Earthrise (4 page)

Starting the plane was interesting. After Herm turned on a switch in the cockpit, he would walk to the front of the plane and manually spin the propeller about three times to start it. He’d jump into his seat, fasten his seatbelt, and we’d taxi down the runway so I could get a feel for how the plane moved along. We’d then take off and fly in small loops above the ranches and farms before practicing landings. We did this over and over again for the next few weeks until I felt comfortable and confident with the plane. One morning after we’d flown for a while, Herm turned to me with a discernible twinkle in his eye and said, “Okay, Ed—I think you’re ready to give it a go.” I wasn’t sure whether he was serious or not, but I felt like I was ready for my first solo.

“Sure,” I said. “Now’s a good time as any.”

The two of us pulled over alongside the runway, and Herm climbed out. “Take her around and come back. I’ll be waiting right here.”

“Right,” I said, trying to sound as brave as I could.

I tightened my seatbelt and looked over the controls to make sure everything was set correctly. Then I started rolling down the runway going a little bit faster and a little bit faster. I could feel my heart start to pound. I felt somewhat nervous, so I slowed down the plane and temporarily stopped to collect my thoughts.
What if something goes wrong up there? Can I bail out if I need to? What if I crash?

I turned around to look for Herm, and there he was standing in the same place, smiling and waving me on. I nodded to Herm and remembered what Grandpa Bull used to say, “Steady as she goes, Edgar. Steady as she goes.” So I looked straight ahead and started moving the plane down the runway again, going faster and faster. And then, just as Herm taught me, I pulled back on the control stick, and up, up I went.

My heart was still pounding, but this time I was actually flying by myself. My confidence soared as I looped the Piper around and then headed back to land just as I was supposed to. When I finally set the Piper down, Herm was waving his arms and giving me a hearty thumbs-up. It was a great day.

I continued to wash planes and fly as much as I could that year. I knew the landscape and terrain of the Pecos Valley from riding a horse, but now I could see so many amazing sights from above. I saw miles and miles of landscape and waterways. I saw the Capitan Mountains to the west, and the Great Plains and farmland over to the east. I could look down at the large Rio Grande River and the Pecos River where I liked to fish. As I flew over my family’s ranches and farms, I was eventually able to pinpoint specific places like my home, Tommy’s home, our ranch, and Artesia High School.

A few times I landed my plane on our fields at Hagerman ranch, but Dad was pretty mad about it because it scared the cattle. “Take your flying elsewhere, Edgar,” Dad said. And I did.

I remembered the acrobatics of the barnstormer who landed in our cotton field years ago. That now seemed like fun to me, so over time as my flying skills improved, I learned how to do things with my plane like spinning, barrel rolls, and stalling. It was just so exciting and I never felt afraid.

My parents were happy I’d learned to fly because they knew I was the type of kid who was curious, into everything, and always wanting to do more.

And by the time I was 16 I was a fully licensed pilot.

From Atomic Bombs to ETs

Growing up in the Pecos Valley was a kid’s paradise of natural springs, rose-colored deserts, and surreal, limestone-laced caverns. It was also an eerie world of strange science, atomic bombs, and talk of mysterious UFO crashes and extraterrestrials.

Only about 5,000 to 6,000 people lived in Roswell when I grew up there, but it always seemed like there was a lot of unusual stuff going on that I heard about either directly or indirectly.

In the fourth and fifth grade, for example, I used to walk about a mile to school on a white gravel road along our farm fields. On most days, I would walk right past the white, two-story home of an elderly man named Dr. Robert Goddard. Sometimes I felt uncomfortable walking by myself because the home was isolated and basically out in the middle of nowhere. I was also a little nervous because some of the townsfolk claimed Goddard was a mad scientist.

Years later I learned that the man was an eminent rocket scientist and considered the father of modern rocketry and space flight in the United States. Little did I know that one day I’d be thankful for the inventions of “crazy” Goddard because his creative and scientific work helped me fly to the Moon.

Very eerie things also happened in the skies around the Roswell area and beyond. One time after I’d gone to bed, I remember looking out my window and seeing a bright flash in the sky that seemed to come up near the distant Capitan Mountains. The flash could be seen for miles and miles and I remember it so vividly.

My parents later explained that the bright light was from the test of the world’s first atomic bomb that was being exploded at the Trinity Site of the White Sands Proving Grounds located many miles from our home in New Mexico. We weren’t sure what to make of this because it was all so new, and we didn’t know the potential danger of nuclear weaponry. But some people say this test in New Mexico ushered in the Atomic Age.

The Roswell Incident

In the summer of 1947 when I was 17 and getting ready to go to college, something happened near Roswell that changed the town, and perhaps my life, forever.

On July 8, 1947, the local paper, the
Roswell Daily Record,
came out with a headline that shook up the entire town. In bold type, the headline read:
RAAF CAPTURES FLYING SAUCER ON RANCH IN ROSWELL REGION.
RAAF stood for the Roswell Army Air Force.

Like most teenagers, I was naturally curious about the whole thing and wanted to know all about it. Tons of questions raced through my mind.
Was it an alien spacecraft? If so, were the extraterrestrials (ETs) friendly? What would the ETs look like? If there were ETs on the crashed craft, what happened to them?

Tommy and I thought about taking his scooter out to the ranch where the saucer had supposedly crashed. But we figured it was about 100 miles northwest from where we lived and decided it was too far away. We listened all day to the radio for updates, but not much was reported. I asked my parents about it, but they didn’t know much either.

The next day the newspaper came out with a second story about the incident, saying the UFO was not an alien spacecraft but was a weather balloon that had crashed on the rancher’s property. Suddenly the whole thing seemed pretty silly, and I didn’t pay much more attention to it at the time. My thoughts were primarily focused on getting ready to start college at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pennsylvania.

In only 17 years, so much had already happened in my life. But now it was time to leave home and set out on my own.

ROCKET MAN

Blasting a human into space from the Earth to the Moon was no easy feat. Thankfully, Dr. Robert Hutchings God-dard, an American physicist and highly gifted inventor, helped make it happen. He saw the great potential of future space travel, and his many advances in science have been crucial for modern day spaceflight.

Goddard was born in 1882 in Worchester, Massachusetts, and is considered by many to be the “father of modern rocketry.” As a teenager, he climbed into a tree and had an “aha” moment that redirected his lifework. He suddenly imagined how fantastic it would be to be able to fly into space—even to Mars!

Robert Goddard grew up during the advent of electric power. Although he suffered from tuberculosis as a child and missed a great deal of school, he was an avid reader and had a strong interest in science. One of his favorite books was H. G. Wells’s science fiction novel,
The War of the Worlds.

He went on to build the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket, which he successfully launched on March 16, 1926, in Auburn, Massachusetts. But his revolutionary research and wild ideas of flying into space were often ridiculed, especially in mainstream media. As a result, Goddard became reclusive and eventually moved to Roswell, New Mexico, in 1930. There he found wide-open spaces to build, test, and launch his rockets.

Dr. Robert Goddard’s pioneering work in rocketry was recognized and honored after his death in 1945. In 1959, the US Congress honored Goddard as the “Father of Space Flight.” That same year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) chose the name Goddard Space Flight Center for its first space flight complex.

Spreading My Wings

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”

—Amelia Earhart

T
he day I left home to head off to college, Mom, Dad, Sandra, Jay, Tommy, and many of my relatives came to the train station to say good-bye. I was excited to be going to Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but it was hard to think about leaving behind everything I’d known.

Mom handed me a sack lunch to take on my trip and gave me a big hug. When the train whistle blew, I knew it was time to go. I boarded the train and quickly grabbed a window seat so I could lean out and wave good-bye to everyone. As Sandra and Jay waved back, I could see this wasn’t easy for them and I knew we’d miss each other.

Shortly after the train moved out of the station, I opened up my sack lunch and polished off my favorite sandwich, a burger with cheese, which Mom had made me. I then settled in for the long 1,500-mile journey winding through New Mexico, Oklahoma, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and then on over to Pennsylvania.

As I looked out at the beautiful fields and farmlands that I’d either worked or played on as a child, I wondered if the train was traveling over the very tracks Grandpa Mitchell and my dad had laid down so many years ago. And as the train methodically chugged along through the many small towns and a big city here or there, I tried to imagine the new world that was awaiting me.

Choosing Carnegie

Although Carnegie Tech was a long way from home, the decision to go there was a good one. I had thought long and hard about my college choices during my senior year at Artesia High School. At one point I even considered going to school to study music.

But my math and science teacher, Robert Parham, encouraged me to apply to more technical, science-based schools like Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Mr. Parham helped me fill out all my applications, and he was a wonderful role model and great mentor in my life. I felt very appreciative of his help.

Carnegie Tech, which is now called Carnegie Mellon, was the first school to accept me as a college student, and I thought this was a good sign of where I should go. My parents also had friends who lived in the Pittsburgh area, so there was a strong family connection for me.

But when I finally got to my freshman dorm, I suddenly felt apprehensive about everything. I wondered if my professors and classmates would think I was some just some straw-headed cowboy from the farm. Then I quickly realized that most of the new kids I met had similar feelings about fitting in.

After I hung up my clothes and made up my bed, I headed outside to check out the campus. I first walked to the Hunt Library that was located in the quad area called “The Cut.” I noticed that instead of the traditional red brick buildings that are so common in eastern universities, Carnegie had sandy colored brick buildings with green roofs. There were also a lot of trees and grass, and coming from the dry, arid Southwest, I liked what I saw. Plus, I was really looking forward to being outside in the winter snow.

During my freshman year, I enjoyed classes in basic subjects such as chemistry, calculus, history, and the language arts. Sometimes on the weekends I’d take a bus or streetcar to visit my parents’ friends and have dinner. And every once in a while I would babysit their young daughter, which was a nice diversion from my studies.

In my sophomore year I had a full course schedule and I also joined the Kappa Sigma fraternity. I was busy, there was a lot to do, and I had expenses to cover. So to earn a little extra spending money, a fraternity brother and I took part-time jobs at the Bethlehem Steel Mills near Pittsburgh. We worked nights cleaning blast furnaces, and we’d go back to Carnegie Tech and get up the next day to go to class. It was hot, dirty, and exhausting work, but it paid pretty well.