Hello Hipsters! I am the infamous Pencil tapping engineer that said Sorry at the beginning of From the Earth to the Moon Episode 5 Spider. For 19 years I was the man up front at the entrance of the Calif. Science and Industry museum (now Science center- where Endeavour is). I lived down the street from North American in Long Beach, CA. I used to ride my bike to Downey to see the closed plant gates and wonder what they did there??? I would see Apollos being loaded at the airport. My Dad knew the Super Guppy Cargo planes crew and some others so I saw Apollos being constructed in the Clean room (High bays) in Downey. I would meet astronauts... and be tongue tied. As a young civil air patrol cadet I once shared a salute from Buzz Aldrin. In 1978 my friend Andy Monsen and I started the Organization to Support Space Exploration (OSSE) and we did the first Apollo-11 recreation Moon walk. (Today it would be called cosplay). He made a fair Apollo A7L space suit recreation and he and his girlfriend did the moonwalk in a 25 minute version! The first time we did it at the museum Deke Slayton arrived to give a talk and sat with me at the Mission Control desk. Then Andy broke away from the script and I asked innocently Deke just walked into the control Center- you have any message for him? Andy came back Deke Slayton- are you a turtle? Deke gave the proper reply REAL LOUD! That night we became fast friends- drinking toasts and talking about Gus Grissom and flying. He signed the spacesuit mockups and Andys astronaut doll and my picture of him. After that whenever we met up we met as old friends. When I started working at the museum in 1984- the head volunteer was Mariwade Douglas the wife of the Mercury astronaut physician Dr. Bill Douglas. When they started the Astronaut scholarship foundation in May 1986- I was their escort that night. After Al Shepard did a Nightline interview we all entered a narrow hallway with me leading the way with the five Project Mercury astronauts behind, The Right stuff music going in my head and Alan Shepard asked Wheres the rest room? I almost replied Do it in Zee suit! I finally met Tom Hanks just after Apollo-13 at an event at the Santa Monica museum of flight called A night of Moonwalkers. I had done a minor gig on the film. My favorite story was the last night we worked on the Moon set of From the Earth to the Moon- After working for a month there with astronaut Dave Scott he asked if there was anything he could do for me??? We went outside to the Moon surface and got in the Lunar Rover and Jim and Dave again roved around the Moons dusty surface! Just as another Jim {Irwin) did with Dave in 1971 on Apollo-15.
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 06:10:14 +0000
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