Remembering George Martin...

I worked for the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) from 1980 through early 1984.  My title was Associate Director of Technical Studies in the Division of Continuing Education.  The job was fairly straightforward -- Develop and administer graduate-level training courses for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The office next to mine was occupied by another gentleman with the same title.  His name was George Martin, and his job was to develop and administer technical training courses for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.  George had retired more than once and worked because he loved technology and enjoyed interacting with people.

There are a few wonderful vignettes about this friend that I was thinking of the other day and that are worth relating here.  They have to do with the National Air Races, John DeLorean, and the Apollo program, in that order.

National Air Races -- There was a picture in George's office of a plane in a steep bank rounding one of the pylons at an air race.  On the ground was a Ford sedan of about 1947 or '48 vintage and two gentlemen looking up at the plane.  I asked George about that picture.  He informed me that shortly after he had earned his engineering degree in the late forties, he taught aeronautics at a technical college in Detroit.  One of his senior classes in aerodynamics decided they'd like to build a plane as part of their practical lab.  George had gotten permission from the administration of the school and guided the students in their project.  The plane, which had twin booms and a wide tail was successful enough that they entered it in the National Air Races, held in the late '40s in Cleveland, which is where the picture was taken.  George brought in some of the design documentation from that class in neat, 3-ring binders (so typical of how George did things).

A few days after we had our conversation about the plane, George informed me that he had called the FAA to inquire about the ultimate fate of the plane.  It turned out the the college where he had overseen its design and construction had sold the plane to an individual in the mid-1950s.  That person had flown it for a few years before they had damaged it in some unpleasant incident.  They had sold the wreckage to someone in Mississippi who currently was its registered owner.  It was being restored!

George promptly contacted the then-current owner and explained his connection to their airplane.  Not long after that George made a weekend excursion to Mississippi, where he presented the owner with his cartons filled with drawings, photographs, correspondence, notes and calculations detailing the birth of their prized possession.  He asked for no payment because that's the kind of guy George was.

John DeLorean -- One day while George and I were working together, there was something in the news about John DeLorean.  He had been charged by the US government with trafficking cocaine following a videotaped sting operation in which he was recorded by undercover federal agents agreeing to bankroll a cocaine smuggling operation.  George surprised me by informing me that he had taught De Lorean's brother while teaching at the same Detroit engineering school where he had built the air racer.  George went on to inform me that he was not at all surprised.

He explained that while he was teaching John's brother, John had gotten in trouble with the law over a "Yellow Pages" scam, in which John was allegedly selling advertising in a non-existent yellow pages listing service and collecting payment from duped merchants.  According to George, DeLorean avoided jail time by making financial restitution to the victims.  Small world.

The Apollo Connection -- George had informed me that while he was a Chrysler employee he had worked on the design of the Saturn V rocket that was the backbone of the Apollo program.  One day we were talking about his contribution and I learned that he was responsible for the stress analysis on the fins that surround the bottom skirt of the Saturn V.  The kind of analysis used to calculate stress is referred to as "finite element analysis," and it typically involves hundreds or thousands of interrelated calculations.  Before the use of computers, it was a tedious repetitive arduous process.

The day after we first broached the subject, George asked me to come into his office.  There on the desk was a stack of three-ring binders about a foot tall.  "There are the stress calculations for one of the Saturn V fins," he informed me.  I looked at page after page of orderly calculations, all meticulously recorded in George's distinctive precise printing.  "I did every calculation and then it had to be verified by two other guys.  This represents about 18 month's work."  You couldn't help but appreciate what a monumental effort the Apollo program had been.

George passed on a few years later.  A lifelong avid fisherman, he was buried with his favorite rod, reel and tackle box.  I've often wondered whatever became of those precious notebooks that represented so much of a man's life.