’s one thing to be in the place where history happened; it’s another entirely to be in that place with one of the people who made it happen. In yet another experience that I file mentally under “perks of the job,” Chris Henry, EAA’s museum manager, and I spent nearly a week in Houston collecting archival materials to add to the Engle Collection in the EAA Aviation Museum, dodging an historic snowstorm, and spending the better part of a day with Gene Kranz.
If you’ve seen Apollo 13 or know anything about the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and SpaceLab missions, you know who Gene is. If not, stop reading, and stream Apollo 13 (better yet, read his first book, Failure Is Not an Option.) Gene is no less than an American hero. He is well-known as a flight director at NASA, part of the brilliant team who put the first Americans into space and the first humans on the moon. I can’t do it justice here, but suffice it to say that Gene’s dedication to the development and execution of space travel is unparalleled.
At 8:30 in the morning, Gene picked Chris and I up at our hotel across the road from Johnson Space Center (JSC). As Gene drove us through the sprawling 1,600-acre complex, pointing out the work taking place in each building, it was clear that he still takes pride in the work NASA does today.
Our first stop was the Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. Mission Control Center, a nondescript, brown box of a building housing the control rooms for all of NASA’s current and upcoming missions (and a National Historic Landmark). In the back halls leading to Historic Mission Control, we were transported back to the 1960s as much remains unchanged. Through a locked door we ascended orange carpeted steps: the viewing room for press, families, and visitors. Part of the VIP tour experience at Johnson, current-day visitors are treated to a presentation (narrated by Gene) which brings the historic mission control to life: screens flickering, consoles lit, and summary display screens in front of the room showing what controllers saw during the first lunar landing. It was surreal to be in the place where the world held its breath. Unlike the VIP experience that can be purchased, Chris and I were the only two visitors in the room. We were accompanied by Gene (Mr. Kranz to nearly everyone who addressed him), Sandra Tetley (real property accountable officer, JSC), and Bill Foster (ground control officer).
The control room itself looked as if the team had stepped out in the middle of a mission, never to return. In truth, it had been gutted, ransacked for souvenirs, and, for a time, treated as if it were not a place of historic significance. Years of negotiating, collecting, and scrounging led by Sandra brought the room back to its old self in 2019. (Read more about the restoration here.) Visitors today get no further than the viewing room, taking a few snapshots before shuffling out and heading to other locations at JSC. We were escorted into Historic Mission Control itself with Gene sharing the significance of many of the artifacts displayed in the room.
After a few photos of consoles up close and photos with Gene, we moved on. Expecting to be led back to the lobby, we were surprised to find out that we were, in fact, about to visit Mission Control for the International Space Station. Stepping in along the side of the room, the contrast between the historic control room and this one was striking. Modern consoles with full color, flat screens, and the graphics you’d expect today greeted us. The room was calm and quiet and not even half full, the astronauts doing prep work for an EVA (extravehicular activity or spacewalk) to come the following week.
As much as Chris and I were awed at being in the room, it was Gene who put it into perspective for me. He was awed at the technology and layout, whispering “wow” more than a few times. As he made his way between consoles, the on-duty ISS flight director, Elias Myrmo, stood to shake his hand, and every other controller watched Gene enter. He asked about the controllers’ locations and their roles in the ISS mission. He was curious and thrilled to be there; they were clearly honored to have him. Chris and I were then invited to join him in the center to take a few photos.
At some point Myrmo told Gene that folks from all over the world were sending their greetings to him. It’s not clear to me if they saw Gene on NASATV or controllers were discussing his presence over the radio, but they all wanted to say hi (or is it “hey” when you’re in Texas?).
As we made our way out, I stopped at CAPCOM (a term from early manned flight, CAPCOM is the Capsule Communicator, the astronaut who relays messages between the astronauts and Mission Control) and asked that he send the crew greetings from Oshkosh. He said he would.
After Mission Control, we spent time with Gene viewing a Saturn V rocket and Space Center Houston (the museum open to the public). Each of those stops is its own story; I chose to focus just on Mission Control here. At every stop, the stories Gene told revealed the pride in his work and in the teams he worked with. Not only was Gene in charge when the missions were live, but he had also been tasked with creating procedures for the missions, training and testing controllers on those procedures, and coordinating training between controllers and astronauts. Again, I am failing to do him justice; Failure Is Not an Option is a must-read.
It is experiences like this that bring to life the work we do at the museum. Developing the kinds of relationships in which heroes like Gene feel they can entrust their stories and treasured keepsakes to us is no small task. I’ve watched Chris do this kind of work since starting at EAA three years ago, and seeing that work up close on this trip was truly remarkable. From the care he took working with Jeannie Engle to collect more of Joe’s treasures to placing a priority on time spent with Gene, it is clear that Chris’ work, much of it unseen, is central to the stories we tell in Oshkosh.