NASA Headquarters Oral
History Project
Edited Oral History Transcript
Connie
Eaton Harney
Interviewed by Rebecca Wright
Lancaster, California – 12 June 2001
Wright: Today
is June 12, 2001. This interview with Connie Harney is being conducted
as part of the NASA Headquarters History Office “Herstory”
Project. This interview is being conducted in Lancaster, California,
by Rebecca Wright and Sandra Johnson.
Thank you again for allowing us in your home and taking time to meet
with us to discuss your experiences while you were employed with the
NASA Flight Research Center in California. We'd like to begin by gathering
some background about you, and if you could start by telling us where
you're originally from and how you began your career.
Harney: I'm
from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I was born and raised on a farm
in Stephenson, Michigan, which is between Menominee and Escanaba.
I'm sure that makes it perfectly clear. The town had about 1,000 people
then and now. It hasn't grown. I went to one-room country schools,
one school, actually, for seven years with one teacher, until I went
into town. I graduated valedictorian of my class in 1964. There were
eighty students in my high school graduating class.
I went to the University of Michigan then, on scholarship, in Ann
Arbor, and that was quite a transition, since there were 4,000 students
in the freshman class. I was a National Merit Scholarship finalist,
although I didn't get a full ride from them. I did get a nice scholarship
from the university, so I studied mathematics and got a degree in
mathematics in 1964. I was in the honors college, so I got an honors
degree. I took math, really, because I was too shy to speak up in
English, and mathematics seemed a lot easier from that point of view.
At that time, computers were just getting started, so I had gone to
a summer science camp the summer before my senior year in high school,
at Northern Michigan University [Marquette, MI]—it was College
then, now it's University—with thirty-nine other students from
the northeastern part of the country, and that was my first introduction
to computers. So I got a part-time job when I was in college, working
for a professor in the geology department, just modifying a computer
program. That was like 1963. This is an assembly language for some
unknown computer now.
And then I also had a project with one of my math professors who was
writing a book on computers, and so I went through and did all the
problems. It's kind of like a red-team review, I suppose. Although
I didn't know what I was going to do with mathematics, I just kind
of fell into the computer programming end of it.
When I graduated, I decided I would work for a year, so I worked at
the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, I guess
it was called, as a computer programmer, for one year, until June
1965, and I decided to go to graduate school at the University of
Washington in Seattle.
I was accepted and was on my way there, but I took the summer to spend
in Berkeley [California] where one of my college roommates was living
with her husband, and I worked there for a summer as a computer programmer.
But in the meantime, I decided to get married instead to the roommate
of my former college roommate's husband that I had met at the wedding.
He worked in Lancaster, so I came down here, but before I came down,
I got the address of a couple of places to apply to and one of them
was the NASA Flight Research Center. So I sent them an application.
This is 1965 and NASA was building up then, so they hired me sight
unseen, which, in retrospect, that seems pretty cheeky of them, don't
you think? [Laughter] So I showed up, I think it was September 7,
1965, at the Dryden Center [NASA Flight Research Center, later named
NASA Hugh L. Dryden Flight Research Center] and met my boss, Mary
Little [Kuhl]. I had worked for a female boss at Michigan, too, actually.
She was a computer programmer in charge of the section. So I didn't
think it was particularly unusual to be working for another female
boss. You know, I guess in retrospect that's probably unusual, but
it wasn't for me then.
So from 1965 to 1973, I was a computer programmer, basically. I worked
in assembly language programming. They were just installing digital
data acquisition systems on the research planes, such as the X-15,
and so I was doing the programming for the first reduction of that,
and it was really quite exciting. I really enjoyed it. But then again,
it was kind of a narrow world. It took me a while to really loosen
up and get more involved with a broader area of the center.
I went off to graduate school, courtesy of NASA. I went to UCLA [University
of California Los Angeles]. I think it was 1969. No, maybe it was
1970. But you can get a year of graduate study leave, so I ended up
just taking nine months. I went to UCLA and got a master's in—it’s
called systems science. What it was was theoretical computer science.
I really enjoyed it, but in retrospect, that was the wrong thing to
be doing. I enjoyed it and it was good, but it didn't directly apply
to anything I was doing at NASA. I mean, certainly NASA didn't need
theoretical computer scientists. I really should have been taking,
if anything, applied mathematics such as the engineers use because
all my mathematics is more theoretical and I didn't have Fourier Transforms
and the kind of the stuff that the engineers are really using at Dryden.
But at that time there was no real advising. There was no career advising
whatsoever, and certainly no real, I'd say, evaluation or assessment
of what people wanted to do when they went to graduate school. It
was kind of like, well, somebody's turn again.
I got the master's in December of 1971, but it was because I had a
master's paper to write, and I did that when I got back to work, just
took off some annual leave.
Shortly thereafter, I guess it was 1973, my boss—by this time,
it was John Smith. Mary Little was no longer a branch chief. She was
in a staff position prior to her retirement, and John Smith—I
don't remember if it was exactly a reorganization, but he had an opening
for a branch chief for the programming branch, and I wasn't really
considering applying for that at all. I really didn't have any career
path in mind. This is all willy-nilly, if you will. He said, "Gee,
why don't you apply for that." "I don't know." So I
did apply for it and he ended up selecting me. It was a big surprise,
really.
When I first started working, I didn't really think of women as being—how
do you say it? I knew I worked for a [female] first-line supervisor,
as far as [women who were] higher in the organization, there were
just no role models and it's almost like I didn't even notice [the
discrepancy]. It wasn't a big issue then. It certainly became a big
issue later and people became more aware of it. But once I got to
be a branch chief, I was making more money than my husband, and one
of the first things, just thinking about beforehand, I remember telling
Mary Little, I said, when she was talking about promoting, we were
promoted gradually, I said, "Well, I don't ever want to make
more money than my husband. That might cause a problem." Of course,
I quickly got rid of that idea, which is kind of crazy, but those
were funny times, I guess.
It took a little while, I suppose, to get used to being a supervisor,
but in retrospect, not that long. I think I was probably better as
a manager than I was—technically, ultimately, I really did enjoy
the technical part of it and I think I was very good at it, but when
it came to broadening your influence, it was much better to be a supervisor,
and so I was a supervisor until the day I quit, or took an early-out
retirement, and through lots of different organizations.
There was always reorganization going on. So from computer programmers
originally to include simulation engineers and electronics engineers
and eventually the range systems like the mission control centers
and the radar systems. Telecommunications became big. New telephone
systems. Of course, the networks and all the ground systems. At one
point I even had the facilities, the brick-and-mortar facilities,
because they went through so many reorganizations, and always the
ground facilities were not nearly as prestigious as the aircraft facilities,
and so they'd kind of add strange things to the various organizations,
because they weren't aircraft. If they have the only thing that isn't
aircraft, well, it could go together, I guess.
Let's see. Maybe you'd better ask another question.
Wright: Those
first days that you were here working, were you with one project or
were they asking you to go from project to project for those first
years when you were here as a computer programmer?
Harney: For
the first few years, actually maybe three, four, five years, I was
primarily involved in this PCM, pulse code modulation, computer program,
and I first wrote it for the IBM 360 Model 40 that they had, and that
took a while. I wrote that assembly language, and then at that time,
I guess right after that was a radar program to process radar data
which was done in FORTRAN, but by this time they were also replacing
the IBM computer and they replaced it with a CDC machine, a Cyber
73, which was a whole different programming language.
This is all still assembly language and so sort of rewrote it, you
know, an improvement. By this time the instrumentation systems had
evolved, too, so they have a lot more capability and then you had
to prepare the post-flight processing system to handle all that. So
primarily [I] just [worked with] research data direct from the airplanes
and radar data, as opposed to, I guess, the programs that [processed]
the data after it had been calibrated.
My software calibrated the parameters and separated them out and essentially
created a database, and then the other software would take that data
and do whatever manipulations the engineers wanted to do to, I guess,
assess what was going on with the data, so I had the fundamental data
processing part of it, and database creation, primarily until I became
a supervisor.
Wright: Did
you work with a large group of programmers or was it just a few?
Harney: There
were just a few and, primarily, my task was my own. I guess the interfacing
was more with the instrumentation engineers who were designing the
instrumentation on the aircraft and then also some other computer
programmers who had to access the data in the database. I would develop
some subroutines for them to pull out the data they wanted, the way
they wanted, but as far as FORTRAN programs do—I mean, they'll
collect the data and create plots and those kinds of things, but I
really didn't do that.
In our group at that time, we didn't have any of what we call business
programming, the COBAL stuff for the financial management information
systems or the payroll or those kinds of things. At that time, all
the centers had their own system. And initially, too, at that time,
everybody was NASA, even the janitors, and we had keypunch operators.
These were IBM cards at that time, and apparently, before I got there,
they had what they called—I think Sheryll's [Goecke Powers]
paper talks about it—what they called [computers], which were
women who ran Friedan calculators and used backlit machines to read
strip charts and film, that kind of thing. They weren't doing that
there when I got there. That's what the PCM replaced, but we still
had a small army of older ladies who were doing the data input and
data setup for these programs.
Wright: You
were new and your field was relatively new. How was it accepted by
the engineers and by the rest of the team that you were working with?
Harney: I
didn't notice any problems. It did seem to be a field that was acceptable
for women, I guess, in retrospect. Elsie McGowan came about a year
before I did, and I think she started with the data tech ladies, because
those were all ladies, except for one or two men, and there was another
computer programmer who was a lady, Beverly [Strickland] Klein. I
forget her maiden name. Beverly—maybe you know her. And there
were men, of course, but it was about maybe half and half. Maybe not
that much. It wasn't that big a group of programmers.
Then simulation engineering. That was a lot of analog programming,
and that was kind of like another different world and those guys looked
down, I think, on the digital programming types, and it took a long
time for them to have a woman in that area. But after I was their
branch chief, they were going digital anyway. Everything was going
digital.
Wright: How
was that accepted? Were you one of the first females to be a branch
chief? I know you mentioned Mary Little, but were you one of the few
that were there at that time?
Harney: I
think initially there weren't many. Of course, Mary was one and I
can't think of any other at this time besides Mary. I think Lillian
Holloman was head of research reports, and I think Katherine [H.]
Armistead, she was in research, too. I don't know if she was a supervisor
of any sort, but there were several women in the research side, which
are pretty impressive. Bertha [M.] Ryan, she left not long after I
was there, but I kept hearing all these wonderful things about Bertha
Ryan. I knew Harriet [DeVries] Smith. We used to play bridge together.
She was a real engineer.
Wright: It's
part of that history of change where women started to move into those
positions, sometimes men felt not as comfortable as they did with
a man because it was something new and a change.
Harney: There
was one guy who wouldn't work for me. He was a simulation engineer
and he told John Smith, "I'm not working for a woman," and
[John] gave him a staff position. There's another guy who protested
it initially, who was David Hedgely, but he backed off. But basically,
except for those instances, it didn't seem to be much of a problem.
There was only once or twice in several years would I get some sort
of innuendo about, you know, "I don't really care to be working
for you." It just wasn't prevalent as far as I was concerned.
I didn't see it. I wasn't looking for it, either. I really didn't.
Wright: There
was lots going on during that time period. You mentioned the X-15
flights were going on. How were you and your group involved with those
flights?
Harney: We
were involved in processing the data for it, and so there would be
pressure of data turnaround, and also, if there was some problem,
if the data didn't look right, finding out why it didn't look right.
Computers were so much more primitive then.
I remember there would be pressure to get the data turned around,
and these would be like three-hour runs. It would take a long time
to process, and if somebody screwed up in one of the input cards,
it would be wasted. I remember standing and just watching the hexadecimal
numbers go by on the screen. You actually almost watched the computer
think at that time, it was that slow. So there's some pressure, mostly
just from turning the data around and getting the engineers the printouts
they wanted.
They didn't have computers to look at graphs, either. They were looking
at reams of paper. It isn't like we had any of the hands-on [aircraft]
experience, so we were all really peripheral to kicking the wheels
and touching the metal, but we still felt a lot of pride in it.
Wright: Did
you find yourself working long hours during those years?
Harney: No,
not as a computer programmer. I did as a supervisor, but I just don't
remember doing it as a programmer so much. I guess a few times I remember,
it was when we were converting from one computer to another, you know,
where you're kind of in no-man's land, so I remember working some
weekends then, but it was nothing like what you do when you're a supervisor.
Wright: That
must be history in itself, the technology that changed while you were
at NASA. Can you share with us some of those high points and low points
of the technology that you've gone through?
Harney: Well,
obviously, for me, the biggest thing is the change in computers, from
being kind of an arcane science, doing things in strange codes, to
using commercially available software where you did a lot of setup.
Initially, there was no commercial software available, so you always
started things from scratch. You'd use some of the same routines you
did before, but like write routines for printing time out, the time
of the day, pulling the time off the PCM [data stream], to write that
out. Those things are now like firmware, or, you know, it's all inside.
So all these little things we did then, nobody would think of doing
that now.
Also, the telecommunications. The idea of sending data around [electronically],
and also the security problems that came with that were pretty new,
have become a big issue now, but initially, you had paper. You carted
paper around, and after that, these floppy disks. Computers didn't
have much storage. You were always running out of storage.
Actually, you'd do a lot of really weird programming just because
you didn't have enough space to do it elegantly, so to speak, or simply.
You spent a lot of time doing things that fit. I remember because
it took a long time to assemble a program, that if there was an error
and I knew where it was, I'd go in and change the punchcard. [I]'d
figure out the hexadecimal symbol it should have been, so I can just
change the object deck so I wouldn't have to go through another hour
assembly of it.
So I guess computers have changed a lot and, I guess, the graphics
displays. Now people don't look at raw data. They don't look at numbers;
they look at graphical representations. I guess I hadn't really thought
about all that, but it's several orders of magnitude different. They
get so much data now. On the X-15, when I was processing it, it was
like maybe eighty channels of data, at 200 samples a second. Now they
have high-frequency data by the hundreds of channels. Plus it's flexible.
You can turn it on and off [i.e., select parameters].
At that time, too, some of the data was onboard, recorded on onboard
magnetic tape, and some of it was telemetered and you'd have to match
those up and there would be lots of [data] dropout[s]. Everything
was just kind of sloppy, if you think about it. Now it's sloppy, I
suppose, in a different way. You just have to do a much better job
of sorting it all out. Just because you have computers doesn't mean
you have less work to do; it just means you have [more] information
to deal with. Presumably, you're smarter because they've advanced
the science. We never had laid off people because we got more computers.
We just did more.
Wright: What
type of people were you hiring when you first became a branch chief?
Harney: Computer
programmers. Simulation engineers.
Wright: Were
they easy to find at that time or did you have to recruit them, possibly
even beg them to come to the Flight Center here, or were people anxious
to work on aircraft?
Harney: It
went up and down. It went up and down. It was a very attractive place
for people who were interested in airplanes. Sometimes industry would
be paying another 50 percent more, so it would be very, very difficult
to get them, and also sometimes the government had a hiring freeze,
and then in the seventies and eighties, they went through affirmative
action and so they would do things like—that would be very disturbing.
They would say, "Okay, we have an opening. We can hire so many
people in the division right now if they're minority." And then
it's kind of like a window opens [only for a short time], so you can't
really go through and do a really good job, I think, of selecting
people. We got some good people. We [also] got some people who are
not great contributors.
I guess that's one of the things about supervising. Looking back,
I got some real doozies, in fact, some real disappointments from people
I thought were going to be the greatest and others who turned out
[just fine]. I don't know what the science [of selecting people] is.
Anyway, your original question is, is it hard to hire, and basically
we always ended up getting somebody, maybe not always the person we
wanted because of one situation or another. We couldn't pay the right
salary or we couldn't get to them on the register or things like that.
But nevertheless, we got some pretty good people.
One of the things that happened after I got to be branch chief is
we ended up starting to contract out functions. In fact, that was
something I [started]. And gradually, now the functions I had, just
about all of them are contracted out. We have NASA people managing
them but we don't have any NASA computer programmers per se. You don't
need them. We shouldn't be competing with the industry in that.
Wright: Does
that help with the turnover, because if they're working for a contractor,
then—
Harney: If
they're working for a contractor, we don't hire them, and turnover
is the contractor's issue. Of course, when we evaluate the proposal
and we look at their work history, all that kind of thing has a bearing.
For a long, long time, NASA itself had very little turnover. Very
few people left. In the last ten, fifteen years, it's not true so
much. People will use [NASA] as a stepping stone to other careers
pretty well. But when I first went on, people started there and they
expected to leave forty years later. A lot of them did that.
Wright: Was
that a plus, working on the projects, to know you had that continuity
of people?
Harney: It
was a plus and also a minus. I think with new people you get a lot
more innovation. You can't become quite as settled and content in
doing things, "This is the way it's done here" sort of attitude.
I think an agency ages, and that's one of the things that happens
to NASA, I think. When I started, it was kind of a young agency. Now
it's kind of an old agency and some of the problems it has had I think
are because it's developed a culture and it's hard to operate outside
the culture.
We went through a lot of training programs. The agency has these,
every now and then they have the various things, or maybe the whole
government, like zero defects or paradigm shifts. The whole idea is
to try and get people to operate outside their comfort zone in the
sense of looking for innovation and doing things a little differently,
and I think that was probably the best part of managing, trying to
get that to happen, and also trying to match people with what they
could do, what they wanted to do, and with what needed to be done.
Some of the most frustrating things were having people who felt they
should be able to do whatever they wanted [just] because they liked
that. It didn't work that way.
Wright: Some
of the areas that while you were branch chief you mentioned were the
radar systems. Can you share with us what some of those responsibilities
were?
Harney: Well,
at one point the organization I had included what we called the aeronautical
test range, which includes a radar facility where we have two FPS-16
radars. Right now, well, let's see, I guess it's about eight or nine
radar technicians. These are electronics technicians, so it became
a whole other type of people that I was dealing with.
It also includes communications, where you have UHF-VHF radio, so
this is where ground-to-aircraft communication and also within the
range communications, it's kind of like an intercom, so within the
control room, the control room can communicate with [aircraft and]
the radar sites or with anything uprange. So the primary areas were
the control rooms, and that included map displays, so you could track
where the vehicle is.
It included a lot of displays of the parameters, so the control room
crew, the Mission Control Center crew, could monitor the health of
the vehicle and also determine if they're getting the data they wanted.
It's a really active place, very exciting. It's a lot different than
post-flight processing because it's all real time and also the configuration
control becomes a very, very big issue, and also kind of the pressure
of the situation, too.
If the Mission Control Center's not ready or the radars are down or
something like that, then you affect flight schedules and that's a
big no-no, because it affects everything that's going on in the technical
aspects of the center. You have overtime scheduled and [if] you're
not ready, it's a big problem. I'm not sure I need to say anything
else about the range, but it's a key part.
Also when I was doing it, it was heavily funded by, at that time,
it was called Code T. No, it was Code O in [NASA] Headquarters. That
involved advocating the budget for that organization. The budget for
the post-flight processing and telecommunications came from kind of
the institutional side of the organization, or as part of the project
funding, but the range funding came from an area of Headquarters that
was responsible for the deep-space network and other tracking organizations,
and they were really very generous to Dryden.
So it was a matter of advocating and tracking the budget the way they
wanted in doing that, so I really enjoyed that. It was a lot of show
and tell and whatnot, but they were really so supportive. Now the
deep-space network is handled in a different way and all that is geared
down. They had TDRS [Tracking and Data Relay Satellite] and things
like that, you know, the tracking satellites. That was exciting, working
with that part of Headquarters. Because otherwise the part of Headquarters
involved with Dryden was the research side, and [I wasn’t] directly
involved in that.
Wright: Did
you provide a lot of new area, or new phases? Did you phase in a lot
of new things while you were in that area that you were just talking
about, with the range, or did you monitor and maintain a lot that
was already there? Did technology change so much while you were doing
that as well?
Harney: Yes,
the range as well as the other areas. It was changing a lot. We went
from kind of primitive control rooms to two redundant control centers.
Actually, now there's four, including a spectral analysis facility
for high-frequency data. I guess the biggest thing was instead of
just strip-chart recorders you actually had displays of information,
not just readouts of parameters, and also you could do post-flight
feedback in the control room, so there would be quick-look sort of
information available for the engineers.
Right now, actually, a lot of the information is piped via the network
at Dryden, so the engineers can look at some of that from their desk,
if they don't have to be in the control room for communication with
the other people monitoring the flight. Of course, there's use of
a GPS [Global Positioning System] system for some of the tracking.
There's also mobile facilities, mobile range facilities, such that
some projects which are not flown right at Dryden, but they're Dryden
projects or NASA projects, can be supported remotely, using kind of
like a big semi-trailer, with its own radar site and communication
system and computers and display systems. It's really a station in
miniature.
There's a lot of interaction with what we called the—now it's
called the RAIF, the Research Aircraft Integration Facility, for combined
systems tests. They have the actual aircraft systems there, or models
of the aircraft systems. Before all that's completed, sometimes they
will send signals back and forth to the range, and the range thinks
it's getting data from flying aircraft, but it's getting data from
aircraft on the ground that's getting computer inputs to make it think
it's flying. So you can practice all your procedures in the control
room so you can see if the systems are communicating properly and
things like that.
All this was—you know, I didn't cause any of it to happen, personally.
I mean, these are things that Dryden itself has evolved with, so I
was involved with the range, keeping up with all that. Likewise, the
post-flight processing. Initially, the computers I talked about that
I worked on, we had a huge room with lots of cooling to keep those
suckers from overheating, and now it's all distributed. It's just
some small servers. I think they use the upstairs of this building,
the data analysis facility, for archiving material or whatever, you
know, or even some offices, I'm not sure.
But things have evolved a lot. I suppose the big thing, too, is the
Internet, just the way data is shipped around. It used to be a big
deal, after a Shuttle landing at Edwards, or like the approach and
landing test, ALT, before the real Shuttle flights. They'd ship tapes,
magnetic tapes, back to [NASA] Johnson [Space Center], on a plane.
They'd have a plane to take the tapes back. That was just a pretty
expensive data transmission system. So all that's changed a lot. Also
I think NASA's interaction with the public in the way information
is shared with the public has certainly evolved a lot, the media that's
used and CDs and the Internet.
Wright: I
would imagine that some of the first things that you worked on were
very quiet, or not maybe talked about once you left the Flight Center.
Were you working on some classifieds and secret information when you
were working with the X-15 and some of those that followed that?
Harney: Yes.
Some of the X-15, I guess, but there were some other projects which
were black, and so we had to have black facilities. I, myself, did
not have to have a super secret clearance, but some of the people
who worked on it before me did. The only time NASA would get in that
kind of situation is if they were working on a project with the Air
Force, and the Air Force has designated it as black. Normally, NASA
is a fairly open agency. Their research is open.
Now, of course, it's economic war and I think they're trying to control
some of their access to some of the information since it's an economic
advantage to have it. NASA's budget is kept level and I think Aerospace
has certainly gone down if not kept level, so there isn't as much
[pure] research as there was then . . . . There's no such thing as
building a whole plane to prove concepts like they did then.
Wright: We've
talked about the technology, but from the day you walked into the
Flight Center until the day you walked out, they had quite a change
in facilities and people coming that it increased. Would you share
with us some of the changes that you went through in possibly moving
facilities or of you having to set up those facilities? I know you
mentioned at some point you were in charge of all of that, and how
that all came about.
Harney: Initially,
there was one main building, Building 4800, as we called it, and it
was flanked by two hangars, aircraft hangars. The loads lab was already
there. It was a huge hangar-like facility which was used for heating
and loading to apply heat in the form of quartz lamps and also loads,
to simulate the loading and heating of aircraft for that in flight.
Other than that, they had converted part of a hangar to a computer
room, built a mezzanine for a computer room, and they had done a lot
of ad hoc work on 4800. It had been expanded several times, apparently,
from the initial building. And so finally, some time after it was
there, maybe it was in the seventies, they made plans for a brand-new
facility called the data analysis facility as a place to hold the—I
guess it was to hold the Cyber computer, the follow-on to the Cyber
computer. It must have been the ELXSI computer.
So it was designed specifically for a second-floor secure area for
a computer, big computer, mainframe, and that was the first new building,
I think, in a long time. I wasn't involved very much in that building
itself. I did advocate and push through a building they called the
[Audio/Video Support Center]. It was for telecommunications. We, at
that time, had contractors who were responsible for the video support
of the Shuttle and also the video support of our research aircrafts,
and also like the cable plant and the public address system and the
hand-held radios and all those kind of communications, not specifically
range communications, but more what I just described.
And so we had no real good place for that. They were using part of
an old warehouse and whatnot, so we built the facility for that. What
did they call it? Video—anyway. [Audio/] Video Communications
Center? I forget. But anyway, so that was a new facility that I had
built, but it's not a major facility. It isn't anything like Chuck
Brown . . . getting what is now called the RAIF [Research Aircraft
Integration Facility] built. It was called Integrated Test Facility
and he had that built. In the range we built a second radar building,
so it was just kind of piecemeal.
There are a lot of little things that we did. The ISF, the Integrated
Support Facility, some of that was done when I was head of the facilities
engineers. Some of these organizations didn't last long, because that
wasn't a real good fit. I think I only had that part maybe a year
and a half or so.
Wright: Did
some of them overlap? Did you find yourself managing several pieces
that just didn't go together?
Harney: Yes.
At one time, not including contractors, I had the instrumentation
engineers and the sim [simulation] engineers and the range stuff and
the ground facilities, and all that just really didn't match. We had
a major reorganization where the center director, Ike [Isaac] Gillam,
and his advisors decided to separate engineering from operations,
which is probably something that took a long, long time to recover
from. Before that, you'd have instrumentation engineers and instrumentation
technicians in the same organization. Now they're all separate and
the technicians just became too remote.
But I did have some what we called super techs, para-engineers. Anyway,
it really changed the culture of the place, but at that time they
set up research engineers and operations engineers, the ones on the
airplanes, and what was left was mine, and it was just too many different
things. And so after a year and a half or so there, then they started
breaking [it] off into the appropriate pieces.
Wright: Did
the change to move Dryden under [NASA] Ames [Research Center] for
a while affect you quite a bit?
Harney: Oh,
yes. Yes, very much so. It was some time after that that—let's
see, at one point I just became head of a group of telecommunications.
They made a new group of telecommunications people and it was just
a few people, and I worked very closely with the telecommunications
group at Ames. At one point, I was advocating briefly that, really,
I should be part of the Ames group, the line management through Ames,
because it was kind of an appendage here and it fit more there.
It didn't happen, which was probably a good thing, and then ultimately
it turns out that there was a group of people supporting data acquisition
from aircraft and data distribution at Ames that became part of our
range. We consolidated the [Ames aircraft data support group and]
the Ames-Dryden [range], and part of that was because we were having
a lot of success getting funding support from Headquarters for that
kind of thing, so [I] ultimately still ended up getting—although
this was later and much more involved—having to go to Moffett
[Field, California – NASA Ames Research Center site] to supervise
people periodically, as well as the people at Dryden. We had a commuter
aircraft, King Air, that [used to] go up to Moffett twice a week.
I didn't go up twice a week, but still. So that was a little awkward,
but it did really affect things. It was the people at Moffett, the
range engineers up there, that really helped us get going on the mobile
operations facilities for the range. I think there's still part of
it.
Wright: Did
your duties take you on a lot of travel for NASA?
Harney: Not
as much as some, but at some point probably four or five times a year,
a couple times to Headquarters and sometimes to other centers. Like
when I went to Johnson, it was because of the video support of the
Shuttle landing, the approach and landing test. I guess I went there
a couple times, one time because of a Shuttle simulation. We were
simulating the PIO, pilot-induced oscillation, problems that we had
on one of the approach and landing tests, so there was some group
at Johnson we were working with. The whole thing just really kept
changing, which I guess is why it was kind of a nice place to work.
Wright: When
you were mentioning that it made me think, because you said that one
of the first projects was the X-15 and then you were talking about
the Shuttle and the landings and watching those. Can you share with
us how that felt to watch from one piece of technology move or the
evolution of when you arrived into different type of craft that you
could see?
Harney: The
X-15 was flying when I arrived, and it flew for the next four years,
and that was always a big thrill, just the idea of it, you know. You
would only see the end of it, per se, when it landed on the lake bed,
but it came in very hot, over 200 miles an hour on these skids. It
was kind of way up and you'd see this dust, but you knew that ten
minutes before that it had been in northern Utah. Anyway, it was just
a real thrill.
And then after that, we flew these lifting bodies, three different
lifting bodies in different shapes. These were wingless aircraft.
M2-F3 and HL-10 and X-24A. But these things were amazing. They landed
like the Shuttle did, in a sense, like a rock. But then we proved
that you could have a shape like that, but it got its lift from just
the shape of the vehicle, without having the wings. So I saw those
kind of landings.
I was there when we had accidents. You know, the feeling in the center
after one of the three X-15s crashed, and reading the reports after
the investigation, the long-term investigation, and then they simulated
what must have happened. Also we had an accident on the M2-F2. This
was when Bruce Peterson rolled [the M2-F3 on landing]. He lost his
eye in it, but the coverage for the six-million-dollar man, that's
from that.
And then we had the XB-70. We were just beginning some joint testing
on that. This is one of two hypersonic bombers. Anyway, one of them
crashed, killed our—well, our chief test pilot and another fellow
were in a chase plane, and they clipped the wing of the [XB-70]. The
[XB-70] went down and so did our chase plane, an F-104. We lost our
chief pilot and one of the people on the XB-70. Those things are always
awful.
But it is exciting just to see these strange vehicles. Then to have
the approach and landing test, that was very, very exciting. All these
thousands and thousands of people who'd come to the lake, and I remember,
as part of a group, we provided escorts for the VIPs who came to various
viewing sites. I saw Prince Charles [HRH Prince of Wales]. He came
to see one of those. It was just great stuff.
And also working with the engineers who work on the problems, like
Milt [Milton O.] Thompson, he was one of the X-15 pilots and also
flew the lifting bodies, and he and a couple of the engineers, the
old engineers, Dick [Richard E.] Day and Joe [Joseph] Weil, I remember
them working on the simulation for a Shuttle. It's not the moving-base
simulation, it's just an engineering simulation where they just have
the control stick and some displays and whatnot to figure out how
to get rid of this [pilot induced] oscillation [PIO] that came in
there.
It was just kind of neat to be working with these guys who solved
these problems. In Houston, astronauts are God, right? In our place,
the pilots were God. Then you get somebody like Milt Thompson who
[served as Chief Engineer after he returned as] a pilot. By this time,
he wasn't flying. You know, all the knowledge they had, all the experience.
So it was exciting.
The SR-71, also known when we had them as the YF-12, the blackbird.
The feeling you got when they flew, did a fly-by over or just as it's
coming in or taking off was just—you know, you just feel it
in your soul. They're just beautiful, they really are. You go out
and see these things, and they're dripping fuel and whatnot, but they're
just huge and they look otherworldly. They've been there for a long
time. A lot of things come and go, but those were always special.
My husband worked on instrumentation for the SR-71s and the X-15 and
some others, so it's special for him, too. Then they had a lot of
planes that were truly weird. You know, the forward-swept wings. We
had the X-29 forward-swept wing. Before that we had some remotely
flown vehicles like the HiMAT, highly maneuverable aircraft technology.
You've got a 3/8-size model, which we flew remotely and that was pretty
exciting, actually. That was where we began to develop a lot of our
techniques for developing aircraft systems and testing them and doing
this closed-loop testing, so this is a vehicle meant to test concepts,
strictly concepts, like composite structures. Digital control surfaces,
it has absolutely no hydraulics on it or analog systems (digital fly-by-wire
technology). And you'd see that thing fly. It would be dropped from
a—we have a lot of planes that were dropped from a mother ship
like a B-52. They weren't expected to take off. They'd drop and then
you'd see this thing do a turn. It must have been like a 12-G turn
it could do.
Wright: Must
have been exciting for the team members on the ground.
Harney: Well,
there's so much teamwork. At that time, we had fewer projects than
they have now, and they would be more complete. Instead of one experiment,
sometimes there would be multiple experiments, and it would be like
the whole plane itself would be an object of study, as opposed to
fitting a special structure on one wing of an existing production-model
plane. But the teamwork was really special.
I don't think it's quite the same now. There's a lot of, as I understand
it—I've been away seven years—but there are a lot of programs
that we provide facilities for somebody else to bring in their program,
and they bring in their own—you know, they have their goals,
they have their data systems, they have their way of doing things
and everything. We're just providing some facilities that they need.
And so really all you need are a program manager and you need facilities
that are operating, but you don't really need the kind of teamwork
we had then.
Wright: During
all this time, when all these things were going on and you were having
things given to you that were so totally different, did you find one
aspect that seemed to be more challenging than the others that maybe
just not necessarily frustrating, but you had to sit back and think
a little harder than the rest of them? Something that was just more
challenging than the rest that you were able to accomplish while you
were there. Because it sounds like the variety that you had kept you
pretty much prepared for whatever came your way. It seemed like you
kept learning so many different things that maybe you weren't tied
in, but maybe the same type of project management worked on each of
the areas that you were given.
Harney: I
guess the hardest part was always the people, really. You know, how
to make an environment such that people were always excited, as excited
as you were about it, who were challenged, who wanted to do what needed
to be done and not always do it themselves, and also to get people
to communicate because there were a lot of people—it's much
easier to get your assignment, grab it, and then go in the corner
and do it, but the projects always needed a lot more information [and
communication] than that.
It didn't do much good to have somebody complain, "Well, I didn't
get all the information I needed." It's very hard to know how
to give all the information. You don't know. Somebody who's giving
the information or has the requirement doesn't know all the information
they have to give you. They don't know what you need, so to speak.
So I guess getting this teamwork to go. There's a lot of camaraderie
and pride, but there's also a real trick. Not that I mastered it,
but the thing was communication between people was probably the most
important thing, to make it go smooth, to keep it a positive experience.
Wright: Well,
all that you've accomplished while you were there, are there one or
two aspects that you find to be the most rewarding when you look back,
that you're really glad you had that opportunity to work on that project
or manage that area?
Harney: Well,
I guess I don't feel like I would if I had been a researcher and had
a report to say, "Okay, now I've proven this or I've demonstrated
that, and now this concept or this philosophy is used on this plane
that's flying." It's nothing at all that tangible. And I suppose
that under my watch, so to speak, I guess all I can say is that I
kept doing more with less, and also breaking this barrier of, well,
what are the critical things that NASA needs to know how to do versus
what are the things we can buy.
I can think of one of the biggest challenges of all, now that I think
about it, was having engineers who wanted to design things themselves
instead of doing systems integration using stuff that's out there.
And also, when is good enough? You know, having some judgment about
just how far to go with something.
The most frustrating situation, you have some guy who wants to do
the same thing for twenty years, make it better for twenty years,
move it from this computer to that computer, or whatever. So I guess
one of the biggest things was actually starting off contracting out
some functions and initially they were all kind of piecemeal and now
having a large contract [to] do a lot [of the non-core functions].
In fact, I'm involved as a consultant somewhat now, and with one of
the contracts proposing on the successor to—actually, it's the
successor to the successor of the one I established, and it would
be probably like 120 contractors doing various things, whereas originally
those were solo (several separate contracts). All originally government,
but it doesn't need to be. That isn't very much to be proud of, to
say we turned [some functions over to] contractor[s], but I think
it does [help] the agency—they shouldn't be putting their resources
into those kinds of things.
Wright: Well,
like you mentioned, too, it brings in new ideas and you've got people.
Harney: Exactly,
because presumably, with a contractor, you have an award fee and those
kinds of things, and so you can look for innovation. Of course, the
trick is to get the NASA people not to try to tell the contractors
how to do it, but just be able to understand what is needed well enough
to be able to describe what is needed, not how to do it. So I suppose
that was always the balance. Balancing what NASA needed, what kind
of core skills NASA needed, and doing it the most effective way within
the boundaries that NASA's operating under.
Wright: Well,
you were certainly thrown many avenues to go. Did you have any regrets
at any point in time that you came to Lancaster instead of going to
Washington?
Harney: To
Washington?
Wright: Didn’t
you want to work on your master’s up there?
Harney: Right,
right. That's right. Well, I did get the master's eventually. But
no, I have absolutely no regrets. When I first went to NASA I knew
nothing about NASA. I just thought, okay, I'm going to work for the
government and that'll be good for a year or so. Because I thought
of the government as something like the post office. Not to pick on
the post office, but at the time, I thought, well, you work with these
gray file cabinets and that's it. But it was always very exciting
and stimulating and really, really kept me busy, too.
I was mentioning I played bridge with Harriet Smith when I was a computer
programmer because we actually took lunch breaks [then], but not for
the last twenty years. I mean, you just do things all the time [as
a supervisor].
Wright: And
just thinking about the social differences between twenty years ago,
or during those twenty years that, for instance, you would take lunch
and play bridge. Now people don't play cards at lunch.
Harney: I
think all those are gone, and at that time, I think, down in flight
ops [operations] they had a Hearts game at lunch. It was all part
of it. They had a [summer] NASA picnic and I think they still do but
I don't think it's the same bonding thing it was then. Used to have
a yearly Christmas dance and I don't think they do that every year
now.
Wright: Was
it more of a family-type atmosphere during that time period?
Harney: Yes.
Well, funding was all NASA and there was not as much turnover then.
Now it's not all NASA. There's lots of contractors, too, and they're
also coming to these same [functions], which is fine, but there's
more turnover, too, because contracts change and a lot of people continue,
but there's a lot of different people who don't. Even pilots change.
Various pilots have changed. Are you going to talk to Marta [Bohn-]
Meyer?
Wright: We
hope to at some point.
Harney: Because
there are some people who have really caused an impact over the years.
I've seen their role change a lot.
Wright: I
think it's another change for you, where I imagine you had mostly
male pilots and now you're able to work with—
Harney: They
still have only male pilots, test pilots, but Marta is their supervisor.
She's a pilot. She flew or does fly the SR-71. Actually, [the SR-71
is] inactive now, but [Marta flew] as a flight test engineer, not
as the primary pilot. But she is a pilot personally for pleasure,
but she's not a test pilot. Could be a flight test engineer. I'm not
putting her down. She's outstanding, and she's been everywhere. And
people like Harriet Smith, who became the first program manager.
In my area, it wasn't nearly as innovative. I mean, computer programmers.
It was an area for women that had already been established somehow.
But [when] Harriet became program manager, there were all men before
that. So we have, I believe—I don't know exactly what the mixture
is out there now, but I know Marta is probably our most accomplished
female.
Wright: We
hope to get to her. Part of our project is based on funding and the
direction on this project is given through the history office at Headquarters,
but we always give them suggestions and hopefully they'll march on
and do more.
Harney: Well,
they probably have a lot of her history anyway because she's been
a poster girl, and rightly so. She's very, very effective with young
people. I'm involved with the American Association of University Women
and also the junior college now. They have a science odyssey in January
and a special program for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, and
Marta has always been the featured motivational speaker, and it's
terrific.
And a lot of the Dryden folk come out, like people from the range
come out and they fly a mission and they set up a control center at
the college so the kids can talk to the pilots and they see what he's
doing and talk to him and ask him why he's doing this and that and
the other thing, so it's pretty neat.
Wright: What
else do you do? You mentioned you were consulting for some other companies
as well.
Harney: Well,
yes. That's just some this year. It's just a little bit of consulting.
I haven't generally been doing that. What I do is I work part-time
at the college, teach English as a second language, which is a complete
change. Yes, it is, and I really enjoy it. I admire the—this
is all adults, these are all adult immigrants. Terrific work ethics.
These people have worked so hard. They've raised a family. They have
kids, the kids are already fully bilingual and now it's their turn.
Anyway, I enjoy that. I've been doing that for five years.
Wright: Have
you been back to Michigan very often since you left the very small
town of a thousand that's still a thousand?
Harney: I
still have my mother there and one of my sisters and a brother, so
I go back at least once a year, sometimes twice.
Wright: Quite
a climate difference from there to here.
Harney: Right.
I'm not moving back.
Wright: You'll
take the sand over the snow.
Harney: Right.
Wright: Do
you have other plans in the future to possibly do more work with NASA
or some of the contractors to kind of keep in touch of what the changes
are going there?
Harney: Probably
not. Right now I can be of use to this particular contractor because
they're competing for this contract, which I was the mother of, so
to speak. But other than that, I'm not strong technically anymore.
I'm not current in a lot of the things, which is fine. It ended up
being stressful and also, even though it sounds like a lot of variety,
there was a lot of repetition as far as the management. It may be
different people but it's similar personnel things and there's just
so much bureaucracy. The agency gets older and there's just more and
more bureaucracy.
I guess I was pretty idealistic, too, in the beginning, and by the
time I quit I wasn't nearly as idealistic, and I didn't think people
could walk on water. I was always very deferential to my leaders,
so to speak, and then after a while you see all these silly things,
sometimes. Not all these silly things, but things. Or why did they
do that?
So I think I was ready to go, and I do enjoy the complete change.
So many people go back and do the same thing they did, but from the
contractor's side, I'm not really interested in that.
Wright: Well,
if you'd like, what I'd like to do right now is just take a small
break and we can stop for a few minutes and then come back.
Harney: I
guess a real highlight for me was my retirement flight. The pilots
have proficiency flights they have to do, and currently, or at least
when I was still at NASA, they flew F-18s primarily as the support
aircraft . . . and they used them for proficiency flying, and it seemed
like it often happened when somebody from Headquarters retired or
somebody retired that they got a ride, and so when I decided to take
an early out, and this was a sudden decision. It was kind of like
a two-week window and I said, "I'm going to go."
So I went to our chief of flight ops and I said, "Okay, I'd like
the ride." He says, "Okay, sure. No problem." So they
fitted me up with a suit and I flew backseat F-18 with Tom [Thomas
C.] McMurtry, who was head of flight ops. Mach one and a half and
he let me fly rolls and he did [a loop] over the top and actually,
I guess it's called the Dutch roll, some sort of roll, so that was
great. I have to say that I, myself—maybe I was talking about
what I was doing not being glamorous before, [but] I liked the glamour
part of NASA. That was the part that really made you feel good, that
ultimately, whatever you're doing fed into those planes, those activities.
Wright: How
long were you up on your retirement flight?
Harney: About
an hour.
Wright: Oh,
how exciting.
Harney: Yes,
it was great. Let's see, so as far as pure thrill, that was it, and
then also the other things I've already talked about, just fly-bys
and things like that. So when it came right down to it, the real thrills
did have directly to do with aircraft, or the Shuttle landings. One
July 4th, Ronald Reagan was there, President Reagan, and we had Enterprise,
which is the approach and landing test vehicle, and one Shuttle had
just landed, and another one was just taking off to go back to the
Cape, and the President and half a million people, or whatever it
was. It was just like, oh my God, who wouldn't want to work here?
Wright: I
imagine when the media came, too, for the landings in the early days
of the Shuttle system, it must have made almost a chaos at the Center
because it's such a small group that you were and then all of a sudden
you have all these strangers on base.
Harney: We
would drive in early to work so we wouldn't get caught in the traffic
and things like that.
Wright: During
your time, I guess, in the early years that you were there, I know
some of the NASA budget changed, and a lot of the funding was going
toward the manned space flights. Did you feel that in your work as
well? Were you impacted by that decision?
Harney: Yes.
We weren't able to expand things or do all the things we wanted to
do. In some cases, some of the facilities we were going to build were
delayed or canceled. Some of the flight projects were canceled and
some experiments were canceled. That was generally hiring freezes
and those kinds of things.
So for a while, in the late sixties, I don't think we were even recruiting
people, or very minimal. Because there was one period, early seventies
I think, where we went years without hiring anybody.
Wright: But
were there new projects introduced at that time?
Harney: Yes.
There was always a joke, in the sense of well, being more efficient.
And you'd have some of these engineers, you know, they'd be assigned
to three or four different projects, and you can't—like 10 percent
of the time on this and 10 percent of the time on that. Time doesn't
go down to 10 percent. You can't really be very efficient on 10 percent.
So a lot of people worked really hard and in very difficult circumstances.
I'm talking about people all across the Center. A lot of overtime.
Wright: And
that wears people down physically and mentally sometimes.
Harney: But
then there are some people who thrive on it. One of my bosses, Archie
Moore, the guy just loved being out there. I mean, working was his
hobby. In retrospect, just being there doesn't necessarily mean you're
getting good work done, but he was always there. There early and whatnot.
Johnson: I
was wondering, you started there in '65 and you were there during
relatively turbulent times, as far as the country was concerned, with
Vietnam and, of course, everything that was going on with the protests.
Some of the people we've interviewed that were working at Johnson
during that time period have talked about how they were so focused
on what they were doing, they weren't even aware of the outside world,
and every once in a while they'd stick their head up and realize some
of the things that were going on. Was that the same way at Dryden,
since you were doing pretty focused work there, too?
Harney: I
think it was, to a great extent. I mean, when I think of those years
I don't think of [world events] directly. I think of, okay, that's
when we were flying this and that's when we were doing that. Those
were not wrenching years. That's pretty hard to say, isn't it? Vietnam
was a terrible time, but I don't remember [those years] particularly
being terrible or otherwise.
I remember coming in to work—I mean, we carpooled, obviously,
since everybody lived generally remote, but discussing things like
the assassinations of [President John F.] Kennedy, the second Kennedy
[Robert F.], and Martin Luther King, [Jr.] things like that. Those
kind of events truly got through. But I don't remember any real carpool
discussion or other discussion, really, about the Vietnam War, for
instance. At home, I'm sure, there was awareness, but at work, generally
you'd be talking about what was going on at work. Really, it was very,
very focused. That's a good point.
Johnson: And
also you were talking about your flight for retirement. Did you ever
have any desire to fly yourself or to learn how to fly, since you
were out here in this area?
Harney: Yes,
I'm always interested in everything at that time. I did go skydiving
before I came out here, when I was still at Michigan, just for that
experience. When I was here I went gliding in a glider. But I guess
as far as flying itself, it was a real big commitment financially
and time-wise and at that time I was more interested in hiking and
rock-climbing and other things so it just didn't make the cut.
But in retrospect, I don't really miss not having been a pilot. There's
just so much time you can do things. For the first ten years I was
here, I spent most of my weekends gone in the mountains, usually hiking
or climbing or skiing or something like that. Became more of a homebody
after that and started doing things that kept me here, tennis or whatever.
I did not have my own children. When I married Paul, he had two daughters,
so I'm a stepmom. I think that happened to a lot of women, too, who
were working at that time. A lot of people who didn't have large families
or didn't have any families, as far as their own children, because
they were just wrapped up in what they were doing at work.
Wright: Looking
back at when you went to the university and left your small town,
you mentioned you really didn't have an idea what you wanted to do
with mathematics. Did you have any idea in the world you'd be working
on all this future technology and things that would be touching space?
Harney: No.
If I had I would have studied applied mathematics and probably engineering,
and maybe I wouldn't have gone into it. I really like art and literature.
[Laughter] You know, just as an avocation. But then again, no, I really
did like the technical part, but I think I would have felt more confident
if I'd had more applied mathematics training and/or engineering training.
So in some sense, I felt remiss for not being, you know, understanding
electronics per se. Not just the logic of computers but where the
electrons are going. So in retrospect I suppose if I had known I was
going to get involved in NASA, I would have done that.
Wright: That
probably was kind of a hard crystal ball to look into since you were
moving into a whole field that wasn't even there yet.
Harney: Well,
I had no idea. After that summer science camp I mentioned that I went
to before I was a senior in high school, I thought I wanted to go
into chemistry. At the camp, besides getting involved with rudimentary
computers, I was doing something with organic chemistry and the idea
of how these molecules are constructed, I said, "Oh, I'm going
to get into that."
But when I got to the university and got into a unified science program,
a unified science program in the sense that the calculus and the physics
and the chemistry—it was physical chemistry, not organic—were
all integrated, because the universe doesn't just stop here and go
into another, you know, this is physics, this is chemistry. It is
all tied together and you need mathematics to understand any of it.
And so it all kind of went that way, and mathematics seemed to be
the most straightforward way to go.
One of my mathematics professors was really a snob when it came to
applied mathematics and engineering. He went so far as to, when I
was taking a topology class, it was being held in one of the engineering
buildings on campus and he refused to hold it there. He says, "We're
going back to Angel Hall," where the mathematics [department
was.] He wouldn't even have a class in [an] engineering [building].
I'm young and impressionable and coming from the farm, I think all
these educated people are God and so I think, "Oh well, I certainly
don't want anything to do with applied stuff," and I truly, truly
regret that. I think I would have had more insight and would have
been even more effective if I had that background.
So in some sense, I was a little bit of a fish out of water, I think,
in areas that I was working with and so it had to just be kind of,
use a lot if intuition and being able to understand what they're saying,
being trained by my people, so to speak, and understanding what they're
saying and using logic and intuition to figure out if it made sense
or not instead of actually having had the same education they did.
Because the people I was hiring were engineers.
Wright: It
seems like it has worked out well and you have had a variety of experiences.
I know that you've left quite an impact there. It may not seem so
but it sounds like you have just done so much that is still making
things work well. We feel very fortunate to be able to talk with you
and appreciate your time to do that.
Harney: Well,
thank you and I appreciate you coming.
Wright: Are
there some other things that you would like to share with us before
we close this afternoon?
Harney: No,
I think that pretty much covers it. I guess, I did get an exceptional
service medal. That was one of my proud moments.
Wright: Oh.
Well, tell about that before we close for the day.
Harney: It
was just one of those NASA medals. But every year, they have Dryden
awards and they have NASA-wide awards, and so in [19] '92 I got an
exceptional service medal and I was very proud of that. It was for
[providing] data systems, flight test range facilities and teams to
support experimental aircraft and the Space Shuttle.
Wright: Is
that given here at Dryden?
Harney: At
Dryden, but they have Headquarters people come out. It wasn't the
administrator. Who was it? I forget, but anyway. So that made me feel
good.
Wright: And
it was not too long after that then you retired?
Harney: Yes.
May 3, 1993. So I was early out. I guess I was just getting tired
of the people management part but that was certainly the only thing
I was qualified to do at that point, too. So I said, "I want
a change while I'm still young," so I did.
Wright: It
sounds like you're keeping very busy with a new variety of assignments
for yourself.
Harney: It's
easy to keep busy. And I do enjoy teaching, teaching the adults. They're
so appreciative. I guess that's one of the differences. When you're
responsible for people, you hear about so many bad things, and people
are always having trouble. You keep fixing things and doing things,
but there's always somebody who's got a problem. But with the people
in teaching, they're there because they want to be. They don't have
to be there. And they're so appreciative, my God. So I guess I like
that.
Wright: Well,
we wish you well with that and wish them well because I'm sure you'll
open a lot of doors for them with your teaching, and I know that's
very rewarding for you to be able to see them blossom and take off
and have such wonderful futures ahead of them. So good luck with it
all.
Harney: Thank
you.
Wright: Thank
you.
[End
of interview]