NASA Headquarters NACA Oral History Project
Edited Oral History Transcript

June C. Bahan-Szucs
Interviewed by Sandra Johnson
San Jose, California – 29 September 2005

[Ellen Lou Nachman, also a retiree of NACA Lewis Flight Propulsion Lab/NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, attended this interview session, contributed information, and verified facts. She held the position of Computer during her career.]

Johnson: Today is September 29th, 2005. This oral history session is being conducted with June Bahan-Szucs from Olmsted Falls, Ohio, as part of the NACA [National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics] Oral History Project sponsored by the NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration] Headquarters History Office. This interview is being held in San Jose, California, during the NACA Reunion Number XI. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson.

I’d like to thank you for taking time to meet with us today and share your history. I’d like to begin by asking you how and when you began working with the NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

Bahan-Szucs: Okay. Thank you for the nice introduction. I started when I was seventeen years old, as soon as I graduated from Olmsted Falls High School. [The Civil Service Commission] had come to the school and at that time they gave the civil service exam in our typing class, which was a very good incentive to get us to come to work for the government. So I started on June 19th in 1951.

Johnson: Did you hear about NACA at that time, or were you just learning about working for the government?

Bahan-Szucs: Well, NACA started in Cleveland [Ohio] in 1941, and I was just a little kid then, thank goodness, but it was a very prestigious place to want to work, and we had personal family friends that worked there, and so it was just sort of a natural that I would gravitate to the Lab.

Johnson: What did you know about NACA before you decided you wanted to work there?

Bahan-Szucs: I knew it was exciting. I knew it had lots of very intelligent people. I knew that it had interesting facilities that had taken over the parking lot that used to be for the [National] Air Races when we had [them] in Cleveland, and it now had [a] hangar on it and the farmhouse and the administration building, and it was just an exciting place to go and work. The same day that I began, one of the other gals from my graduating class started at the Bomber Plant [later known as the Cleveland Cadillac Tank Plant], which was right across the airport field. We both had June 19th as our beginning day.

Johnson: Tell us about those first days when you first began and what your position was and what some of your duties were and maybe who hired you, who you were working for, and that sort of information.

Bahan-Szucs: In the very beginning, like what we’re talking about, the farmhouse was an actual farmhouse that was utilized as a personnel and civil service [office building], and all kinds of other offices were in that one building. So all the hiring was done out of the farmhouse at that time. I had a very fascinating Irish gentleman as the man who hired me. His name was Ray Madigan. I was escorted into the farmhouse by one of the ladies that worked there, and she introduced me all around, way before my interview, so it was such fun.

Then I was immediately assigned to become a report manuscript typist. It was just called report typist at that time, but it became report manuscript typist. The top supervisor for that area, his name was Burt Mulcahy, was quite a caustic gentleman. He would come over and pick up his new employees, walk them back from the farmhouse over to their building, which was ERB, Engine Research Building, and as we’re walking on the way to my new job, he said to me, “Well, I certainly hope that you like to type.”

I said, “Oh, I do. I really do.” At seventeen you’re very enthusiastic. “Oh yes, I’m a good typist. I like to type.”

He said, “Well, you’d better. You’re going to be typing a lot.” And boy, that was the greatest understatement of the world. [Laughs] I typed a lot.

Johnson: What were your hours like when you first started?

Bahan-Szucs: They were eight hours a day, and we worked from—

Nachman: Eighty-thirty to five.

Bahan-Szucs: —eighty-thirty to five, I think. Yes, and then a half hour for lunch. I earned a whole $2,400 a year. Yes, I was very wealthy.

Johnson: For seventeen, I’m sure you were. [Laughter] Where did you live while you were working there?

Bahan-Szucs: In Olmsted Falls. We lived on Usher Road. This is my fourth time moving back to the same community, so this time I hope I just plain stay there.

Johnson: Well, if you will, just share some details about those first days and what your experiences were like as you began your duties.

Bahan-Szucs: They were terrifying, because we had a very, very, very strict supervisor. She was from Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia], which many of our supervisors were, and her name was Mary Lou Greene. She was very, very southern, and she fits the stereotype for southern women, that they look very soft and fragile and feminine on the outside, and they have a steel fist within that velvet glove, and boy, did she ever. She ran a tight ship, but it was very good training.

We were taught zero defects from the first day I went to work. A mistake was not acceptable in any form, any shape. It had to be perfect. We had to learn to type the equations and type the statistical charts and type the figures with all of this very specific detail, so I learned to be a typist of perfection. I was just telling someone the other day, I said, “If you go back all those thousands of years when I started at the Lab and you look at anything I typed, I’d still be proud of it,” because we had to do it right, and we did. We just plain did. If we didn’t, we’d get our hand slapped, probably.

I worked with some fabulous women at the time. They were all young. We were all about the same age, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old. There’s a bunch of us that have become lifelong friends, so all these years later we’re still very friendly. In fact, I was just at a football game with one of them [Edna Tenhopen Schleich] the other night, along with you [referring to Nachman]. [Laughs] We did all kinds of crazy things.

I did not intend to work for the government longer than that summer. I was going to go to Kent State University to become a journalist. I had a scholarship, and I had my room all assigned to me and everything. But I had a little baby sister that was born that year, by surprise, and there just wasn’t any money, and it was just necessary for me to keep working, and my mom and dad were so happy that I was at NACA, and they were just so pleased. So I just stayed and stayed and stayed and stayed, and then it took me twenty-three years to get my bachelor of arts degree in communication. [Laughs] It would have been easier in four years, I’ll tell you.

Johnson: For sure, it would have. Did they offer any type of training when you first started, or was there any kind of training that you needed to have?

Bahan-Szucs: The training was all in-house. It was all in our own office, and they had specific sub-supervisors that would be the trainers. Yes, we were very carefully trained.

Johnson: What type of training was it?

Bahan-Szucs: Just following the rules that NACA had written and be sure that what the engineers wanted and the scientists wanted we presented to them in typed form. That [whenever the] Editorial Office marked up our reports in yellow and red and green, that we had to make the corrections exactly like they decreed. Everything was [run as a] very, very, very tight ship.

Johnson: What type of understanding at that time, at seventeen and just starting to work, did you have of what you were actually working on?

Bahan-Szucs: Oh, a good understanding. I’d taken college prep courses all my life. I had no intentions of being in the commercial world, so I paid really good attention. And anyways, NACA, at that time, and Lewis [Flight Propulsion Laboratory, Cleveland, Ohio] was a very exciting place, because we were all young, and it was like a lovely marriage factory, and we got to date a lot of people. You’d walk down the center section [of ERB], and they’d all whistle at us, and so Mary Lou Greene would make sure that we [carried] cayenne pepper with us no matter where we went, and she wouldn’t permit us to go down to the cafeteria unless there were two of us together at a time as a buddy system. But, of course, we always snuck out on her, because it was so much fun. [Laughter]

Johnson: What was the percentage as far as women compared to men there?

Bahan-Szucs: Oh, we had good numbers, didn’t we? [Laughs] Yes, well, all the fellows were just out of college, and I think we figured out one time we had eighty men to every one woman, so that was a good percentage.

Johnson: That’s quite a few.

Bahan-Szucs: I only dated fifty-six of them, though. [Laughter] But that took a long time, you know, many years.

Johnson: I was going to say, you didn’t do that all that first summer, did you?

Bahan-Szucs: No, not all the first summer. [Laughter] No, no, not.

Johnson: That’s good.

Nachman: There were a lot of women in computing, too.

Bahan-Szucs: Yes.

Johnson: Did you interact with the other women? Did you all know each other, the computers and other people like that?

Bahan-Szucs: No, our typists were told to stay in their own little box, and we weren’t even permitted to speak to the computers, and they weren’t permitted to speak to us, either, a lot of times.

Nachman: Oh yes.

Bahan-Szucs: Were you? Okay, then you had more freedom than we did.

Nachman: We did.

Bahan-Szucs: You also had a southern boss.

Nachman: Yes, a couple of them.

Bahan-Szucs: Yes, but we had to stick right to our desks and so on, so to compensate for the strictness, we used to see how many pencils we could stick in the asbestos [office] ceiling sometimes when we got a little bit bored. I did pretty well. They stuck very well. They finally put five of us in the room—these are the five I mentioned that we’re still very compatible—and so we were all really good typists and draftsmen and so on, and so we would sing, and we would tell jokes while we were typing, and then we would proofread together.

Proofreading was a joy, because we didn’t really know Greek at that time, and so we made up our own Greek. We made some other pronunciations that were quite funny, like a manometer, that was a man-o-meter. Then when you would proofread the equations, instead of deltas, you’d have triangles, and then instead of psis, you’d have pitchforks, and then you’d have all manner of things. Then we would laugh and giggle, and then Mary Lou would come say, “What’s going on in here?”

We’d say, “We’re just proofing.” So we had a lot of fun. We really, truly did.

Johnson: You made your job a fun time.

Bahan-Szucs: Yes, it was called job enhancement. [Laughter]

Johnson: Describe the facility, if you will. You mentioned the farmhouse. About how many buildings, and maybe the building that you worked in, if you can describe how it looked at that time?

Bahan-Szucs: Okay. We now have 350 acres in Cleveland, but at that time we didn’t have that; probably 250, perhaps, because they bought a portion of the Metropolitan Park, which has [since] been utilized into our Center. And the buildings are all numbered according to the way they were built, and so the Engine Research Building we were in was [Building] 5, the Administration Building was 3, the Hangar was 2, I think. The Farmhouse was 1, and the Altitude Wind Tunnel was there at the time, and the Icing Wind Tunnel [Icing Research Tunnel] was there, and 8 x 6 Supersonic Wind Tunnel was there, and the 10 x 10 Supersonic Wind Tunnel was built then, too. Then some of the buildings along behind the Hangar where the Fire Station was and Fab [Fabrication] Shop, and stuff like that.

So the main campus, because it was very like academia at that time, was all up on the one level of land. South 40 hadn’t been built yet or anything. Then way back at the Back Gate they had a long, long, long construction building, and that’s where they had the workers that were actually doing the construction of the new buildings, and that was their headquarters. That was one of the most popular buildings of the place. Also the Rocket Lab [Laboratory], where I ended up working at the end of the seven years, was just a cement-block building, and at that time I had twenty-six rocket engineers that I worked for. That’s jumping the gun, though. It’s okay?

Johnson: Yes.

Bahan-Szucs: Okay. Like I said, we were all young and we had a wonderful time. I worked for John [L.] Sloop and for Gerald Morrell and for Del [Adelbert O.] Tischler and Glen Hennings, and what happened, because of our rocket program and our space program, [was that] the majority of the men—and they were all men—that I worked for became top supervisors [and] Division Chiefs. [Some] went to [NACA] Headquarters in Washington [D.C.]. So our little nucleus of people that I worked with were extremely instrumental in what happened to NASA as a whole.

For example, Howard [W.] Douglass was experimenting with fluorine, and people said, “You can’t [test] rocket engines with fluorine,” but he did. We had garage door test cells, Cell 21, and so on, behind the big bunker, behind the cement-block building that I told you about, and there were eight different test cells. They would use their little mock-up models of the rocket engines, and whenever the guys knew almost for sure it was going to blow up, they’d say, “June, you want to come back and see the test?”

I was always gullible and, “Oh, yeah.” I loved going back there, it was so exciting.

So we’d go back and we’d watch for a while through the control window and so on, and then they’d say, “Hey, it’s all ready for ignition. You want to push the button?”

“Oh yes.” I blew up more rocket engines than anybody you’ve ever met in your whole life. [Laughter] And they’d laugh and laugh and laugh. Sometimes we blew the doors off of the garages and everything. They were big explosions. It was fun. [Laughs]

Johnson: It sounds like it. Not everyone can say that.

Bahan-Szucs: That’s how I got my name for my computer e-mail; it’s “RocketJune.”

Johnson: You mentioned this other job. If you can talk about how long you were in that first job as the typist. and how you moved to your next position, and what the progression was while you were there.

Bahan-Szucs: Okay. Well, okay, so I started in [19]51, and I worked there probably for a year and a half, and then two of us were transferred over to a different report typing group, Group Two, which was [in] the 8 x 6 Supersonic Wind Tunnel. There our supervisor was Sylvia Taylor. She is a delightful person [whose] hobby was ballroom dancing, and she had won all kinds of awards, and [was a] beautiful, beautiful dancer. She was also a very strict boss, but we learned an awful lot from her. She was very intelligent, also. We got to know the meaning of a lot of the reports and so on. It was a good experience.

But I’d wanted to move on, so I had gone to Baldwin-Wallace College [Berea, Ohio] to get my shorthand. I’d never taken shorthand in high school. So finally I accomplished it, and then I became a stenographer-of-one. We had formerly had a typing pool, and they had one later on, too. This went in sequence, in cycles, or whatever. But when the women and secretaries would go on vacation, I was the person they sent over to take their place. So that means that I worked at almost every single office. I worked for Dr. Abe Silverstein. I worked for Dr. Edward [R.] Sharp. I worked for Willson Hunter. I worked for [Dr.] Bruce [T.] Lundin. In fact, as a side note, I have worked for every single Director that we have ever had at NACA and NASA in Cleveland.

Johnson: That’s quite an accomplishment.

Bahan-Szucs: All but the current one. I have to take that back, because I left before Julian Earls took over, but up to that point. Through Donald [J.] Campbell, I’ve worked for every single one.

Johnson: That is an accomplishment.

Bahan-Szucs: Yes. It’s antiquity on the hoof. [Laughs]

Johnson: How long did you work in that position?

Bahan-Szucs: That was for almost a year. I went through the summer vacations and then a bunch of them were taking longer, but it was wonderful. I met more people on that one assignment than I could ever [have done] in any other way. To this day they still remember different little things that happened and things, so that was great.

Then when that was over, I was assigned to Personnel, and I worked in Personnel Records, and then I got pushed upstairs because I could do shorthand and so on, and I was a secretary, assistant secretary, to the Chief, Dr. Mike [Michael J.] Vaccaro. He was a very fascinating man. He was a psychologist, too, and he wasn’t too tall, but he had all kinds of interesting mannerisms, and so on. One day I handed him a letter for him to sign, and I handed him my pen, and he started to write with it, and he [gestures] threw it on the floor, and he said, “Don’t you ever do that again.”

And I said, “What?”

He said, “You write with black or blue ink. You do not use turquoise ever.” So I certainly learned you don’t use turquoise ink when you sign a letter. [Laughs]

So that was a very good learning experience, being in Personnel. Well, actually, it was fun being in Personnel Records, to start with, because at that time we had everybody’s pictures and statistics on their cards, and we could pick out who we wanted to date by how much money they made, how cute they were, and if they were single. You know, we really had it made. [Laughs] It came at the right time in my life.

Johnson: Now I see where the fifty-six come in. [Laughter]

Bahan-Szucs: They were hand-chosen. Okay. But upstairs Marge Barbaglia, who was Michael Vaccaro’s Head Secretary, was a wonderful teacher. She taught Joan Keating and myself at the same time, and Joan went on to be, I don’t know, Director’s Secretary, I think. But it was another good training session. We really learned a lot from each other and from the ones that really knew what they were doing.

We had lots of interesting social events that happened at those times, too, because, like I said, we were all young and kind of attractive and so on at the time. So when the three-year Annual Inspection would come to all the Centers, to Langley, Ames [Research Center, Moffett Field, California], and Lewis, then they would call on us to be hostesses for the parties that were thrown, and the parties were magnificent. They were over in the Hangar, and all the admirals would come from [the] military and the generals and the majors and so on, and the senators would come. All kinds of officials would come from Headquarters for [NACA from] all over, corporation [heads] and so on. So we would just get to talk to them, and you really learned to become very artificial, and it was such fun. [Laughs]

Then we also had, when the Inspections would be there, we’d have a luncheon for everyone. That was [held] in our cafeteria, and all of the girl people would serve the tea and coffee and make sure that everybody had their meals properly, and if they needed anything at all, we would run and get it for them.

Well, there was one man from NASA Headquarters which you’ve heard of quite a few times, Dr. John [F.] Victory [the first man hired into NACA]. He was extremely particular, and the moment that he entered the door he wanted hot tea [snaps fingers] at his place, and so you just prayed that he wasn’t the one you were going to be assigned to or [to] that table. Well, one year it happened and I had Dr. Victory. So I really ran and got that hot tea, and by the time he sat down, it was there, but I was shaking so bad by that time, it’s a wonder I didn’t spill it. But I [didn’t], I [made] it. [Laughter]

All right. So after I worked in Personnel, then I was assigned to the Fuels and Combustion Division [known as Fuels and Lubes], and I worked for Dr. [Walter T.] Olsen, and Marie Henkle was his Secretary—until they had an opening ready for [me], which was the Rocket Lab, which was one of the joys of my life. I was assigned to the Rocket Lab, and I was there while we prepared the blueprints for South 40, where we tested the great big, extremely full-size models of rockets. Our neighbors didn’t appreciate that, though, because it would shake [their homes] a lot. Of course, the 8 x 6 Supersonic Wind Tunnel, had to build a barrier all around it because the people in Fairview [Park and surrounding cities], had their dishes kind of fall off the walls, and they got upset. So they built a barrier around that [wind tunnel of ours].

Johnson: Did the barrier stop it?

Bahan-Szucs: Pretty much so, and then also they ran at night instead of during the day and so on. Anyway, electricity is cheaper at night than it is in the daytime.

Johnson: What did the community—you just brought up a question—the community around Lewis at that time, what did they know about what was actually going on there? Were they aware—

Bahan-Szucs: Not much, and they still don’t. Still don’t.

Johnson: Were you instructed as far as, when you began working there, how to communicate with the public as far as what you were doing and that sort of thing?

Bahan-Szucs: Well, that’s a tricky question because, remember, this is a long time ago, and security was a very, very, very high [priority], so we really didn’t talk about our work at all. A lot of us had Q Clearance. We had Top Secret and—well, that’s kind of an interesting point I want to tell you about.

They were so strict with our files, and the secretary people were the ones that were responsible to make sure that all the files were locked up each night. If you happened to forget one cabinet—I had twenty or thirty I had to be responsible for—and if I forgot [even one], I would get this phone call at home, two o’clock [a.m.], from the Head of Security. Don Kelsey was his name, and he would call me out to the Lab, and I had to go [immediately] and go through and do an inventory of what was in that cabinet and relock it again. After that happens two or three times, you learn to really be extra careful. We also had to be careful to shred the carbon ribbons [from] our typewriters. We had IBM Selectric typewriters, and you had to shred all that. You had to use carbon paper, and that had to be shredded. Security was extremely tight.

But about that time is when I joined the [Lewis] Speakers Bureau for the first time, and the theme of our Speakers Bureau was the same as [for] all the Centers, we [were] to sell NACA to the public. It is one of the best tools an employee can use to learn what’s going on in the rest of the Center and the other Centers. It’s something that gives you a worldwide view, and you don’t just do your little typing of the page. You know what’s going on. It’s been a wonderful experience.

Johnson: Explain to me what the Speakers Bureau is and how you participated in that.

Bahan-Szucs: It was originally organized by Calvin Weiss, and Peggy Jones was his head person. At that time we probably had fifteen or twenty people on the NACA Speakers Bureau. There were not too many women on at that time. It was mostly men, and they were quite exclusive and wanted to keep the women out, but we didn’t pay any attention to that. We would go out, as we do now, to schools and so on, but requests were few and far between. Now there [are] hundreds and hundreds of requests every single day, and we have 120 or 150 people on our Speakers Bureau now. I’ve been in it twenty-seven years or something like that.

Johnson: Did they give you scripted information to present?

Bahan-Szucs: They tried. [Laughter]

Johnson: You were able to add to that, I take it?

Bahan-Szucs: We were able to write our own scripts. The exception would be like when we had the Fiftieth Anniversary [of NASA], and another gentleman and I each gave seventeen fifteen-minute speeches in one day in the [Administration] Building, and we spoke to thousands of people. I wrote a script for a bus tour once for one of our big tours, and then you had to go strictly by the script. So it depended on the situation.

Oh, well, we’re not up to the NASA times, but I have a UFO [unidentified flying object] story for you later.

Johnson: Okay. I’ll write that down so I won’t forget that. And when did you join the Speakers Bureau?

Bahan-Szucs: Probably in 1955.

Johnson: While it was still NACA?

Bahan-Szucs: Yes, it was still NACA.

Johnson: You mentioned that there weren’t very many women, but it was open to everyone. They didn’t just specify it had to be a certain position.

Bahan-Szucs: No. Anyone could volunteer to be on the Speakers Bureau, and then [you were] sent out on assignments. Now we have six states that we cover. Every Center has their own District.

Johnson: Do you recall during that time period when you were there any famous people coming to visit?

Bahan-Szucs: Oh, yes.

Johnson: Do you want to share some of that with us?

Bahan-Szucs: Yes, I sure will. Okay. At the time the Air Force had its Liaison Office over in the Hangar, and Peg Lawrence is the name of the gal that was in charge over there. What the secretaries would do is whenever an important visitor, or any visitor that was for our Center, because of security, we would take our own automobiles over to the Hangar, pick up the person, and bring them back to our office.

So the one day, I couldn’t believe that Gerald Morrell said, “Okay, June, go get him.” So I did and I picked up Dr. Wernher von Braun. He was in my car, and I brought him back to our office, because I shared it with my Branch Chief, Gerald Morrell. I didn’t type a single word while he was there, and the men all just gathered in there. It was a wonderful experience; loved it. He was the most important one that came in.

In my second stint at NASA is when I met a lot—well, I met important people the first time, too.

Johnson: That’s neat. It’s such an opportunity for someone as young as you were at that time, too.

Bahan-Szucs: Yes. Yes. Oh yes, that reminds me of something else to tell you. Our little Rocket Lab was a little short, squatty one-story building, okay? Across the street from it was this big, beautiful 10 x 10 [Supersonic Wind Tunnel] three-story building. In order to go to lunch I had to walk from my building to the cafeteria, and it was kind of a gravelly road. It was kind of hard [to walk on the unpaved road in my high heels, which I always wore.] I did not discover until I came back to NASA at a later time that what the men used to do whenever I went to lunch, they’d ring a bell, and they’d all run to the windows with their binoculars and watch me walk to the cafeteria. And when I heard that, I was very embarrassed. [Laughs] I would have carried my lunch every day if I [had known] that.

Johnson: Were you the only woman working in that area?

Bahan-Szucs: Yes.

Johnson: So you were the entertainment. [Laughter]

Bahan-Szucs: I was the entertainment. That’s how I got the “Rocket Red” title.

Johnson: That’s funny. And did you stay in that position, while it was still NACA, for the rest of that time period?

Bahan-Szucs: Yes, I did. I got married in November 16th of ’57, and then I became pregnant, and my baby was due and he [Jeff A. Szucs] was born on September 28th, 1958, two days before [we] became NASA. I officially had resigned as of July, because no one worked very much past six months at that time. [It was] recommended that [we] leave. [We] weren’t forced to, but we were [advised] that we [should] leave. Dr. Sharp came to my wedding, he and [his wife,] Vera Sharp, and he also came to my baby shower [in the “little dining room” in our cafeteria]. Those were pleasant, pleasant things.

Johnson: Did you meet your husband there?

Bahan-Szucs: No, isn’t that disappointing? [Laughter]

Johnson: After all that.

Bahan-Szucs: I met him at my sister’s wedding. He was the best man and I was the maid of honor. What can I say.

Johnson: You mentioned the Speakers Bureau. Were there other social-type things that you did while you were at NACA or other gatherings?

Bahan-Szucs: Yes. Yes. [Ellen Nachman and I] were both members of NicNACA. NicNACA, I think that’s right, and that was the social committee. We planned the picnics and the parties, and I, in particular, did a series of square dances for people in the [Administration] Building. We had exercise classes, and we had all manner of entertainment and fun. We [even had] a ghost in our Guerin House, but that’s later on, too. That goes with the UFOs [Unidentified Flying Objects].

Johnson: Ghosts and UFOs. Okay. Should be interesting. Was there anything else about your time during NACA that you’d like to mention?

Bahan-Szucs: Yes. After they built the Rocket Operations Building, which was a big, beautiful modern building with a control room and everything, then I was secretary to forty-two men in the Rocket Lab, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun and as exciting as it was when we had our little tiny building. It was all modern and everything, and it just wasn’t the same. But it was interesting because [I had typed] the blueprints for South 40, [and] I got to do all the typing for the reports for the [facility], and so when South 40 was built, it was fun to see that I had a hand in its being built.

Johnson: What about the Plum Brook facility [NASA Plum Brook Station, Sandusky, Ohio]? Was that during that time period, too, as far as the beginning of it?

Bahan-Szucs: I don’t think we had Plum Brook yet. I don’t think so. I think it came later.

Johnson: I think [19]’56 was when it was first—I think that was in my notes. 1956 was when I think the first—

Bahan-Szucs: Then I’m mistaken, and it was there during NACA. There wasn’t too much there, though.

Johnson: No, I think it was [19]’63 was when they acquired the rest of the land, but ’56 was when they acquired 900 acres of Plum Brook to construct the nuclear research reactor. So I wasn’t sure if anybody you worked for, if you had any—

Bahan-Szucs: Well, Glen Hennings, that was one of my Rocket Lab people, he was the head of Plum Brook [Station] later. That’s what I mean, that my Rocket Lab people became top people all over the place. Del Tischler went to [NACA] Headquarters, and John Sloop then went there for a while, too. [Some other early NACA Lewis “Rocket-ers” were: Richard Priem, Donald Nored, Frank Kutina, William Tomazic, Sanford Gordon, Verl Huff, Charles Feiler, and Bob Graham, Riley O. Miller.]

Another thing that was a good sideline is that the American Rocket Society was formed greatly by our people in Cleveland, and that is the predecessor to the IA—

Nachman: AIAA?

Bahan-Szucs: AIAA, yes. But the American Rocket Society was the initial one, and Del Tischler was president. John [Sloop] was president. Gerry [Morrell] was president. So I was the official Administrative Assistant to them for all their meetings. They would take me down to the Science Building—what do you call it?—the Engineers’ Building downtown [Cleveland], and we’d register [the members] and plan the meetings and all that sort of thing. That was exciting, too, because people came from all over. And then the American Rocket Society had an interesting magazine that would come in once a month, and everybody would run to get their copies. It was a lively bunch of people.

Johnson: You left right before it became NASA officially?

Bahan-Szucs: Yes.

Johnson: Well, the July before. Is that what you said?

Bahan-Szucs: Yes, I did.

Johnson: But you knew it was coming and that transition was coming at that time?

Bahan-Szucs: Oh yes. It was two days after my baby was born.

Johnson: How long were you away then?

Bahan-Szucs: I was away for ten years.

Johnson: So you began working again in [1966]—

Bahan-Szucs: Yes, Bill, my husband, [and I] had a sporting goods store [in Berea], and we decided to end the sporting goods store and our marriage, so I went back to work.

Johnson: Tell me about going back to work and what your position was and what that experience was like at the beginning.

Bahan-Szucs: It was quite horrid. I told you I earned $2,400 when I [started at NACA]. At that time they had the system where you would have letters affixed to your grade, so I was a GS-5, Step E, which I was very proud of at that time. I think I maybe [earned] $3,800 [when I left. I am not sure] what I earned, I really don’t [know] anymore, but it really wasn’t a whole lot. But all they had to do when they rehired us again [was] pay us commensurate with what we had when we left. So that brought me back down to a GS-3, and I thought that was so unfair, because there were so many of us that happened to. They went and had their babies and came back, and they had all that experience and the whole bit, and we were just [hired in at lower grades]. It was worse when they went down to Kennedy [Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida], much worse. We had GS-5 people they put down to [GS-]2s at that time, and they had GS-7 people they put down to [GS-]3s. That’s a great unfairness, so I would like to officially register that.

Johnson: Well, you’re certainly welcome to register that complaint. I don’t think they’ll go back and pay you, though.

Bahan-Szucs: It would be nice. Two cents a year? [Laughter]

Johnson: What position did you take when you first returned?

Bahan-Szucs: I was hired by Sam Perrone and I was in the Reliability and Quality Assurance Office, R&QA.

Johnson: What differences did you notice from the time you left to when you came back?

Bahan-Szucs: I cried a lot.

Johnson: Were you just not happy with the position or was there—

Bahan-Szucs: I was unhappy with my life. But the people were wonderful, and I learned many things from them. I was a clerk-typist, and after you’ve had the glory days of being a Branch or Division Secretary, it’s very difficult to go backwards.

But the guys were very nice, so that after a while I got a merit promotion, and then I went to another phase of excitement in my life, because that was to the Space Nuclear Systems Office [SNSO]. The nuclear program was very lively at our Center, also. In fact, our little KIWI [experimental nuclear reactor, thermal propulsion] was ready to do the around-the-world tour, and that’s when, 1972 with the RIF [reduction in force], they chucked everything [our entire SNSO project]. It was ready. It was ready. Our guys had everything all set.

SNSO was interesting, because it wasn’t [just the] Atomic Energy Commission, Department of Energy (DOE), and NASA. It was a combined agency. So even though we worked at Lewis—this is NASA time now, of course—we were despised by many because they thought we had the same salaries that NASA Headquarters would get, and so they thought that we were just, “Hmm,” a hoity-toity [group]. So when the RIF came and we went back to NASA Lewis, we were not happily received. They didn’t want us to come back. They said, “You had this plum job over there before.” [There are] many little things like that that don’t come out in normal interviews.

But SNSO became SNPO, Space Nuclear Propulsion Office, and our people went on to do extremely good things. I had mentioned to Rebecca [Wright] about one of the bosses in particular, William [H.] Robbins became head of the Wind Energy Project, the CTS [Communications Technology Satellite] Project; he worked on Centaur; and there was another one I can’t remember right now, but that is typical of the people that I was fortunate and honored to work with [who] went on to do extremely big things for NASA and for the world.

Johnson: After coming back, in comparing the work environment those first years when you were there with what you experienced when you came back, did the feeling of the lab and the Center, did it feel the same?

Bahan-Szucs: No. Completely different. We had changed from being academia, like I had said, and a research center, a very scholarly place like a college campus is what it originally was. And when we came back after, in [19]’62, when they had changed over to R&T [research and technology], it was completely different, and the complement had increased three times as much. It had been twenty-four hundred—twenty-four hundred, yes—and it went up to forty-two, forty-six hundred people—and so many people had been brought in from the outside, and there were so many resentments of the original core of engineers. [Laughs] It was a “corps” of engineers. All the techniques were different. All the methodology was changed. You no longer had perfection. Many contractors had been brought in, and they had to be trained, and then they replaced the civil service employees, so there was a lot of resentment. Now as years go on, it’s changed, and the contractors [now] have to teach the civil service [staff] to take back the jobs again, so that that’s been a main [factor], as far as employment goes, all along.

Johnson: As far as the goal of what you were working for, of course, with NACA, and then when you came back, it was all about going to the Moon and working toward those kinds of goals.

Bahan-Szucs: Yes, it was, of course. Of course, it was wonderful. It was exciting.

Johnson: Did you feel that, as being a part of this whole process, working there during that time, was there an excitement about the project and about the goals of the space program at that time?

Bahan-Szucs: Absolutely, yes. Whenever there was a launch, we were all excused to go in the lobby or wherever there was a TV, and everybody watched it, and so we saw all the good things and all the bad things. The day that the Challenger went down, of course, there were hundreds of people in the lobby watching, and there wasn’t a sound, not a sound. Complete silence. Yes, we lived through the space program.

Johnson: You were there right before Apollo—

Bahan-Szucs: I came back in ’66.

Johnson: Okay, so you were there when Apollo 1—the fire happened.

Bahan-Szucs: Yes, and yes, I know Senator [John H.] Glenn [Jr.]. In fact, later on when I became antique, they needed someone to be interviewed that knew him, and I did know John Glenn, and so I was on television. And just the other day someone said—she hadn’t seen me in twenty-seven years, and her name is Mary—and she said, “And I saw you were on television about Senator Glenn.”

I said, “Oh, my word.” That was a long day ago. [Laughs]

Johnson: I know during the sixties sometimes the astronauts would go to different Centers for training and that sort of thing. Did they come to Lewis, also?

Bahan-Szucs: Absolutely. We had the centrifuge there, and so they all came to us at that time. Every one of them came to do training, and some of them worked there. [Also] Dan [Daniel S.] Goldin, who [became NASA’s Administrator] worked at Cleveland, too, for a while.

Johnson: What was it like when the astronauts were there? Did everyone know that they were there training at that time, or were they just accepted as just somebody else working for NASA?

Bahan-Szucs: They were just NASA people accepted as doing their job. Yes. Later on came the glory days. [Laughter]

Nachman: We knew they were being trained. We knew they were in there for training.

Bahan-Szucs: Yes, but they didn’t get real red-carpet treatment, not like they did later on.

Johnson: How long were you in that position [R&QA], the one we were talking about when they—

Bahan-Szucs: Let’s see, I started in ’66, and I worked till ’68, so two years.

Johnson: And where did you go from there?

Bahan-Szucs: I had a merit promotion, and I became the Division Secretary to Arthur A. Medeiros, “Frenchie,” [Division Chief of the SNSO].

Johnson: Can you talk about that period?

Bahan-Szucs: Oh yes. That was a wonderful period. The people at SNSO were so intent on inventing and improvising and striking out in a whole new field of the nuclear energy, and there was a feeling of excitement all the time. They were so enthused and they were a bunch of crazy people. It was terrific. It was absolutely terrific.

There would be sidelights of things that were fun at that time. This one engineer and I, we wrote a book on ornithology while we were there, so every time that we see each other, we would add another stanza to the poem about birds that we were writing. Another one was so creative that he would rhyme everything when I’d come in the room, and so we would have these little battles of rhymes. It was word games and—it was a fascinating group of people. We worked extremely hard in [SNSO], and when you work extremely hard, you play extremely hard, so it was a very wonderful experience. Truly it was.

Johnson: How long were you in that position?

Bahan-Szucs: Well, 1972 was the general RIF across the whole world of nuclear energy, and 120 of us lost our jobs, and I went back to the Procurement Division as my one choice in the RIF situation. And that would [have been] my last choice, but that’s where I was put.

Johnson: What was the general atmosphere during that time of the RIF and when people were losing their job?

Bahan-Szucs: Total futility, total sadness, frustration, anger, sadness. Every emotion you can think of. It was horrible. A RIF is one of the most horrible, horrible things that there can be. A buyout is fine, because people get a choice. A RIF is hideous because there are no choices.

Nachman: We all went downhill, all through the lab.

Johnson: Did they feel that there was no direction at that point?

Bahan-Szucs: Oh, there was direction, all right, but it wasn’t the direction anybody wanted to go. Oh, no, there was plenty of direction. See, we also had Materials and Stresses, which is M&S, and that nuclear energy [program] was over in that building, too, on the NASA side of the fence. As a result of that, something beautiful happened, because Dr. James Blue worked there, and he was extremely upset to think that the cyclotron that we had was no longer in use, and eventually he got Cleveland Clinic to come out, and we gave cancer treatments at NASA, NASA Lewis Research Center, at that time. [The patients] would be brought out in [the Cleveland Clinic] ambulance, and they would get the horizontal beam of a cancer treatment that could [reach cancer that nothing else could reach]. There were only three places in the whole world that could give them at that time. You could never say that [any one was] cured from cancer, but after x number of years, seven or whatever the [number] was at that time, they had some wonderful success stories, and all because of one man, [Dr. James Blue].

We also had another man in M&S. It’s kind of interesting. When people have the joints put into their elbows, into their knees, and so on, the material that they used at that time got burrs in it, and so they had to replace it because it would tear the flesh and so on, tear the skin. So they’d have to go in and replace them. Well, that infuriated this one man in particular, and he improved the metal so much that they never have to be replaced for that reason anymore. The metal is of such a good quality that [it does not develop burrs. You see,] spin-offs are one of my favorite things, as you can notice.

Johnson: It’s very interesting, because you wouldn’t think things like that would come from the type of research that was being done.

Bahan-Szucs: Right. Right. It’s the benefits on Earth. It’s serendipity is what it is, [which are the] benefits from space that we get here on Earth that you don’t expect to get. [I know of many NASA spin-offs of great worth.]

Johnson: Well, talk about the period after the RIF and how the Center changed and how they found a better direction in that time period.

Bahan-Szucs: They didn’t find a better direction.

Johnson: Okay. [Laughter]

Bahan-Szucs: The threat of RIF—well, the NASA nuclear people were also RIFed, and so the threat over the whole Center put a blanket of gloom over the whole Center, and when [we were] accepted back, only about twenty of us came back to Cleveland. The rest went all over the nation. That’s out of 120. But some of us, especially the women—oh, no, the men, too, some of the men—we were treated really, really as poorly as an employee can be treated, and it had lots of repercussions through the years. It was really bad news. They did not want us back. In fact, one of the top officials I had worked with years before at NACA, he said, “You’re never coming back here, June. We’re not going to permit any of you to come back.” Well, they had to, so we came back, but they made sure that we didn’t enjoy it, and we didn’t. I was put back as a clerk-typist in Purchasing.

This is a funny story. Remember I told you about zero defects an hour ago? Well, I still believe in zero defects, and so in Purchasing there’s one theory that we had was “get it out, get it out, get it out.” It doesn’t matter what it looked like. Well, I couldn’t buy that, so I was a rebel-of-one. One day I was fixing a purchasing order that I was typing, and I had out my White-Out and I had my patch paper, and I was fixing it, because I wouldn’t let anything that [didn’t] look good enough go out. It wasn’t right. It could be a little bit—no, it couldn’t even be messy. It had to be good. It had to look nice. One of those kind of people, you know, like Monk [television program about a man with obsessive-compulsive disorder] or somebody. [Laughs] But anyways, I had this big pair of scissors in my hand with six-inch blades on [them], and I’m cutting out this little piece of patch paper. And one of the ladies of “get it out, get it out, get it out,” comes and she puts her head over my shoulder, and she says, “What are you doing?” I almost cut off her nose. [Laughs] I didn’t, but I would really have liked to.

Is that what you asked? [Laughter]

Johnson: I don’t remember.

Bahan-Szucs: I don’t remember, either, what you asked me.

Johnson: Well, how long did you stay in that position?

Bahan-Szucs: Forever. No, I didn’t, really.

Nachman: Seemed like it, though.

Bahan-Szucs: Yes, it seemed like it. I did end up in the Procurement Division for twenty-three years. That’s more than a life sentence. But it got better, because I transferred from that section to the Construction Section. Then my mom died, and there was a troublemaker in that [construction] group, and we ended up going to federal court, and all kinds of horrible things [happened] at that time. And the stress was so unbearable that I contracted asthma right at that time. Then, when my mom died, my sister came up from Dayton [Ohio], and she called the Division Chief. She said, “You transfer my sister this week or else.” And he did.

Johnson: Oh, goodness.

Bahan-Szucs: Yes. So I was able to get out of that situation, and I went to the Small Business Office, and that was a wonderful experience, too, because Dr. John Liwosz [Small Business Office] taught me many, many things about all kinds of things, and we met all kinds of important people. [Some examples were] the 8(a) program [and] the Socioeconomic [Program]. He taught me so much that when he had to go on sick leave, I was in charge of the Small Business Office for about almost a year, and that was exciting and fun. I didn’t do the actual full-time work that a [Small Business Officer] did, but I gave them all the information and talked to the people. It was marvelous. I won an award for it and everything. It’s cool. Nice time. And let’s see—

Johnson: After Small Business.

Bahan-Szucs: Oh yes, after Small Business, I made a mistake, and I applied to become a buyer, and so I became a buyer, and that was the most hideous job. Oh, my gosh, it was with the same people I’d worked with originally in Purchasing, and some of us [still] didn’t agree with each other. In fact, one day my boss said, “Who do you think you are?”

And I pulled myself up to my full stature and said, “I am June C. Bahan-Szucs::, that’s who I am,” and that’s who I’ve been all along. So after that I was able to get out of Purchasing, which was good. It was very good. And I went to become Administrative Assistant to the Division Chief, Brad Baker, and that was [another] nice period of [my] life. Real nice people to work with and you got to know the whole picture. It was good. Then what happened?

Johnson: Do you need your notes? Well, at what point did you go back—you mentioned that you went back to school and got your bachelor’s degree.

Bahan-Szucs: Oh, I always went to school, actually. I went to college, Baldwin-Wallace, before I got married, and then while we had the store I didn’t go to school at all. Then when I came back, I went to Tri-C [Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland, Ohio] and got my Associate Degree in Business Management, and then after that then I went [back] to Baldwin-Wallace. And I was in all kinds of programs from the Center. I was in CEP II, which was Continuing Education Program, Roman numeral II, and so many of my classes were paid for by the Center, I had the training requirements that you work as long as your training has been, and so on.

So I was able to get my full degree. It did take me twenty-three years though. [I sound like I’m] a slow learner. [Laughs] I went to weekend college. I went to evening school. I went to day classes. I [earned my Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications].

Johnson: How were you able to balance that? You mentioned you had a son, and working full-time and going to school. How did you balance your life?

Bahan-Szucs: I’m a juggler. [Laughs] Well, I figured out one time I took a time management course, and you had to draw a circle of your hours of your day, you know. I did it, and it came out to that I had twenty-eight hours in my day. And I couldn’t figure out what I [had done] wrong. I know I’m not really [great] at math, but I finally figured out it’s because I would eat my meals as I was driving to work, and then when I was driving to take a test I would stop at the stoplight and I would study. So, anyways, you learn to do that, of course.

Johnson: You multitask.

Bahan-Szucs: Multitask, yes. That’s it. That’s what it was. I only use twenty-four hours in my day now.

Johnson: Well, that’s good. You’ve slowed down a little.

Bahan-Szucs: Oh, a lot, a whole lot. I told you my grandkids said I’m a turtle. [Laughter]

Johnson: Well, what other positions did you hold during your time there, through 1998, I believe you said.

Bahan-Szucs: Oh, okay. So I was the Administrative Assistant in Procurement, and the buyouts were starting. I could have left, but I didn’t really want to. I didn’t feel I was quite ready to leave, but I could have. So finally I got really close and I was really going to do it, and I went to all the seminars and everything, and I decided, “Well, let’s make one last shot at what I really wanted to do in life.”

So I went over to John [M.] Hairston, who is Head of External Affairs, and I told him that I was considering the buyout, but I would much rather come work for him like I always wanted to. So if he wanted me, let me know. We had a real nice conversation, and a couple of months later, he called me up and he says, “June, you’re hired.” So I had the best job of my entire life. It was fabulous, absolutely fabulous.

One of the reasons I got the job was because of my writing. We had a contest years before when my one grandson was three years old and my dad was still there, too. It was to see who could write the best song, who could write the best essay, and who could write the best poem about the Center. We had a big program [for our Center’s Fiftieth Anniversary,] and we had [a high school] band come in. It was wintertime and they had a platform out there, and they had Leon Bibbs from our local television station there. They had the [winning] song sung, and they had the [top] poem read, and [then] I read my essay. So I dedicated it to my dad and to my grandson, and my grandson promised that he would come back in fifty years when they opened up the space capsule to hear it. And my essay hung in John Hairston’s mind all those years, and he told me later on that’s one of the main reasons that he hired me, because he said, “I have a copy of it right here on my desk.” He just really liked my essay, and in it I had wished all the people of the future good luck in all their future projects and so on, and so that was one of the keystones [upon which] I got my new job.

So I was in Community Affairs, and I worked with fantastic people, with Linda Dukes-Campbell and David DeFelice, and there I read all kinds of things about the job that you’re in. [Laughs] And we put on the parades for the Indians when they won the championship, and we dedicated the logos [our NASA Meatballs] on the [sides] of our Hangar, and I was in charge of that project. We met astronauts all the time. [As for] the Speakers Bureau, I was [still] very active in it at that time. Well, I still am pretty active in it. It was a fantastic, wonderful, wonderful time. So that’s how people know who I am at the Lab, because I’ve [really] been around there.

Johnson: How long did you stay in that position?

Bahan-Szucs: About three years, and then they said it was going to be the last buyout, and so I decided it was time to go. Leave when you’re at the top; it’s a good idea.

Johnson: Well, tell me the story of the UFO and the ghost.

Bahan-Szucs: Oh, okay. You didn’t forget. [Laughs]

Johnson: No, I wrote it down.

Bahan-Szucs: Way back in the beginning of the eighties, I took Fay Maldari from the Air Force Liaison Office with me to one of my speeches, and it was to a UFO society, for our NASA Speakers Bureau. I had like a hundred or so people in the audience, and they were very attentive and they listened very carefully. Then it was time for questions and answers. They almost rode Fay and me out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered, because they blamed her for everything the Air Force didn’t do [and] everything the Air Force hid. They blamed me for everything that NASA did. And we were really frightened, and I will never give a speech to a UFO group again, ever. [Laughs]

Okay, now the ghost. All right. The Guerin House is our social-gathering house at our Center, and it was purchased from a dentist. They used to have a pool out in front, and it has beautiful acres of land there. It’s very, very pretty. But it’s haunted, and it’s haunted by a little girl with long blonde hair and blue eyes, and she sits at the end of one of the hallways and she cries. She’s been seen and spotted by many different people. The whole wing at the end of the building is very cold, with a nice cold, ghostly [feeling]. But—I hate to tell you this—it’s not haunted anymore, but it was for many years. So our security guards were so frightened of it, because they had to go in alone and check it [out] all the time, they would always go two by two. They would not go alone. But one night one of the guards happened to be there alone, and he heard noises in that garage, and so he shot, and to this day, there are still bullet holes in the wall of the garage where he “shot the ghost.”

Johnson: Oh, goodness. [Laughs]

Bahan-Szucs: I’ve been in [the Guerin House], too, at night, and what would happen is doors would close all over the place [in the basement] where there was nobody there, and the windows were not open. There was no wind; there was nothing. It was a nicely ghostly place. But the ghost is gone now, and the room isn’t cold anymore, and hey, it’s all okay.

Johnson: Okay. [Laughter] Does anybody know what happened to the ghost?

Bahan-Szucs: I don’t know. Did you ever hear?

Johnson: Just decided to leave.

Bahan-Szucs: Decided to leave, yes. The ghost is gone from NASA Lewis when it became NASA Glenn [Research Center].

Johnson: You mentioned that during your time there that you worked for all the Directors except for the most recent. Can you talk about some of the different styles that the Directors had and the different people you worked for?

Bahan-Szucs: Oh yes. I can summarize it for you. All right, Dr. Edward R. Sharp. He was a wonderful country gentleman type. He was a very intelligent man and very sociable, and his credo was to know his people, and he did. He knew us all by name. He would attend all of the different events. He would listen to people talk. He was from Langley, and as our first Director, he was a wonderful beginning. It was just a wonderful beginning, very classy. And his wife, Vera, was a wonderful lady. I got to be friends with her later. There is an Alcove of Honor for Dr. Sharp in our Employees’ Building. Because I had so many contacts with my last job, I just did it. [It is] very nice, and it has the bust of Dr. Sharp, a big [portrait] of Vera, [a large painting of Dr. Sharp], and plaques [from] different people [who] donated things

Johnson: Okay. We won’t tell anyone. [Laughter]

Bahan-Szucs: But anyways, then Dr. Abe Silverstein was number two, and he was the brains of the outfit from the beginning. He was a very highly intelligent and very strong leader, and people were frightened of him and [yet] they liked him immensely, and he had loyalty of so many people. To this day he gets the votes as probably being the best director, because he got more things done and the people really followed him. But they were afraid of him, too, because he was very forceful.

Okay. Next—it’s hard to remember the order of them. I can’t do the order of them. [Dr.] John [F.] McCarthy came from the outside, and he was our PR [public relations] man, and in a time when the Center was faltering and it needed a lot of help from Congress and so on and so forth, he was there and he [helped us greatly]. It was during the Wind Energy time and so on, and so he was the only outside commercial type director that we ever had.

Donald Campbell was the one right before Julian Earls, and he’s the one that I worked for, and I [wrote] some speeches for him and [helped him with some of his projects]. I don’t think he was super happy in his job, because there were many difficulties from many areas, but he was a fine director, too, and he had a good staff of people working for him [so] that everything worked out okay.

Andy [Andrew J.] Stofan was exciting, and he was very well liked, and he was very active with Centaur. When he was ready to leave there and go on to his next deal, he bought the most beautiful little red car, a Miata, I think it is. Anyway, [he zoomed] around in a little convertible. That was fun. [Laughs]

Bruce [T.] Lundin’s way near the beginning, [he] was the third [Director]. When I was that steno-of-one, and I said I worked for lots of people, I worked for him in the one office [with] David Gabriel in the [adjoining office]. David Gabriel went to Washington and became Head of the SNSO Program, and Bruce became the Director [of Lewis]. They were as different as day and night. Bruce was perfection. His desk was neat and everything was clean and everything was organized and everything was straitlaced. He was tall and very, very thin, and he was just very, very precise. And David was laid-back and he would relax at his desk, and he was brilliant. He was just absolutely wonderful. He was the Director [of SNSO] when he went to Washington.

Let’s see. Who am I missing?

Nachman: Yes, was Mangamiello ever—

Bahan-Szucs: No, he was third in command.

Nachman: He was deputy or something.

Bahan-Szucs: Right. Right. Well, without looking at the list, I can’t do it offhand.

Johnson: That’s a good idea.

Bahan-Szucs: But I worked at the Center for every single one of them except for Dr. Julian Earls, so I had lots of experiences. I worked for a lot of people.

Oh yes, I could tell you something about Abe Silverstein one time. He was such a perfectionist, and I was working in his office in the summer, just for a few days, thank goodness, because we had to use all that carbon paper to make copies with and so on, and you couldn’t have any erasures. You couldn’t have any White-Out or anything. I typed one letter seventeen times before I got it perfect for him. [Laughs] If I hadn’t been shaking that bad, it probably wouldn’t have taken so long. I [finished it], though. He signed it.

Johnson: Looking back over your career with NACA and again with NASA, what would you think of as your most significant contribution?

Bahan-Szucs: I wrote some on my [written interview form for you], but I think it was that I was allowed to make a difference. I was able to help a lot of people write their KSAOCs [knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics] for their jobs and a lot of them got their merit promotion jobs. I was able to help counsel a bunch of people who had many different personal problems and work problems and so on. I was able to be a leader at the Center, because I was president of all kinds of stuff, BPW [Business and Professional Women]. Ellen was president of BPW also. And of the LLAMA Club [Lewis Laboratory Amateur Mumblers Association], the public speaking club.

I devised a training program, which I wished had gone through, because it was really great. I was teaching English as a second language, and in my class I had one [NASA] gentleman from China with his Ph.D. and another one from Puerto Rico and another [Ph.D.] from India, all in the same class. We had a marvelous time. It was because I was not trying to take their language away from them. The Chinese gentleman, for example, his teenage kids were mad at him because he kept going to McDonald’s and asking for “flench flies,” and they didn’t know what that was. But things like that, and being on the Speakers Bureau and being part of the pulse of NACA and NASA have always been a thrill.

But one of the most wonderful things are the friends that I have developed and kept all through the years. Coming to NACA Reunions is like a shot in the arm, because these are the giants of people that really did fabulous things for the nation, and we know them [personally]. They’re our friends and it’s a wonderful thing. It’s nice to be a NASA person / an NACA person.

Johnson: What do you think was your biggest challenge?

Bahan-Szucs: Working in Purchasing. [Laughs]

Johnson: I think I knew that was coming. [Laughter]

Bahan-Szucs: I didn’t hide it too well, did I? Well, everybody has their ups and downs in life, and that was a down.

Johnson: Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about that you wanted to mention?

Bahan-Szucs: There’s a lot of things in my written stuff that you’ll find. What I gained from being active in so many things is self-confidence, and getting my degree in communication I have taught nine courses now for Baldwin-Wallace College in what we call the ILR, the Institute of Learning in Retirement. I always tack on the word creative, so that means I can do what I wish. You see, I like to do what I like to do. I don’t like a script. So I’ve taught Creative Writing I, II, and III; Publication 101, because we wanted to publish what they had written; Creative Speaking, Creative Interpersonal Communication, and Creative Thinking. Then I did a combined course on genealogy with some of the other professors there, and then I taught one course on NASA, and that was very, very successful. And just having the courage to do this is really fun [and] to be able to [teach is most rewarding].

Johnson: Were these all Continuing Education courses through the college?

Bahan-Szucs: They’re for retirees, and, yes, they’re continuing, but there’s no grades or anything. There are no grades. There are no tests. There’s no pressure, but the wonderful thing is adult students are so much fun to teach. They’re just marvelous.

Johnson: And you had a lot of the beginnings of that love through your involvement with the various organizations through NACA and NASA?

Bahan-Szucs: Well, yes, because I taught public speaking for BPW for years. Oh, here is just a little note. I was asked to install the State President of BPW last year, and that was a nice honor. So many good things. I’ve had a very fun, exciting, wonderful life, and I haven’t really slowed down yet.

Johnson: No, and hopefully you won’t.

Bahan-Szucs: I’ll try not to.

Johnson: Well, I appreciate you coming by and sharing your history with us, and if there’s not anything else that you want to add, I guess we’ll say goodbye for now. Thank you.

[End of interview]