from BAMA to von Braun Team to NASA

In September 1958 I completed my final Co-Op secession with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) and returned to Tuscaloosa for my senior year.  If all goes well with my studies, I will receive a Bachelor of Science Degree in Physic and Mathematics in May of 1959.  It was a hard two semesters for I was taking a heavier load than normal to have enough hours to graduate.

In the spring semester of 1959 I began job interviews, including an interview with ABMA.   Co-Op students were not guaranteed a job with ABMA after graduation but were given preference when jobs were available.  By the first of May, I had in hand offers from RCA for their military electronics facility in Camden New Jersey and from Hughes Aircraft Corporation to work with electronic hardware in military jet aircraft in southern California.  Both of these offers were for exciting jobs with good pay and benefits, but the job I really wanted was in Huntsville Alabama with ABMA where I could be working with the Army's von Braun rocket team.

After my last class of the day, I headed to the post office.  On the way I was thinking that if I did not hear from ABMA this week, I would need to accept one of the offers.  I opened my mail box and extracted a letter from the U. S. Army that was post-marked “Redstone Arsenal”.  I ripped the letter open and---Hurrah!---I was going to be a part of the von Braun team.

When I returned to ABMA, there was still some debate in Washington as to whether the von Braun team would be part of the civilian space program known as NASA or remain with the Army and just provide rocketry support to NASA.  In a little more than a year the decision was made and in September 1960 we gathered in the parking lot of ABMA Headquarters to listen to  President Eisenhower conduct a ceremony which transferred the von Braun group and its facilities to the newly created George C. Marshall Space Flight Center.  At that time we were already working on the next generation of space vehicles.   The very successful REDSTONE and JUPITER military missile systems were to be combined into a multi-stage rocket called SATURN.  We were also preparing a REDSTONE Rocket to carry the first USA astronaut into space during the coming year.

Copyright 2012© Willie E. Weaver