A Very OK Podcast
Episode 20: “Higher and Faster”
November 15, 2022
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I am the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, and with me, as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn. He is the former executive director. And, Bob, it’s so great to see you here today. How are things in your world?
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Trait, going well. We’ve had a beautiful fall in Oklahoma this year. A little bit more rain, and just enjoying life in Oklahoma.
Thompson: The rain has been nice. We’ve desperately needed it. I took my kids camping out to Lake Eufaula State Park not too long ago, and boy was the lake low. And so I am loving seeing this rain coming through, and we need a lot more of it. So I’m not going to be disappointed by a few cloudy days if we have them this fall.
I want to bring in someone who’s going to be talking with us, and this is Dan Provo. Dan is the director of the Oklahoma History Center, which is our fantastic museum of Oklahoma history, right here in Oklahoma City, across the street from the State Capitol and the building that we have all of our administrative offices in, and Dan has done a phenomenal job over the past 20 years of making sure that this museum has been top of the line. And we want you to all come and see it. Dan, welcome in.
Dan Provo: Thank you. I appreciate the invitation and the opportunity to be part of the conversation.
Thompson: Well, Dan, one of the things that has been, you know, one of your crowning achievements over the last couple of years, and unfortunately, the exhibit that Oklahomans and Space is a fantastic exhibit. But we unveiled it just in time for COVID, right?
Provo: The timing could have been better. It took about 10 years to develop, but the end result is well worth it, and we look forward to sharing it with folks for many years to come.
Thompson: It’s a marvelous exhibit, and we’ll talk a little bit more about that here in a little bit. But we are talking today about Oklahomans and the space program, particularly in that really, that period of the 1960s and the 1970s when the space program was really getting off the ground. So when we had the Gemini and the Apollo programs, and then later on, that’s what leads us into the space shuttle era. But we have so many Oklahomans that have contributed to the space program. But of course, we always like to talk a little bit of pop culture. And some of the best movies out there are space movies, right, Bob? I know you’ve got some favorites.
Blackburn: Oh, I do, and of course, when you look at the history of Oklahomans in space, you always think about tough situations, and how do people deal with challenges and look for opportunities, and two recent movies that deal with both of those subjects would be Matt Damon’s The Martian, and then Sandra Bullock’s movie Gravity. Both of them dealing with disasters and somehow, how can you adjust? And of course, my heroes like Gordon Cooper and Tom Stafford and others from Oklahoma have dealt with those kinds of situations. And so, those resonated with me when I saw those at the theater.
Thompson: Well, The Martian is one of my favorites that you just mentioned, and it’s got a great quote in it. And I use this quote to think about how we approach, you know, running an agency and doing the things that we need to do. We’re constantly faced with problems and things that we need to solve. And at the end of that movie, I hope it’s not a spoiler, but he’s lecturing to some college students, and he says, “At some point everything’s going to go south on you. Everything’s going to go south, and you’re going to have to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem and then the next one.” And I love that attitude. And that movie is great for exhibiting how solving one problem can lead to solving the next. But if you sort of hang your head and give up, that’s where you’re going to stay.
Blackburn: Yeah. And one last popular culture reference in this is for all of us central Oklahomans over the age of 70, and I’m kind of leading that crew right now. But we all remember WKY Television in the 1950s with Danny Williams, starred a TV show called The Adventures of Dan D. Dynamo, 3-D Danny, and he had Space Science Center, and every day we would rush home from school, and he outdrew Walt Disney, Disney, the Disney show at the time, and we would rush, and he would take off in his Space Science Center and these adventures in space. So all of us baby boomers in the ’50s, well before our first launch, we were thinking we were going to get to the moon someday. That was part of our childhood. And Danny Williams was this great entertainer in Oklahoma History, represented that for us every day. And now, in this museum here at the History Center, Dan Provo helped put it together. We found some talented people, Cameron Eagle and Chuck Clowers, to put together a reproduction of Space Science Center. So someone, if they’re my age and older, they’re going to remember Space Science Center. Come see it. You can see 3-D Danny’s spacesuit that he wore on the air.
Thompson: Yeah. It’s great, it’s great. Dan, what are a couple of your favorite space movies?
Provo: There’s so many. You’ve already talked about The Martian. And one of the things that makes space movies special to me is when you can make a connection to them. You know, in our case, being in Oklahoma, of course, that’s Donna Shirley and her connection to the first Mars rover program. And another story of a young woman going to the university at the University of Oklahoma, going and wanting to get an engineering degree and being told, girls don’t do that. And 40 years later, she was an associate dean in that same college of engineering, having persevered and succeeded all the way through. I think some of my other favorites are The Right Stuff, for all kinds of reasons. I love the progression from aviation through space flight, some of the personalities involved, and again, making connections with people that have strong ties to Oklahoma. As well as Apollo 13; extraordinary movie in all kinds of ways, again with strong Oklahoma connections. Directed by Ron Howard, talking about Fred Haise in it as one of the crew members.
Thompson: Played by Bill Paxton.
Provo: Indeed. And Fred Haise, of course, went to school at OU and was in the Oklahoma Air National Guard, has strong connections to Oklahoma, continues to be back from time to time. So those dynamics, those interpersonal stories that ability to make connections with people, those are always, I think, really particularly interesting to me.
Thompson: That great scene in Apollo 13, once again, you’re talking about problem-solving. And these space movies tend to have a theme along that lines. But when they dump out the big box of parts, and they’re trying to fix the oxygen system, and they say, you’ve got to make this square filter fit in this round hole here. And he says, you have, I don’t know what it is, an hour to figure it out. And all those engineers get together and they start working on it. But for me, I would just think, well, I’m sorry, I guess they’re going to die today (laughing) because I would not have that ability to do that. But the level of brilliance and expertise and the people that just continued to try, you know, try something, it fails; try something, it fails. I’m continually inspired by that.
Provo: And the level of creative teamwork because they were all pulling together to save the lives of those people that were in space. So it was get the job done, get it done right, and get it done the best way you can at every level, from the mission control, mission control officers, to flight engineers, every aspect of it was a coordinated effort to succeed.
Thompson: Yeah. Gene Kranz at Mission Control in that movie says, “I don’t care what anything was designed to do. I care what it can do.” So, well, a couple of my favorite movies—Hidden Figures came out just a few years ago in 2016 and had a wonderful cast, including Taraji P. Henson, and Octavia Spencer, and Kevin Costner. But it was a little-known story about these Black mathematicians who were on the front lines. They called them computers back then because they did computations, but they were on the front lines there, working on the Gemini program and making sure that we could actually get a man into space, and to see what they went through, all of the discrimination that they went through, just not because of their ability, but because of the color of their skin. That was such an inspiring movie to see what they fought through. And then, of course, I have to say this one is one of my favorites. And it’s not based in reality, but it’s Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs, and a fantastic spoof of the Star Wars movie. Let me see if I can do my best Dark Helmet impression here. “And now, you see, the evil will always triumph because good is dumb.” That’s my Dark Helmet. I hope it was good. If not, I’ll have Aaron and cut it out.
(laughs) But there’s a lot of great space movies out there, and I encourage you guys to check those out when you have a chance. But, Bob, we have for a state, we have about, what, 3.5 million, 4 million people in the state of Oklahoma. We’re probably as big as we have been. So, going back through time, we’ve been a much smaller state in population. We’ve punched way above our weight in terms of Oklahomans contributing to the space program. And when you come into that gallery, Dan, that you guys have put together, and along a whole wall is a whole line of Oklahomans who have contributed. And those are just the astronauts, not counting the people at Flight and Mission Control. But we have had a lot of people contribute to the space program. Bob, what do you attribute that to?
Blackburn: Well, really three things, and I’ll try to keep this short. One is the history of Oklahoma being a landlocked state far from anything else. Very few resources in the beginning, and transportation was always a challenge. So, as I always like to say, how do you overcome challenge? Look for opportunities. And so generally, people who could go farther, little more cheaply, more efficiently were succeeding. And so Oklahomans were defined by mobility. In fact, Arrell Gibson wrote a great essay for me when I was editor of The Chronicles on that defining issue of mobility. How do you get there? How do you get there quicker? Well, you combine that with the pioneer story. One of the last frontiers settled, and people coming here that faced challenges in their old communities. They come, they work a little harder. They try a little bit more. They understand teamwork, helping each other. And so you get the personal values with a pioneer spirit, with this emphasis on mobility. And so people like to go fast. They like to go higher. The Wiley Post story of the world, that’s sort of the typical story you come away with there and all those pioneers of his generation.
But then you throw on top of that the fact that two things came together in the 1950s. One was that we had “the King of the Senate,” Robert S. Kerr from Ada, Oklahoma, who was born in, literally born in a log cabin in Indian Territory, has an oil company, gets into diversified industries, becomes a governor of the state of Oklahoma during World War II, coming out, becomes a US senator. And probably, he and Lyndon Johnson were the where the driving forces of the US Senate in the 1950s, just as we were entering another phase of world history that would impact all of this, and that was the Cold War. So, by the time you get the Truman administration after World War II and the Soviet bloc hunkering down and saying, we are going to control, we’re going to control as much of the world as we can with our way of life, our form of government, our socialistic system of economics, and the two halves of the world split. And the tension sometimes is forgotten. Right now, we’re thinking of it with the war in Ukraine. But in the 1950s, the world was going to come to an end. We really thought that in the 1950s, and the Cold War was real, and it was survival. And so you get this motivation at the national level, somehow we have to compete with this Soviet way. And as a despotism, with unilateral control, they could move quicker. Democracy is messy, as we’re seeing in politics. It’s messy. But we have strengths that they did not have, of course, and with the edge in technology, we’re competing. But then you get to the point where when the nation says we have got to compete, and then Sputnik, when the Soviets flew into space before us, the entire country was petrified. They’re going to beat us to space. They’re going to use that in this Cold War. They’re going to be able to fire down on our country. And in this new dimension of mobility and weapons, and suddenly the country said, we’ve got to fight back. And the Eisenhower administration and the Kennedy administration, all of this is happening when we have one of the guiding forces in the US Senate, Robert S. Kerr, who says, yeah, we’re going to be involved with it. You get the spirit of Oklahomans at their core, saying, yes, we want to go higher and faster. We want to do more. We’ll work hard. We’ll learn. And this emphasis on mobility. Those three things came together that Oklahomans were punching well above their weight when it came to those first generations of space exploration.
Thompson: And Dan, so October 4, 1957, is when Sputnik is launched. And there’s a fascinating podcast about the space program that I encourage everyone to listen to, in addition to our great podcast. But it’s called Moonrise, and it was done by The Washington Post. And in that podcast, Lillian Cunningham, who is the host, talks about how Eisenhower wasn’t particularly concerned about Sputnik, what didn’t really register on his radar. But LBJ was very concerned about this, and LBJ used this as a way to start ginning up support for the space program. And remember, 1958 is when NASA is formed. Dan, in 1961, May 25, 1961, John F. Kennedy, in a joint session of Congress, says this: “First, I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.” What does that do for the space program?
Provo: I think that’s the real, real jumpstart to everything because he’s committing the nation, the nation’s treasure, resources, creativity, and some of the very best minds around to making that a reality. And you can see it throughout the space program. Young engineers, scientists, pilots, test pilots, answering NASA’s call, coming together, and basically inventing something that had never been done before. And you see it over and over again, the ability to look at a problem, to apply critical thinking to it and say, yes, nobody’s ever done it before, but it needs to be done. So this is what we’re going to try. And all these folks coming together to pool their talents is just an extraordinary story, just by all kinds of extraordinary people.
Thompson: And we’ve, the first, one of the first programs, the Mercury program, you have the Mercury Seven, and we’ve got an Oklahoman who was part of the Mercury Seven. Can you talk a little bit about Gordon Cooper?
Provo: Sure. Gordon Cooper from Shawnee, Oklahoma, is represented there in several ways right now, as well. But again, a test pilot, a person who was striving to go higher, faster, and farther than other people had gone. And the ability to, again, take risks, the ability to assess the situation, the ability to react appropriately under pressure. All those things are critical elements, and he certainly possessed them and demonstrated them over and over again.
Thompson: He was the command pilot on Gemini V in 1965. He piloted Faith 7, which was the last and longest of the Mercury flights on May 15 to 16, 1963. So a guy who grew up in Shawnee is one of the pioneers of the space program. That’s pretty fascinating.
Provo: It’s a tremendous story. But again, we see it over and over again. You see it in the story of General Stafford growing up in Weatherford. You see it in the story of other astronauts either from or associated with the state, people growing up in Enid, Oklahoma, and becoming astronauts, people adopting the state, such as Shannon Lucid, who was born in China to missionary parents, but adopted Bethany as her hometown, and grew up there. And the impact that she had, again, an extraordinary story. When you look at it, she’s a little-known individual, but she flew in space seven times. That’s a remarkable achievement. And again, it’s this quiet determination because she was also told girls don’t do this. And she said, uh-huh, and then went ahead and did it. So that’s part of the story as well.
Thompson: And we have Fred Haise, who was on the Apollo 13 mission, which we just talked about that movie, but he was born in Mississippi, but graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in aeronautical engineering, became an astronaut in 1966. And so, another Oklahoman who is a very well accomplished astronaut. Now talking about the Apollo program, one of our own, General Tom Stafford, who we’re going to talk to here in just a few minutes, he was the pilot on that Apollo 10 mission, and that Apollo 10 mission set the stage, Bob, for the lunar landing with Apollo 11 in July of 1969. But without Apollo 10, that doesn’t happen.
Blackburn: That’s right. Because, you know, he’d been a pioneer in so many parts of the space program from the time that he got into the NASA programs, and really, he chose the site for the landing. You know, what all of us around the world were watching when Neil Armstrong set that foot on the moon. Well, that site had been chosen by Tom Stafford, and he overcame so many challenges and came up with the technical solutions, the human solutions, and just a remarkable person, and we really owe a lot to Tom Stafford.
Thompson: Now, I wasn’t born yet when the moon landing happened, but do you both have recollections of that moment?
Provo: Absolutely. Through the whole space program of the ’60s, very clear memories of being glued to the little black-and-white television set and watching these events unfold, which was just remarkable, up to and including the first lunar landing. And when you look at those things, one of the things that’s fascinating about what we do in museums is along the way, you get to meet some extraordinary people. And the stories that Tom Stafford, that Fred Haise, that others tell; not all history is in the history books, and you get their stories. I once heard a visitor asked Tom Stafford, “Were you ever tempted on Apollo 10 to just go down and land on the moon just to be the very first one?” And he looked him right in the eye and said, “Never. That was not my mission.” So again, a team effort, mission-oriented. It’s the success of all, and that was the focus. Give everything you’ve got for the success of the total program.
Blackburn: And Trait, you know, Dan has been a part of the History Center since the very beginning. We hired Dan, I think ’99. I’d just become deputy director, or excuse me, executive director, and so Dan was one of the first big hires. And I told him at the time, I says the History Center is going to be yours. Let’s make it work. We had Bob Thomas, my deputy director, who is an architect. I said, guys, once in a lifetime opportunity.
Well, in the planning documents, I had already had several iconic parts of Oklahoma history when I was trying to sell it to the legislature, to the public, to raise the money. And one of the things I had in it was a spacecraft. I wanted a flown spacecraft. So that was there in the very beginning, along with the Winnie Mae, USS Oklahoma silver service, and a Ditch Witch, I remember, but two or three using as an image. Well, of course, Dan was the perfect partner to follow through with that. And so we kept looking for a spacecraft to put in the museum, and with General Stafford’s help, we said we need to get the Apollo 10 spacecraft from a museum in London. And General Stafford believed that it was undervalued there and not very well appreciated. So we started working on that. We went to the Smithsonian several times. We worked with the head, General Dailey. I’ll never forget some of our early meetings there. We couldn’t get it, because it was right at a bad time when President Bush at the time needed to be working with our British allies more so. So he didn’t want to mess with the British Museum. So that’s when we got the Gemini spacecraft from St. Louis, and that was one of the primary focal points in the first days of the History Center. And then later, of course, we had a chance to get the flown Apollo spacecraft with Oklahoma connections. But Dan was there the whole way, leading that effort. We had another member of our team, Bill Moore, a very gifted videographer, who I had hired even earlier than that, when I was deputy director. Bill came in with our video program, and he eventually would do a documentary series on Oklahomans in space. So, Bill was a partner in all of that, working with Dan, and so the exhibit you see today is really the result of 20 years trying to build up the story of Oklahomans in space.
Provo: You know, you talk about some of those early efforts, and I have very clear memories of you and I in Washington with General Stafford at the Air and Space Museum, and the extraordinary nature of walking around in that museum, the most visited museum in the world. And here are these iconic aircraft and iconic spaceships, and Bob and I are walking around with General Stafford, and people don’t know. And you want to say, people look, look who this is. This is an extraordinary American hero! And typically, he drew no attention to himself. He was just quiet. But it was a special moment to talk with him and have him point out how these different things worked. And there was a mock-up of Apollo-Soyuz, and talking about the connections and the problems and the different circumstances there. Definitely the real deal.
Thompson: Well, just a few months ago, you came and got me in my office, and you said, Trait, you want to meet an astronaut? And I about bolted out of my chair like it had a spring set into it. I was like, well, heck yeah. Do rattlesnakes kiss carefully? Of course, I want to meet an astronaut. And so, we go downstairs, and John Herrington is down there, and John Herrington, who’s the first Native American into space, who’s Chickasaw. And he lives up in Montana now. But he was here, and it was so fascinating because we had, we were down there showing him some of the exhibits and everything. You know, a kid came into, with their family, came into there and we said, hey, see that picture of that guy on the wall waving from space? That’s that guy. And his eyes just got about as big as dinner plates as he’s kind of putting that two and two together that he’s meeting an astronaut. Well, I felt the same way. There’s just something about somebody that has done something that only a few people in the world have ever done. That’s just, it gives you a just a feeling of pride that you even get to be in their airspace.
Provo: It’s, again, when you get to talk with these different folks, and the progression in time from the the earliest astronauts through Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, into the shuttle programs, it gives you a window to history. That is a very special window and something that we’re privileged to be a part of and to be able to take a glimpse through that window into some of the really little-known elements of history.
Thompson: And Dan, in sort of the focal point of that space gallery here in the Oklahoma History Center is the Skylab IV Apollo space capsule. Can you talk a little bit about that? And we also had an Oklahoma that was on that mission.
Provo: We did. Again, this comes back to the fact that Oklahomans have been involved in every aspect of the manned space program— the only state that can make that claim. There are states with more astronauts, but no state has been involved in every single step along the way. In this particular case, things came together to allow us to move forward and bring a flown Apollo command module here. The technical designation is CM-118, and up until just recently, it was SpaceX. It continued to hold the record for the longest duration in space of any US spacecraft. And it wasn’t the shuttles, it wasn’t other things that broke those records. It was here just within the last year or so. And its pilot was Bill Pogue, another Oklahoman. So there were three flown missions to Skylab in 1973 and 1974. Oklahomans were on two of them: Owen Garriott and then Bill Pogue. Again, it’s an extraordinary example of the commitment and dedication of these folks.
Thompson: And just so folks will understand, the Skylab program was the predecessor to the International Space Station.
Provo: It was America’s first space station. And what they did was they modified sections of a Saturn rocket and put that into space, and then had three Apollo command modules fly up to that and dock for varying lengths of time, and conducting experiments in a way that America had never been in a position to do before. That was part of the preparation for a long-term space station as well as the possibility of longer-duration space flights, the opportunity to go back to the moon, to go to Mars, and other things of that nature. And part of the central feature of those missions was also a telescope. This was called the Apollo Telescope, and there’s a strange acronym for it. But they had an opportunity on that last Apollo flight to, from space, view the Comet Kohoutek, that had never been done before. So just first after first after first—spacewalks— just all sorts of extraordinary circumstances.
Thompson: Well, Bob, we have a special guest that’s coming in to talk with us. And I got to say, American hero, General Tom Stafford. What a guy, what a whole list of accomplishments he’s had. I’m really excited to talk to him.
Blackburn: Yes. Well, General Stafford has been a good friend to the Oklahoma Historical Society, to the State of Oklahoma. He has a museum in Weatherford is outstanding. Dan and I’ve watched that come together over the years in Max Ary, the director now, has done a great job with that, and they’ve been good partners with us. And so what we do here on the story in space is coordinated to some degree with what General Stafford has been doing in Weatherford. But he is a good friend, and we treasure a lot of the memories of working with him over the years.
Thompson: Well, let’s bring him into the program. Tom Stafford is a renowned test pilot and astronaut, but he wasn’t always famous. Tom started life as a small-town Oklahoma kid. His mother came to Oklahoma in a covered wagon and lived to see her only child fly to the moon. His father was a dentist who taught his son to appreciate what he had by working hard for it. Tom found a love for heights at age four, when he climbed his first windmill and was certain he was on top of the world. This is where his desire to go higher and faster began.
Through a lot of hard work and some natural abilities, Tom would make his way to the top 10% at the US Naval Academy, become a three-star general in the US Air Force, and be known as the first astronaut to become a general and the first general to fly in space. Over the course of his career, General Stafford flew four cutting-edge space missions. He became the chief of astronauts at NASA and was appointed the head of research and development at the Pentagon. He chaired the team that developed the Hubble instrument, COSTAR, which stands for Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, and worked at Area 51, and is responsible for stealth technology as we know it today. He and his best friend, Alexei Leonov, who was a Russian cosmonaut, were the beginning of the end of the Cold War when they teamed up on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. General Stafford also chaired a team to carry out President Bush’s vision of returning to the moon and then on to explore Mars, and today he serves as chairman of the NASA Advisory Council Task Force for ISS Safety and Operational Readiness, advises members of Congress on aerospace-related subjects, serves on advisory boards for NASA, and works as an aerospace consultant. General Stafford has the most complete and comprehensive career of all the surviving astronauts. And General Stafford, welcome in to the program. And I just want to ask you, you know, why didn’t you apply yourself more in your life? It seems like you could have done so much more.
General Thomas Stafford: (laughing) That’s a real good question. Well, I guess I was brought up as a little boy, you know, never to be idle or anything like that. And my mother and father kind of instinctively instilled in me, you know, not to work is a sin, basically. So I’m always thinking or doing something, designing things, or being involved in pushing frontiers forward. It’s just a lot of fun, too.
Thompson: Well, tell us a little bit. You grew up in Weatherford, and tell us a little bit about how a kid that grows up in Weatherford, what was that passion? What was inside of you that made you want to reach for the stars?
Stafford: Well, remember Weatherford was at the edge of the Dust Bowl there in the ’30s and the mid-’30s, and I was born in 1930, and then when I was, oh, five or six years old, you know, the dust storms would come, but also Route 66 was the main street in Weatherford. It went right down the main street. Now, that was, it was right underneath the first transcontinental air route, where American Airlines and TWA were flying DC-3s. And every day as a little kiddie, I’d see two or three of these planes go by every day. I’d look up. They just looked so fantastic. And I just said, I want to do that, so those DC-3s from American and TWA really inspired me. And so I said, I always want to do it. This is kind of a side. First, I remember one incident, I wanted to build a powered model plane. And I built little model airplanes that have rubber bands, that turn the propeller. But I wanted to buy a smallest engine that was made I could afford. And so Dad said, you got to go out and work for.
So we had a client that had a farm out on the way to Hydro named Caesar Folks. So it was cotton season, picking season. So my mother got the overalls, the knee pads, and all that, the cotton sack. So I went out, and we go up and down the rows, you know, snapping cotton and throwing it in the bag, and you weigh it individually. It was dusty. The wind was blowing. (laughing) You know, this just wasn’t too inspiring to me.
Thompson: There’s got to be something better out there, right?
Stafford: Yeah. And I, again, it was fairly close to Route 66. So, during that Saturday, I worked on that. Let’s see, I did that for several Saturdays to get enough money to buy that little airplane engine. But I see these DC-3s come over, and, you know, I thought, I’m going to get the hell out of this place. (laughter)
Provo: General, one of the things, looking at your book, We Have Capture, you talked a lot about early aviation and how that motivated you and drove the first part of your career. And I was struck by the fact that you always seem to have a clear vision of being a pilot, wanting to go higher, wanting to go faster, wanting to go farther. I wondered about that and the importance of that throughout your life.
Stafford: Well, you know, that was kind of a driving thing. I wanted to fly, go fast, so I did it. You know, after my commission in the Air Force, pilot training, I always wanted to fly the latest airplanes. I had the chance to fly the latest and the fastest, go highest, would be a test pilot. So I applied for the test pilot school, was accepted and worked hard, graduated one in my class, was assigned to the performance section of the test pilot school as both a test pilot and instructor. And while I was there, I helped to coauthor two textbooks. One was a pilot’s handbook for performance flight testing. The other was aerodynamics handbook for performance flight testing. So, you know, and then the space program came along as far as human space flight. So I said, well, that sure is higher and faster in particular when Kennedy said, you had this national goal, he set the goal of going to the moon. That’s definitely got to be higher and faster.
Thompson: Yeah.
Stafford: It was all just kind of a one, two, three, four. I would strive for going higher and faster and take advantage of including things technical and work hard, and do better.
Blackburn: General, this is Bob. Of your years as a young pilot, what was the first plane that you flew? And then secondly, what was your favorite? What was the most maneuverable that you felt like you were one with the craft?
Stafford: Well, Bob, the first plane I ever got above the ground was when I was about 15 years old. My math teacher really liked me. I guess I was one of her star pupils. I always talked about flying. So she had a lady who was a flight instructor. Weatherford had a grass strip, two wooden hangars, and about five or six, you know, Piper Cubs, Taylorcrafts. So he had this lady named Jessie Duncan. This friend of this Mrs. Span, my math teacher. And so, she took me up for a ride in a Taylorcraft and showed me the controls and all that. I was just fascinated. You could look out and see the rise, do banks and turns, and all that she did. Oh, wow, that was super. So, that was the first plane. The plane that I really like was my first fighter plane was the F-86D, the first swept-wing plane with an afterburner. Of course, some of the control systems with the afterburner wasn’t too reliable. Had a few close calls.
(laughter)
But the plane I’ve flown that was the most maneuverable, I really love, and I made him push through the flight control system. I had just finished Apollo-Soyuz, went back to Edwards, this time as a commanding general of the Flight Test Center. We had the prototype, the YF-60. So I was the 13th test pilot to ever fly it. I got, after I got back down, I said this plane’s got a great potential, but I said, so I says, what dumb bastard designed this flight control?
(laughter)
Stafford: It didn’t have a centering, a supply, a side stick fly-by-wire force. But they didn’t put what you call hysteresis, where you come up on a ramp and then when you’re in the center, where you’re not doing anything, you can’t really feel it if you don’t have this little flash placement goes up in like a 45-degree angle coming down towards center, low, flat place going down 45, same way to pitch. But roll is a real thing. You try to do your roll, and you rush around. So as a result of that, I forget, I wrote up a whole thing. I was a two-star then. I wrote this discrepancy up against the airplane, recommended put hysteresis in that. So you have a little about an eighth-of-an-inch movement in that stick. Also, the stick was way too big. If you’re a gorilla, it could be okay, as big as it was. The human hand is a little bit smaller. And so the stick is way too big. It needs to be can, because, you know, just put your, you are sitting down, close your fist a little bit, like have your index finger or your middle finger touching your thumb. You’ll notice that say everybody is really like, (inaudible) you see it’s about 12 degrees.
Provo: General, I was going to say, among the many remarkable aspects of your career, are the sheer number and variety of aircraft that you have piloted.
Stafford: Yes, sir. Well, I’ve flown, I think about 125, 126. Gosh, that’d be about eight—and I think that includes about eight helicopters.
Thompson: Oh, wow.
Stafford: And then also, I’ve flown on four different spacecraft, which I think is a Gemini, the Apollo Command Service Module, the Apollo Lunar Module, and the Soviet, now Russian, Soyuz.
Thompson: Well, so let’s talk a little bit about some of those outer space adventures. In 1962, you were selected by NASA to participate in the Gemini and Apollo programs. In 1965, you piloted Gemini VI. In 1966, you were the commander of Gemini VII. What was the importance of
Stafford: It was Gemini IX.
Thompson: Oh, sorry. Gemini IX. I misread my notes here. What were the importance of those Gemini missions in terms of preparing for the Apollo missions?
Stafford: Well, you know, President Kennedy set to go on 25 May 1961. That was when we would go to the moon. But already flown, and this was about three weeks, nearly three weeks after Al Shepard’s flight on May 10, 1961. But he had only gone about 150 miles an hour, and he was only airborne for about 15 minutes. I think he went about 300 miles downrange. If you’re going to go to land on the moon, well, that is a big leap.
Thompson: Yeah. Yeah.
Stafford: And so, I said, we got to have an interim program to develop the techniques to train the astronauts, to also help train the ground flight controllers and everybody in the system. So the Gemini program, we came up and said what’s the main, the biggest booster available? At the time, it was the biggest intercontinental ballistic missile we had, which was the Titan II. And so they carried the about 8,000 pounds maximum in a lower circular orbit. So I said, well, I have to get two people into it. We will need about 3,500 to 4,000 pounds with one person. So that’s how the Gemini program, which from the constellation, you know, Gemini has two stars, Castor and Pollux. So Gemini came along as a real, believe me, (inaudible) training so much, without Gemini, Apollo would have been unmitigated disaster.
Provo: When you were talking about Gemini in the past, you always talked about it being a stepping stone, a whole series of steps, all designed to allow the nation to go to the moon and make a successful mission of that.
Stafford: Right. Well, there’s several things. One is deciding to rendezvous. Which was when Gemini decided to go start with. Doctor Gilruth in Houston—this before I came on board— he said we need just a huge booster. It would be about two and a half times bigger than Saturn V, but you’d drop off stages as you go Earth orbit. The trench, lunar injection, and dropping off stages of the lunar orbit. Somewhat, this is a way that the Soviets looked towards their N1, but they didn’t have the technology we had. Before hydrogen in the upper stages, which gives you the real payload, for specific impulse. And the key thing was this theory of rendezvous, that this doctor, John Houbolt from Langley, said this will drastically reduce the size, reduce the cost, and in the end, reduce the risk. And he is absolutely right. But it was hard to sell.
Even Von Braun, he had an idea that maybe two boosters would rendezvous in Earth’s orbit, each one about one and a half times bigger than Saturn V. Then you take off on that direct, you know, flight out, and then you’re delaying the whole thing, the direct asset coming back, versus the rendezvous. But Houbolt really kept pushing this. Thank God, Dr. Seamans, who was the deputy administrator, had a technical background— he was with aerospace, MIT, he understood it right away, and pushed it. There were several old people in the scientific community against it. They wanted to go like, Gilruth, the director. I didn’t realize all this. I was still a test pilot at Edwards. And then this was announced in July of 1962. We’d use the lunar orbit rendezvous to, this is the way we could get an approach landing on the moon, coming back later, which we could do it faster, better, safer, smaller, less cost. And that was announced, and then I was selected about two months later. Then, due to a series of events as far as flight crew assignments, the first time it was not announced to the public, but to the group. And actually, we couldn’t talk to anybody. The first crew was going to be Al Shepard and myself. So I was really happy. I was walking on cloud nine. Yeah, I’ll be the first one in my group to be able to fly out of nine astronauts that were selected. In fact, on my 32nd birthday. So I was just feeling great.
Then, about three weeks later, Shepard got me aside and said I’ve got a big problem, I’ve got Ménière’s syndrome in my ears. I’ll be grounded, and I can’t fly ’til I get it squared away. So the commander always chooses his pilot, so Al and I were, we got along great together. But Gus and I got along, but he got along better with John better. So, Gus said he wanted to fly with John Young. Oh, man, I was really down in the dumps. And so, and then about 30 minutes later, Wally Schirra came into my office and shut the door and said, hey we’re changing crews around. He said, me, Gus, and John will fly the first mission. That’s just three orbits. Then there’s Gemini III and IV and V are long-duration orbits. But you and I are going to do the first rendezvous in space, It will only be a one-day mission, but we’re going to really fly. We’re not going to bore holes. Okay, so that’s how I ended up in the rendezvous seat.
And then real fast, I was the backup on IX and July 12, Well, but tragically, the nine crew makes some mistakes in weather. In flying their wing, they broke off, an accident boarding, and they made some bad decisions and tragically were killed. So then, I took over as commander of Gemini IX, flew that seven months after I flew Gemini VI. Did three different types of rendezvous. One was an early phase, like which, the overhead one a ballistic, and one which was probably the toughest rendezvous I flew. We would show a command service module picking up a lunar module below the signal. And then, the first obstacle-tracking section. And then Cernan was the first one to walk in space around the world.
Blackburn: General, you mentioned several of those pioneering astronauts who became friends and colleagues of yours. Of course, the first astronaut to fly from Oklahoma, Gordon Cooper. Did you get to know Gordon in those years? Fortunately, I got to interview him before he passed away, but he was a great interview. And just wondering if you had any memories that come back on Gordon.
Stafford: Sure. Gordo was a real good friend of mine. In fact, I remember people always say, where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated? Well, Gordo and I were having lunch at the Ellington Officers Club, back when we flew together in a T-33 that day. Just, you know, proficiency flying. We were in the officers’ club having a quick bite of lunch when the waitress came in, and said they’ve just shot the president. We didn’t quite understand it. She said in Dallas. Then, before we finished, she came back and told us the president was dead. So that’s why I remember Gordo. He was a wonderful type. I flew quite a few T-33, T-38 missions with him. We got along good.
Thompson: And he was your backup on Apollo 10, right?
Stafford: Gordo was my backup for Apollo 10. Right.
Thompson: Well, speaking of the Apollo program, you know, you the Apollo program and your piloting of the Apollo 10 mission in 1969 really did set the stage for Apollo 11, and you did everything except land on the moon. Just as a layperson, I just want to know what is it like, you’re sitting there on the launch pad; those rockets are firing up. What does that feel like, and what’s going through your mind before you launch out of the atmosphere
Stafford: Well, before ignition, you’re, I don’t know if you saw the the movie The Right Stuff.
Thompson: Yes.
Stafford: When Shepard was there. When I think of that first flight, said something like, “Oh God, please don’t let me screw up.”
(laughter)
So that’s why it’s really critical on the launch, that’s a real hazardous space flight. Probably the most hazardous of the whole thing out until you get about 8/10ths, the speed of the orbital velocity. So if anything’s going to happen to you, it’ll be in that phase. It could happen other places too. But, you know, this is where, at that time, where most of the problems occur. You had maximum dynamic pressure. You went through that. You went through vibration, heating, and everything on the way out. You do have lots of heat on the way in, but it’s a fairly static. Even though you are changing velocity, but the real hazard is always is the launch space, so you’ve just got to be able to react like a cat.
Provo: General, when you say react like a cat, that makes me think of the application of your test pilot skills. It seems like over and over again through the space program, the astronauts early on that had all been pilots, test pilots, that ability to quickly assess the situation and act effectively was a critical thing several times during the history of the programs.
Stafford: Oh, it sure was like on Gemini VI, our first launch attempt, the engines lifted off. The engine ignited at minus three seconds to then exactly at T-zero. The liftoff signals came, and the engine shut down. And we knew we had a dead man’s scare for about three quarters of a second there. And the mission rules said we should have ejected. But Wally and I both knew the training. We had our basic instincts and everything that we hadn’t lifted off. That was a close call. And then later on, Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott, they did the first docking because Wally and I couldn’t dock with VII. It was put there as a target, Gemini VII. And then, the Neil and Dave Scott rendezvous, next mission with Agena Target Vehicle. And then they went into nighttime, and everything was fine, and the whole joint mast started to rock back and forth and shake, and they assumed the Gemini’s okay coming up to us, so it was probably the Agena. So, Neil and Scott, they were starting to spin up. They had a roll thruster stuck on, and they were spinning up to one revolution a second.
Thompson: Whoa!
Stafford: About to, the blood was going to their head. So, that was a close call. In fact, I was over a flight simulator in Houston with Cernan, who came and said hey, come over at Mission Control quick. Gemini VIII is going to make an emergency reentry. They’ve gone through the fuel in one ring down, and they’ve down to half the fuel in the second ring of the reentry control system. But Neil did a great job getting them, so those are the two big close calls we had in Gemini.
Blackburn: Well, sir, speaking of close calls, when you’re in the lunar landing craft, and you were not far above the surface of the moon on that particular flight, I think you had a similar issue you had to deal with as a pilot of getting control. Can you describe that particular moment and lead up to that?
Stafford: Oh, well, we fortunately, we had the lunar module, Lunar Module 4, and it hadn’t undergone the super weight improvement program that they gave Grumman like $10,000 a pound for every pound. They could pull out of a descent stage. So we were too heavy to land. Neil had wanted to but could barely make it. He had some weight pulled out, and the other ones got better, and they put more fuel in the change tank configuration. So we’re coming down. We did this pass, coming down twice, nine miles above the moon. Photo map, radar map; visually make observations, picking out an ellipse, picking out potential landing sites. Now, with that on the second loop, we came down to perilune, which was the lowest point to orbit around the moon. Just before we stage, we were going starting at dusk at nighttime the moon, the thrusters started to fire a little bit. I looked down, shouted that I had a yaw rate. Oh, my! Yeah. Oh, my! Great gyros.
But yet they (inaudible) but the eight ball I had wasn’t moving. You see it was just going into darkness. (inaudible) I couldn’t figure out what was going for a second, then a warning light popped up, and that was an electrical hiccup. It started to fire again. So we were all buttoned up. And I reached over to a switch, you know, and I’m pretty sure I hit the wrong switch with the primary abort guidance system, which point the X axis up at the command module where John was. So that was swinging right over towards the area. I could lock up the gimbal so the inertial platform goes. You only had a three-gimbal platform, where the Gemini had a four gimbal. I said we’ll never make that mistake again in any design. Because what we did for the Apollo, the initial guidance platform we took, Polaris, the Navy’s ballistic missile platform. They just put that over an Apollo. That was the guidance. So, real fast. All the attitude control thruster with Gemini was on those four thrusters at four quad arrangements around the upper stage weighed 1,100 fully fueled. But down below with everything on it, it had to control the spacecraft that weighed about 34,000 pounds. So I just decided, I am gonna get better control of those thrusters. There’s only 11,000, compared to 34,000. So I just blew off a descent stage about 40 seconds early and headed towards gimbal lock. I flew around, and we were starting to spin about 60 degrees a second.
Thompson: Wow.
Stafford: And Cernan, he’d been looking out the window, and suddenly the horizon kept spinning around.
Thompson: Oh my gosh.
Stafford: So, that’s when we forgot that we were on hot mic. And Cernan was accused of saying some bad words, rated X.
Provo: Well, you mentioned the microphone. One of the remarkable things about that mission is listening to you talk about the situation. You’d swear you’re just walking down the street, rather than a quarter of a million miles away in a very difficult, potentially, situation.
Stafford: Yeah. (laughs) So one, two, three, four. You know, now, we’d never simulated that emergency. I guess the thousands of hours I had flying, you know, and those two previous space missions, all this aircraft that kind of all went together just like that boom, boom, boom decision like that.
Provo: Well, then you talk about the boom-boom-boom decisions. You talk about all the firsts because every Gemini was a first, and then your flight on Apollo 10 was a first, and all those things building towards the lunar landing, but with not a lot of room for error all along the way.
Stafford: That’s right, and we did it in such a short period of time. Kennedy said we’ll go to the moon. I like the words “and safely return.”
Thompson: Right.
Stafford: Before the end of the decade. So that was January 31, ’69, and after that tragic fire that set us back for 18 months or so, we were really up against it. But once we started flying there with Apollo 7, that was Schirra was commander. I was his backup with my crew of John Young and Gene Cernan during October of ’68. We had just only about 14 months to go to reach Kennedy’s goal. So, in nine months, we flew five missions—four of them on the giant Saturn V, and three of those were to the moon. So that’s how fast-paced the program was.
Thompson: That is a fast timeline. I want to get into the Apollo-Soyuz mission, July 1975. And, you know, this is certainly a unique time in history. The United States and the Russians were enemies on the ground, but this is the first time that we’re linking together up in space. Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, I’ve been to your museum in Weatherford. I think there’s a bottle of whiskey there that everybody has signed. Can you tell us a little bit about your relationships with the Russian cosmonauts?
Stafford: Well, we’ll put it in probably the proper perspective; then it was the Soviet cosmonauts.
Thompson: Okay.
Stafford: Well, I do the same thing. At that time, we all used the word Soviet and Russian. Russia is the native ethnic background, but the political spectrum they were all living under was the Soviet Union. You’d see that on their airliners, we’d see CCCP as we’d see it.
Thompson: Right.
Stafford: In the Cyrillic alphabet, that’s really a SSSR, which is Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik. Took me 30 minutes with my Oklahoma accent to learn how to say that whole thing.
Thompson: I’ll bet. I don’t even want to try and repeat it.
Stafford: So that was the goal we had. So we didn’t. So you know, I’d never spoken any Russian, so we worked as a crew. I made the push, too, that we would have the crews announced two years before flight, and the Soviets only wanted to have the crews announced six months before flight. So, and I said, no way. So the Dr. Fletcher, the administrator of NASA, and Chris Kraft, the center director there, they all backed me up. So we there in February of, of 1972, which is the two years or about four, five—two years and about four months, we announced our crew. So, boom, we did that in the press, right away, went to the Soviets, okay, so the Americans have announced this crew. Where’s your crew? So we forced them into a little bit of a box. Then they announced their crews at the Paris Air Show. I was there at Le Bourget in June, in June there, in July of 1972, ’73, pardon me.
Provo: I was just going to say, I’m assuming you, you’re comfortable with Leonov’s quote when a reporter asked him, what language was going to be spoken, and he said “Russian, English, and Oklahoman.”
Stafford: Yes, sir, he called it Oklahoma-ski.
(laughter)
Stafford: So, yeah, out of the four missions I flew, as far as the training, the most difficult was the Apollo-Soyuz. Not due to any technicalities, to me, it is a piece of cake technically. But I knew that I had to speak the Russian language as well as they spoke English.
Thompson: Wow.
Stafford: So it would be about a billion people seeing us on live TV, so I had to learn all those six different tenses, you have, and you have consonants together, you know? I used to get charyley horses in my tongue, in my cheek, learning how to speak that language.
Provo: General, is it fair to say, though, that even before Apollo-Soyuz you were involved in building bridges between NASA and the Soviet Space Agency? I think you were involved in several opportunities to reach out to the Soviets, weren’t you?
Stafford: Well, the one primary thing, they had the three cosmonauts went to their first little space station, where I’m not coming back in the Soyuz, had a poor design. They didn’t have any pressure suits on, and when they retro-fired, then they blew off the orbital module, that ball on the front, that’s where they lived most of the time. And then the service module, when they blew off the other module, they had an air-pressurization valve to bring in air from the outside, when they were on the parachutes down about 18 to 20,000 feet. It also went out and bought a lot. It was like a automotive valve with a little niche in it around the valve and some balls locked in it. So once it opened up, you couldn’t close it. And they had no way to a secondary valve, so tragically, the crew died of hypoxia and air embolism.
And so I was in Europe at that time of my life. Two daughters, they were in Frankfurt. They didn’t have any astronaut group having replaced Al Shepard there in ’69, and it’s after I got back to from the moon and so I was over there, and I got a call to decide to have me represent President Nixon and the Americans at the funeral, which would be the next day. So I had to fly, you know, about half the night down to Belgrade, Yugoslavia. They had an Air Force plane fly me to Copenhagen, and they had a SAS-DC-9s just myself, you know, the pilot, copilot, two flight attendants, and it was a charter, so we took off from Copenhagen to Moscow. It was a short night, so it was daylight up there in their time, zone. I just got a couple of blankets, I just lay down the aisle and got some pillows, put a kind of one over my head to keep the sunlight out. Flew that time, so I didn’t have much sleep. You got there, and General Beregovoi, who was a cosmonaut, (inaudible), and so I didn’t see an American for about four hours. Had this traumatic experience and the state funeral out there in Red Square, standing there at attention. in front of Lenin's tomb. It was quite a moving experience.
Thompson: General, what would— we’re wrapping up here, what would you say is your proudest accomplishment in your career?
Stafford: Oh, golly. I’ve had a bunch of ’em. Well, I think demonstrating the first rendezvous in space, flying that first one to the moon, the first lunar module to the moon. Picking out the landing site. That was great. The first rendezvous around the moon. Back this way, on the way back, setting the all-time low-speed record, we still set it at Mach 36.
Thompson: You are the fastest man on Earth right now.
Stafford: That’s right, yeah, unfortunately, my two colleagues are no longer with us, so I am the fastest man alive. Hope to keep that status for a few years.
Thompson: Yes, sir.
Blackburn: We do too, General.
Stafford: And then after that, I went back in the Air Force and became the deputy chief of staff. But when I was at Edwards, the first experimental stealth airplane arrived, which I had at Area 51. The commander of the flight center at Edwards is also the commander of Area 51 for operations. And so, you know, nobody could talk about it. Even the vice chief of staff in the Air Force didn’t know about it. Let’s see, two—four Congressman two in appropriations (inaudible) and a couple of their senior staff. Nobody else knew about it. That was one of the best secrets. So, that was called "Have Blue." And then from there, I got the idea, I saw the Soviets’ strengths and weaknesses. So we could take out their command and controls. This will really put them a big disadvantage. So, that’s why I really pushed stealth. Well, I was the deputy chief of staff for research development.
That’s when I, there’s no statement, need a requirement to start the F-117-A, which will be out at the Stafford Museum. It will arrive out there probably January, February, will take two or three months to make the final rehab on it. We have a Stealth gallery out there. And one afternoon hotel room in Chicago, in ’79 early ’79, I met with Ed (inaudible) slow speed, low observable shelves, planar ability. They wanted know what to do with it. I met the chairman just for a cup of coffee. What should they do to take advantage of the technology? So, I was really frustrated with Carter. You know, he cancelled the B-1 bomber. He continued to delay the MX missile. The Trident submarine program had big technical problems then, I was also learning. We didn’t have much going. The Soviets were building these ICPUs. One thing we could do was get the stealth bomber. So I outlined the specs for the advanced technology bomb. I gave it to him, said, do these studies on your own for a few months. Maybe we can get you some money. Then I flew out the next week to Burbank. But that was the famous Kelly Johnson probably one of the great aircraft designers of all time. He did U-2, the SR-71, the P-38, the P-80, F-104, and so, I gave him that, and I said Kelly, start to work. See how big you can meet these specs. So that’s what became known as a B-2 bomber.
Provo: I think, General, that early on, you are also a champion of drones and unmanned aerial vehicles at the same time. So your impact in stealth technology, drones, I think there were some particularly remarkable cruise missiles and a variety of other things. Your footprint has just been tremendous and thankfully continues to be tremendous.
Stafford: Well, thank you. Yes, I did start the long-range advance, a cruise missile, stealth; had a range of 2,000 miles. It was a nuclear warhead, and you know, a B-52 could carry six under each wing. So you could launch, a B-52 could launch over London, and then it could hit Moscow. Just over 2,000, I think you could go 2,000 miles, nautical miles. So even though the British wouldn’t see it, the French wouldn’t see, the Germans, East or West Germans, and Poland, Belarus, Russia, the Soviet Union. And finally, baseline I think 1,450, we produced 461. When the Soviets finally found out what we had, they cried uncle and came to the negotiating table for strategic arms reductions.
Thompson: Well, General. Oh, General, thank you so much. It’s been such an honor to talk to you. And, you know, you don’t get an opportunity very often to talk to someone that is a true American hero. And we just appreciate your time so much today.
Blackburn: And, General,
Stafford: I thank you. Right. Go ahead.
Blackburn: I’m sorry. General, this is Bob, but I just wanted to tell you thank you for being such a good friend to everyone in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma History Center would not be what it is today without your help. Dan and I talk often about your early help and wanting to get some flown spacecraft back to Oklahoma, and us working on that together. And thank you for all your service to the country, to the state, and for building your museum in Weatherford. That is a jewel of a museum, and we want to encourage everyone listening to take the time to go to Weatherford, Oklahoma, to see the Tom Stafford Museum.
Provo: The collection that you have assembled out there is extraordinary. I think, in my mind, probably the most complete Gemini collection that you’re going to find anywhere, in addition to all the other elements of aircraft and other aspects of the space program. It’s truly extraordinary.
Stafford: Well, thank you, Bob, Dan. I never wanted a museum named after me. TripAdvisor has now ranked what we’re growing into is the top 10% in the US, as far as museums like it.
Thompson: Well, General, thank you so much. It’s been so great to talk to you, and we appreciate you making time for us.
Stafford: We’re glad to. So really great to talk to you, Bob and Dan, again, and also Trait. I hope to get back to Oklahoma. Well, I will be back this month.
Thompson: Oh, wonderful.
Stafford: They have, they’re building a new terminal at the airport, it’s so busy. I’ll be, they want me, I’ll be back there for the dedication, but also the day before. They built a new school for the second, third, and fourth grade for all the Weatherford students in there to go to school. They named it after me. That’ll be dedicated the day before.
Thompson: Oh, wonderful.
Stafford: Yeah. So I hope you can get out and see it.
Blackburn: Thank you. We hope to see you then.
Provo: Thank you, General, for everything.
Thompson: All right. Take care, sir.
Stafford: Okay. Thank you. Great to talk to you. Bye-bye.
Thompson: What a fascinating interview with General Stafford. I mean, just hearing his stories and some of the things that he has done and some of the harrowing situations he’s been in. What a man. I think he’s about 90 years old. Dan, is that correct?
Provo: I think 90, 92 somewhere right in there. Yes.
Thompson: I mean, he sounds like he could jump on and go fly an experimental plane tomorrow.
Provo: To this day, he’s one of the busiest people you’ll ever find. He’s here. He’s around the country. He’s still going to the Soviet Union, now Russia, from time to time. Just incredibly active. And one of the things that impressed me with our conversation and knowing him a little bit is that in addition to his vast technical expertise, he’s also a visionary and a teacher. He’s always sharing. He’s always communicating. He’s always looking for new ways, and I think that’s part of the remarkable nature of what he brings to the table.
Thompson: Well, it’s been a pleasure to be with you all, and we will get back with you on our next podcast episode. Thanks for listening. You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org, and find us on social media by searching for at @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
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