1963 DIARY

Last week Dawn Letson returned my 1963 Diary that had gotten into Lou's documents taken to TWU. I have been fascinated by reading it. I shared some of the pages with Nancy when I came in Sunday night. In the first two months I wrote about meetings with Bob Gilruth who was the NASA director during the Apollo flights and a frequent visitor to our department at A&M. We also had Johnson, the CEO of LTV speak at a meeting where I handled the Q&A. I made a trip to the IAS (Institute of Aeronautical Science that later joined with the American Rocket Society to become the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) in New York City at the Astor hotel. I ate at Jack Dempsey's restaurant and went with some friends to Greenwich Village and ate at O'Henry's and walked back to the hotel. I was a member of the Education committee chaired by Ray Bishplinghoff.

I came back and the next day Saturday Jan 26 President Rudder's house burned at noon. Later in the diary I tell about going to work for NASA in Houston, but the diary is very incomplete for the summer. I think I started keeping notes somewhere else but there are a few notations about my trips to North American Aviation in LA and Grumman in NY to discuss the meteroid protection for the LEM that was my assignment.

What also showed up in the diary was my teaching SS every Sunday and giving copies of The Bible and Modern Science to everyone I came in contact with. And I had used it as a study in the College SS class I was teaching. We changed the name of the class from Aggie to College and Career.

When I got home last week there was over an inch of rain in my rain gauge. My neighbors Mary and Pete Shulle said it was Thursday night when a hard rain brought lightning that splintered a large mesquite tree in their yard. When I left Sunday at 3 it was thundering and I watched rain in my rear view mirror as I drove to Granbury. I checked the storm total on the radar and we didn't get much but around Brownwood got a bunch. Today all day we watched clouds all around Granbury but no rain here. Rained heavy north of DFW and some in FW. Mark's plane back from Pakistan was delayed by weather and he was in Chicago waiting to come in tonight. We did see a rainbow in the northern sky as we drove back to Nancy's home.