NASA Johnson Space Center
Oral History Project
Narrative
Donald
D. Blume
Told to William A. Larsen
Dallas,
Texas –
21 September 2002
My father’s family settled in the St. Louis (Missouri) area
in the mid-1800s, having immigrated from Germany some years earlier.
My mother's family was originally English; some of them were early
New England settlers. Both of my parents were born in St Louis and
were living there when I was born on December 12, 1928. I grew up
during the Great Depression and saw the considerable effects of it
in our community with banks closing, people losing their jobs, property
foreclosures, and the like. In that regard my family was somewhat
more fortunate, and I was able to stay in school and not drop out
to help my family.
After World War II started, there was major economic growth, and I
was able to complete public school at Ben Blewett High School (St.
Louis, Missouri) in 1945. I attended two semesters of college at the
University of Missouri-Columbia (Columbia, Missouri); then I enlisted
and served in the U.S. Army from 1946 until 1948. During most of that
period, I was stationed in South Korea and assigned to an engineering
group that worked to rebuild the country’s economy after WWII
by maintaining and operating railroads.
As I recall, there were U.S. contractors who operated the railroads
as engineers and conductors, and American GI's overseeing construction
and maintenance of trestles, rails, and equipment. The railroads were
to be technically compatible with American railway standards. For
a while, I was the night manager of a railroad station in the town
of Taegu.
Although I was an enlisted soldier, I was in charge of the activities
of several others. On one occasion, I was a witness at a court martial
involving another GI practicing his "quick draw" using an
Army issue .45. I think that he shot himself in the knee, which had
the effect of getting our attention to his situation.
On another occasion, a GI was transferred to my outfit from a wartime
prison in Europe. He had been convicted of killing his commanding
officer during battle. Apparently, there was some attempt to clean
out military prisons in Europe and give former inmates an opportunity
to be rehabilitated in the Army. Unfortunately, this person developed
a drinking problem in Korea, stole a jeep, and destroyed it in a vehicle
accident. Needless to say, I was happy to be freed from responsibility
of these two individuals, and most of my work was really quite easy
and rather pleasant. Obviously, in the years of the Korean War, a
considerable amount of our work was destroyed again.
I returned to college at the University of Missouri-Columbia on the
GI Bill in the fall of 1948. My wife, Betty, and I were married in
1949, and our son, James, was born in 1950. I graduated in 1951 with
a degree in geography and history, and I also got my teaching certificate
although I never had to use it. I started graduate work in Public
Administration at St. Louis University (St. Louis, Missouri) and continued
later at the University of Colorado (Boulder, Colorado), and at the
University of Oklahoma (Norman, Oklahoma).
In 1951, I went to work at the Air Force Aeronautical Chart and Information
Center in St. Louis as a cartographic specialist. In 1952, I responded
to a civil service announcement for a job as a Federal investigator
with the U.S. Civil Service Commission. I was selected and over the
years I performed a variety of tasks as an investigator for this Agency.
My assignments most often involved doing background investigations
for Federal and contract employees needing security clearances, investigating
violations of the Hatch Act, resolving employee performance issues,
veteran preferences investigations, and postmaster selections. There
were probably other types of cases that I worked on too, but I have
forgotten many of those details.
One day in mid-1953 (known to the investigators as Black Friday),
the St. Louis office of the U.S. Civil Service Commission announced
that many investigators had to move on to other agencies or leave
Federal employment. They provided virtually no assistance (this was
common in this particular office), but finally I located a comparable
position in New Mexico and several years later moved to Boulder, Colorado.
Those were great duty stations although there was considerable travel
and extensive time away from home. In 1958, the Civil Service Commission
again told us that there would be reduction in force and we all needed
to find other jobs if we wanted to keep working. I was lucky enough
to get a job with the Navy Department assigned to the Bureau of Astronautics
in St. Louis as an industrial security officer at the McDonnell Aircraft
Corporation aircraft production plant.
I learned a lot about plant physical security there, and also I became
involved in evaluating and resolving employee background investigations
that had uncovered derogatory information about employees. This meant
that I had the authority to approve or disapprove security clearances.
My boss at the time, a Navy pilot, was more interested in flying than
working at a desk so I had considerable latitude and authority in
my job.
It was in this connection that I spent some time with NASA security
people. They anticipated that the Agency would soon have a massive
hiring program to send men to the Moon and knew that there would be
many new people hired who would need security clearances.
Eventually, I was offered the position, as Security Officer for the
Space Task Group (STG), the predecessor organization of the Johnson
Space Center, located then at the Langley Research Center in Hampton,Virginia.
On my first day of work at Langley, I found that there was to be an
Agency-wide security officer's meeting and traveled to Cape Canaveral,
Florida. At this meeting I met a number of NASA security folks including
Charlie Buckley, the new NASA-Cape Security Officer. He was a former
trooper with the Massachusetts Highway Patrol and his boss, Dr. Kurt
H. Debus, pretty much let him run the base security program without
interference.
While there, I had lunch with Dr. Robert R. Gilruth, my new boss.
Although we ate lunch together, this was an opportunity for Gilruth
to interview me. Apparently Gilruth felt comfortable with me on his
staff, and over the next ten years he never failed to support my analyses
and recommendations.
My initial impressions of NASA have always seemed to include the presence
of water. Around Langley there were swamps. I recall standing in water
while signing a rental agreement there. There were many trips to the
Cape to support launches, tests, and meetings. I remember Alan B.
Shepard passing me on the wet highway one night. He was driving his
Corvette and going quite fast on very wet roads.
As the STG started growing, there was considerable speculation that
we would be moving. At the same time, I was being promoted on a regular
basis and had opportunities to recruit and hire security personnel.
(As I found out, "protecting" the original seven astronauts
took a lot of resources. These security men had to be dependable and
able to think on their feet. The various hometown parades and national/international
tours were other requirements that I had not anticipated).
In September 1961, it was announced that there was going to be a Gemini
Program and also that the Manned Spacecraft Center would be opened
in Houston, Texas. Most of the STG people in Virginia were to be moving
to Texas. This was just a couple of days after Hurricane Carla hit
that area hard, and the new complex would be near the Gulf of Mexico
and more water. After we arrived in Houston, we lived in an apartment
complex on the Gulf Freeway for some months.
During that time, my Security Division was housed at the East End
Bank Building--one of about 13 sites NASA leased in Southeast Houston.
It was an extraordinary period involving rapid growth of our workforce.
My duties included developing physical security requirements for the
new work site near Clear Lake, assuring security at each of the rented
facilities, and providing continuing support to the Astronaut office
now in Houston. At the same time, I had to figure out where my family
was going to in live in Houston, which was undergoing change at a
tremendous rate.
I recall the July 4th parade in 1962 and working out the security
for the astronauts and their families. There was a huge turnout for
the parade in downtown Houston, and almost everyone seemed really
glad to see us. We were also recruiting more astronauts so I had to
design an investigative screening system that the office could use
to review the results of background investigations and resolve derogatory
information. I believe what I put into place then is still basically
in use. It was not perfect though. I recall that one astronaut was
selected, and the day he reported for duty at NASA his wife announced
that she was divorcing him. He then abruptly resigned from NASA.
By the way, you might be interested in knowing that the U.S. Civil
Service Commission now had NASA as a customer. They completed all
of our background investigations and worked very closely with us on
astronaut investigations. My experience with them in the 1950s was
helpful to our office, in terms of organizing the work and making
certain that the Civil Service Commission’s work was as accurate
and useful as possible. I had also hired a number of former Commission
investigators to help in personnel security and in other expanding
areas of our program.
As construction work started at the Manned Spacecraft Center on the
newly named NASA Rd 1, I recruited a former Atomic Energy Commission
security specialist to be our on-site security resident throughout
the construction period which ended in spring 1964. We knew that we
would need things like parking lots, speed limit signs, a locksmith,
a permanent security guard force, vaults, badging areas, etc. Some
in Congress wanted to have an open site so that our streets would
simply be public streets and be an integral part of the community.
My experience at Langley also left some room for traffic concerns
as most employees there ignored speed limits, stop signs, badging
standards, and similar issues. Mostly, engineers felt that they had
a better appreciation of what was needed than administrators.
Paul Purser was my liaison with Dr. Gilruth during this period, and
there could not have been a better nor more reasonable person with
whom I could work. There was quite a debate, for example, about whether
the Center should have a fence or simply be left open. This discussion
continued until 1965 when we finally fenced the Center and installed
permanent guard positions at each of the gates. In the meantime, people,
dogs, kids, or anything else that could walk or crawl could find its
way on site and completely ignore our guards at the gates.
However, most of these issues eventually found supportive solutions
if we were patient enough. Having deer onsite was an ongoing problem,
and the state had to make some provisions for culling the numbers.
There were predators too. Several deer and other animals were found
mauled by a puma, and a couple of our guys spent nights looking for
it to scare it away. Apparently they were successful.
Also, we had a lot of ducks permanently residing on the Center causing
extensive damage to shrubs, attracting many types of animals to prey
on them, and making sidewalks somewhat hazardous. They had gotten
so comfortable that they stopped migrating. Eventually, although not
popular with all employees, the game wardens came out and relocated
the ducks to locations outside the Center.
In 1965, the Center underwent a significant reorganization and the
Security Division became one of several branches in a new organization
called the Management Services Division. Chuck F. Bingman, whom I
had known since Langley, was the division chief and I was his deputy.
We reported to the Director of Administration, Wesley Hjornevik.
Chuck stayed with the new job about a month and then abruptly transferred
to Washington. I was made the new division chief responsible for base
security and a whole host of other functions and people about whom
I had relatively little knowledge. Some of the people that had been
placed into the Management Services Division during the reorganization
had been having performance problems for one reason or another. A
few tried to instigate other organizational changes where they could
gain more management authority than they had in Management Services.
It took a little time to sort through these matters but, with support
from Center management, I resolved them.
There were so many people being hired by both the Center and its contractors,
it should not be surprising that a few employees had encounters with
the office due to improperly using or attempting to steal government
property. In addition, after the Gemini flights started, people from
all over the world would show up at the gates or call. Some, unfortunately,
needed psychological or medical help while others were curious about
what went on here and wanted to see first hand. In the case of the
former group, we were usually successful in finding family or other
caregivers to make the necessary arrangements.
Several of our Center managers seemed a little naive about some of
these things and could get drawn into extended communications until
they would realize their situation and call Security for assistance.
For the others, in 1966 the Center's Public Affairs Office provided
a kind of open house environment for the public to visit specific
facilities for designated areas. For a number of years, there would
be as many as 1 million visitors coming in on these self-guided tours.
Although they created havoc for our employees in terms of parking,
taking all the seats in the cafeteria, etc, we had remarkably few
security problems and the program was probably useful in creating
public interest in the space program. It also meant that we had to
apply extensive security around work areas where classified materials
were in use or at the Mission Control Center during simulations and
spaceflight missions.
One Friday night in January 1966 we became aware of the Apollo-204
fire involving the deaths of Astronauts Edward H. White, Virgil I.
“Gus” Grissom, and Roger B. Chaffee. I was not in town
during that weekend but my Security personnel had to deploy to each
of the family residences to protect family privacy and assure access
for those needing to meet with family members. Just prior to that
time, the Center had established a Protocol Office, led by one of
my former security agents. This was a particularly difficult period
for that group so my security people were often on the front line
dealing with the media and the curious public all times of the day
and night.
This situation was made a bit more difficult by the experience we
had with the local and national media a couple of years earlier when
one of the astronauts, Theodore C. Freeman, lost his aircraft and
was killed trying to eject free from the crash site near Ellington
Field, Houston, Texas. News reporters, monitoring police radio frequencies,
actually got access to Ms. Freeman before any NASA people could get
to the house. Also, at the memorial services in Webster, the media
had attempted to enter the church, and there was a fairly ugly confrontation
between the media and security.
Over the years, the Protocol Office began doing more of the media
interfaces. Also, the media and security probably began to understand
each other better so that by Apollo 11, for example, the Security
Branch could focus on its roles without so many distractions or confrontations.
The return of the Apollo 11 in July 1969 provided my security personnel
with another challenge. Before the flight, we asked ourselves, “how
should we protect and store lunar samples not in use” and “how
could we assure lunar sample security for those samples being worked
at investigator laboratories through out the world?” On the
former, I was able to locate space in a bunker in San Antonio large
enough to hold all lunar samples not in use, provide a nitrogen storage
environment, and have the United States Air Force physical security
support respond immediately to any security alarms in the bunker.
I recall the planning that went into moving the lunar samples from
the Center to the San Antonio facility. It involved one of the busiest
freeways in Texas. We had the samples boxed in specialized containers
on large buses with a large motorcade of security and law enforcement
people.
Everything worked very well, but we were criticized by some in the
media for our methods and the degree of security used. It was also
NASA's desire that researchers all over the world should have access
to lunar samples. It was not too long before we realized that some
were being lost or stolen.
We designed a set of physical security requirements that required
a security plan from all researchers, which we reviewed and also sent
people out to check on how well they were being followed. All things
considered, the protection of the lunar samples really worked quite
well.
Although I have described mostly the security activities, other functions
in the Management Services Division in the 1960s through the 1970s
included data management for Apollo and Skylab programs, graphics
and publications, the Center library, and printing and reproduction.
At that time I had a division staff of nearly 150, which was augmented
by a contractor workforce of 700 to 800. Part of our security contract
included staffing for site safety including the operation of our own
fire department. Eventually, we made an agreement with the City of
Houston to provide the Center with emergency personnel when fire alarms
went off on site.
In exchange, the City of Houston could use our trucks and facilities.
This led to a permanent presence in the Clear Lake Area of a Houston
fire response capability and made the annexation of Clear Lake developments
and the Center by the City of Houston more cost effective for the
Center. During the 1970s and into the early 1980s, we were able to
make significant equipment changes using reproduction and printing
technology enhancements. This does not sound like much today but it
had profound effects at the Center. Due to these changes, the Center's
personnel can make their own copies or have the printing plant turn
around printing/reproduction using in-plant resources.
During the Gemini and Apollo flights we had large typing pools working
on 8-hour shifts producing typed copies of the crew to ground communications.
Copies of these were in demand by the media, Manned Spacecraft Center
analysts, and researchers around the countries. At the time, having
such typing pools was rather common in both government and industry.
During the 1970s, we had a number of budget reductions as Congressional
funding for NASA was cut. We had to make a number of changes in the
way we did our work because there were major staffing reductions in
many areas. The most important management tasks were to understand
and preserve the most critical organizational roles and resources
and to evaluate efficiencies based upon technologies enhancements.
It was about this time that the first word processors were developed
and we were able to take advantage of this technology long before
it was common elsewhere in government.
In 1981, I told my boss, Kenneth B. Gilbreath, that I wanted to begin
transitioning to a status from which I could easily retire. I moved
over to his staff and took on several management projects that included
chairing some source evaluation boards to select various companies
to do our contract work. This was an area in which I had some prior
experience and I was able to organize this process in such a way that
it came to be the Center's model by which all source evaluation boards
were conducted for many years.
Also, I had the opportunity to observe and support the activities
of many of the people I had recruited and mentored over the years
and it was gratifying to see them fitting into place and assuming
key positions in the Center.
In 1983, I retired from Federal service. Subsequently, after my wife
retired from public school system administration, we moved from Houston
to San Antonio, and on to Dallas to our present residence.
Aside from my family, many of my most significant memories involved
friends, associates, and events connected to operations of NASA and
the Johnson Space Center. In particular, the extraordinary period
of the entire 1960s had many events that are now part of our national
heritage. Although I still follow what is happening at JSC to some
degree, it certainly does not have the same public attention that
it had then, but maybe that's the way it should be.