 Number one song, not necessarily my number one relative. With that coming, I guess I better be packing my bags. Here's Ricky with a song that's quickly taken over the number one spot he must have insulted his mother-in-law, too. A joint session of Congress today, President Kennedy gave this country a remarkable challenge. I believe that 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 the Earth. Did you hear that? Are we going to the moon? That's what the President said. That message by President John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961, brings back many memories. But it really hit home for the people of South Mississippi when the government announced five months later to the day that it would build a pest facility along the banks of the East Pearl River to test those rockets that will go into the moon. The newspapers throughout the area carried the announcement of the location of the test site. Generally, a quiet, subtle community. It was a lovely place. I was somewhat familiar with the fact that Honey Island Swamp between the two Pearl Rivers was sort of a no man's land. Also, Devil Swamp over to the east of the site here was most just in low Timberlands. The original policy for acquisition of the test site was the operational area where all of the facilities are constructed contained 13,500 acres. That was bought outright, including the mineral interest. The buffer zone, which was approximately another 120 plus thousand acres, the original policy was to acquire only a perpetual restrictive easement. One of the reasons this area was selected, of course, it was a number of reasons, a physical reason for one thing, this marvelous river we had here and then low population. Where could you find that much acreage and move that smaller amount of people? The project was under overall management of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. People up there were really excited about the selection of this Pearl Rivers area for the test site. After all, it was just a short distance down the Pearl River and across the inland waterways over to the Mishu Assembly Facility in New Orleans and out out the mouth of the pearl and around the tip of Florida, the Cape Canaveral where you would launch the rockets. But even though the area was sparsely populated, NASA did have to move five communities to make way for the construction of the facility. Westonia, Santa Rosa, Napoleon, Gainesville and Locktown. The Gainesville community was a unique community. The Loveless Grocery Store, Mrs. Louise Loveless who operated the store with her husband was sort of a focal point in the community. Around the corner from the grocery store there was a lady and I don't remember her first name but she was referred to as Aunt Blue. Her name was Aunt Blue Davis. When we acquired her home, as a lot of the others did, she didn't have it demolished but she reserved the right to remove it. And she had a house mover, as I recall, his name was Daly Dronette from the Gulfport area who loaded that house and took it up around the Nicholson area. Aunt Blue Davis never left it. She sat on the back porch in a rocking chair and went down the highway with that house. And I can still see that lady today and I think she had maybe a niece, I believe it was Mrs. Freeman Davis, that rode with her as that house went down the highway up from 43 to the Nicholson area. A lot of us look on, Senator Stennis is more of a statesman than a politician. He told us that if any of you have any trouble dealing with the Corps of Engineers on doing the eminent domain, you call me and I'll see what I can do. And he did help people who called him. It was a daytime meeting and the way they handled the questions and answers, they had couriers and I was one of them. People, if they had a question they wanted to ask, they had to write out the question. Then we would take it up to the podium. I don't know who the lady was. I took her question up and her question was, why do we have to go to the moon? Senator Stennis answered that question in this way. He said, we have to go to the moon for international prestige. Senator Stennis had another quote that day that became rather famous. He said, there's always the thorn before the rose. The thorn being eminent domain. The rose being the opportunity that those people had to play a major role in America's prestigious space program. I was a highly elated, very proud of America. I felt that, I'll tell you why I felt that way. I felt that we were part of it since we had given up our land and moved everything that we were actually part of going to the moon. We had the challenge of building a very large rocket test facility. It was a swamp here. There wasn't anything here except the Ruchon house which is behind us. The challenge was significant. In today's dollars that would amount to a billion dollar facility. We had to build it from scratch and when it was completed we were going to test the awesome 7-5 rockets that were going to take men to the moon. Jerry has been associated with Stennis Space Center for almost his entire existence. In the Apollo days we used to see Jerry once a week as he flew down from Washington where he was responsible for overseeing the construction of the Mississippi test facility in those days. There were schedule problems. The S-2 stand was a critical facility. It seemed to be the most critical facility in achieving the Apollo mission and therefore there were lots of pressure to complete the construction on schedule. We did not know at the time what all it took and what all it was going to take to really construct and to put together the type of facility that's required to support the space program. But as time passed and as we continued to work and continued to lay out the boundaries and the foundations for construction the roads began to appear. Power lines began to appear. Buildings began to appear. Then it started coming together. We had to clear an awful lot of land. We had to put in an awful lot of facilities, many of which were very highly technical facilities. Very high pressure systems and liquid oxygen and hydrogen that was going to be required and then test stands over to a little further east of it. Our responsibilities for us in the early days was to construct the facilities, get it to a point to where it could be operable. And all during those days it took about three years for us to finish and finalize all the facilities that's now known as the Stennis Space Center. The construction activation phase brought out the very best of everyone. It was characterized by superb leadership. Dr. Werner von Braun, director of the Marshall Center, appointed a Navy Captain, Bill Fortune, as first project manager. Captain Fortune was highly respected by his employees and especially popular in the communities. The first American flag to fly over this site, symbolizing NASA's presence here, was raised by Captain Fortune and Dr. von Braun. That event brought on a reminder of Dr. von Braun's early involvement with this facility. He was not merely an overseer or a vister. He was a participant. In fact, he often referred to the South Mississippi site as his baby. He was a fine gentleman and a true professional and really knew how to get everybody's consensus to his ideas and how to move them forward. Carl Heimberg and Bernie Testman, his deputy were in charge of his test laboratory up there in Huntsville, and we worked very closely with them developing the requirements for this facility. Carl was a hard driver, but a very tough and fair man, very focused on where he wanted things to go. Testman had a good personality, had a good sense of humor, and he filled in some of the people gaps, but both of them were fun to work with. Of course, we had Henry Orter and a gentleman named Gordon Artley was significant in bringing together the focus to get this place activated with three or 4,000 new employees coming on plus 3,000 contractors and get things done. Ken Riggs was outstanding in bringing together the test experience and requirement to our planning team. Some people think I'm kidding when I tell them that during the months of July there were a jacket, a denim jacket, or some other form of jacket that was thick enough to prevent the mosquitoes from penetrating your clothing. Rainy season, there was a lot of mud and so that slowed things down. When we excavated for the test foundations, there were holes 40 feet deep and so you got down to where water wanted to just bubble in the bottom and we had to put in more deeper and deeper wells so that we could pull the water table down, congestion, I mean there was work going on everywhere here and just lots of activities happening simultaneously. We had that snow, about a 10 inch snow down here in Mississippi. We did have some unusual problems during construction and sometimes resorted to resourceful methods to solve them, even to the point of using mules to do what modern machines couldn't accomplish. One of the photographs taken of that activity became world famous. That picture was real famous. That picture went around from coast to coast they told me. My boss asked me and said, do you know how to apply a mule? I told him yes, I do. It was kind of wet, soggy, mule was kind of bargain, but we made it. In the spring of 1965, Jackson Balch was appointed manager of what was soon to be officially named the Mississippi Test Facility and with him he brought other leadership from Huntsville to fulfill the mission. Jack Balch asked me if I would come down and be project manager on the S2 program and just look like an opportunity I couldn't turn down. Working for Jack was a real learning experience too. Jack Balch was a unique character, a lovable man in many ways. A tough task master in many ways. He certainly would be an understatement on my part to say that he left an indelible mark here. He was a hard-nosed individual but you like Jack automatically if you like confidence because he was a very confident individual. It was just the people more than anything. People tend to remember the hardware but it's really the people that made the hardware work. There was considerable excitement in the air in those days with the anticipation of building and testing the vehicles that would get us to the moon. People were being trained. We were learning how to handle large volumes of hydrogen. It was an exciting time for sure. Everything was out of the ground facility-wise. We were getting ready to finish out at Seal Beach and be shipped in here. It was just a real beehive of activity getting ready for the first test and you remember the S2 was probably the most controversial of the Saturn V stages and it was liquid hydrogen. It had a common bulk head and expected a lot of problems. It was pretty difficult because we were running round the clock no days off. It wasn't anything like a weekend you just kept right on going. Coming up to the test everybody was pretty tired but I can remember the feeling that they certainly wanted to get it off and it wasn't any question about we were going to do it. It took some 25 hours after the block house was sealed to get that test off. We got some bugs in the system things that had to be worked out but ultimately we weren't successful in the test it was a major accomplishment a major milestone. At that time they had the countdown of the test firings on the operational intercom site wide and everybody would listen to the countdown and as it got to the last few seconds if you could go outside so that you can see the smoke and hear it. In 1966 and every rocket that was tested here performed its mission flawlessly in flight and taken our men to the moon. Like all Americans I remember it well being at home with my family keeping my kids up all night so that they could see this historical moment and then finally seeing Neil Armstrong step on the moon and having a sense of pride that I had some little small part of that. All the people here at MTF in those days as we call it the Mississippi Test Facility felt an enormous amount of pride in the fact that we had a major role in making that happen. The people at MTL and their neighbors didn't have long to enjoy the laurels of that fantastic mission. Even as the nation was celebrating that first lunar landing an ill wind was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico that would change the destinies of thousands of the Mississippi Test Facility. Camille came along devastated the coast killed several of our employees damaged our facilities and it was a time when our people came together. Hurricane Camille focused the attention of the country on this area and NASA boat is back and said we want to help in this area and NASA provided substantial help to the area not only by continuing the operations here but in many other ways in the local community. The MTF management team under the leadership of Jackson Botch was engaged in a diligent search for new roles and missions even before the tragedy of Camille. When we started hearing about the Mississippi Test Facility and the fact that the rocket testing was phasing down here we were asked to think of things that could be done here. Assistant Center Director at Johnson Space Center, Bob Pollan was asked to define an activity to be implemented here and he defined this laboratory. NASA established the Earth Resources Laboratory at MTF and a number of federal and state agencies were also invited to utilize the facilities. A plan was set out to convert the Mississippi Test Facility from a single agency NASA single mission propulsion testing to a multi-agency multi-mission federal laboratory. A great shot in the arm however was in the 1970 timeframe the committee met in early 71 NASA decided to put the testing for the space shuttle main engine here. During his first term as Administrator of NASA Dr. Jim Fletcher decided that the installation should be renamed and its reporting changed. In June of 1974 MTF became the National Space Technology Laboratories. That was in recognition of some of the application and technology type projects that this facility became involved in after the Apollo era. I was asked if I was interested in coming down there was a vacancy Jack Balch has retired and Henry Otter his deputy was acting in his capacity and NASA asked me if I'd come down and lead this facility and I said yes. And he served a distinguished period of time 12 years and really his major contribution in my view was that he took this installation from the fringes of involvement with NASA programs to the center line and during Jerry's tenure we had major improvements in our involvement with NASA our relationships with other centers our involvement in the programs new programs were assigned to Stennis new facilities were built Jerry's knowledge of NASA his leadership ability his knowledge of how NASA headquarters and the Congress work sure did pay off for all of us here at Stennis Space Center. That was a great day it was a recognition by NASA that this installation is part of the family part of the family of NASA it was a day that we honored a great Mississippian and a great American he had a great deal to do with this place he was likely father of the installation he worked for his advancement and his progress ever since he was established and he in addition had not only supported the programs that were here in Mississippi but he supported the entire national space program he felt it is the right program for the agency he supported Kennedy when he announced his intention to go to the moon and therefore it was a great good feeling not only for me but all the employees of this installation we feel that Senator John Stennis got the test site for us and I think we owe him a great debt of gratitude for his effort in that John C. Stennis I call Uncle John because this was his second home he just loved to be out here I felt like when they changed it to Stennis Space Center it was a long time coming for John Stennis because he deserved everything every recognition has been given him through the efforts of technology and through everybody working together as a team Stennis has grown even more and the shuttle program seems to be moving moving forward moving ahead with tremendous strides the whole thing comes to Roy Estes ever since I met Roy Estes he has always been the guy who could exude confidence and everything is going to be all right, hang in there well the people, the team, but Stennis Space Center have made substantial successes in the last few years and largely I think because of the foundations that were laid by those who came before us and we have been successful in carrying through those with tremendous amount of support from NASA headquarters starting with Admiral Cruley JR Thompson Dr. Lenore all have been very strong supporters of the emerging Stennis Space Center everybody from the people who gave up their land to the technicians engineers, business people everybody who has had a part of this has made in my view a major contribution to the country's success in space and the people of south Mississippi south Louisiana that work here have been the secret to that success