Cj2785
My LEM is coming along nicely. Here's my progress so far.
I'll be watching. My wife, Susan, will be interested, too. I can say, truthfully, that my wife was one of the many thousands of people who helped to make Apollo a success.
Susan and I were corresponding, as friends, in 1965-66 when I was training with the Marines in Okinawa and later when my battalion was in Vietnam. After I was wounded, on March 5, 1966, and evacuated to Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego, Susan came with my parents to visit me, and during that brief visit I asked her to marry me. She agreed, and my father, the founder of the American Kitefliers Association, contacted Francis Rogallo, member of the AKA and inventor of the Rogallo Wing to ask if he could get Susan a job at the Ryan Aeronatical Company; at that time, Francis was under contract with Ryan to develop a landing system for Apollo.
Susan got an offer from Ryan, passed her typing test with flying colours, and then heard this question from the Ryan employee who administered the test: "So, who do you know here at Ryan? I was told to hire you even if you couldn't type a word!"
Susan spent that summer in the typing pool at Ryan, mostly re-typing engineering reports about Apollo's Lunar Excursion Modul, or LEM. But there was a problem. Someone — a politician, probably — decided that you couldn't say that the astronauts were going on an excusion, which implies a holiday. So "LEM" became just the Lunar Module, or LM. Much of Susan's work that summer involved using a Selectric typewriter to white out the "LEM" in engineering reports replace it with "LM".
She didn't much enjoy that job, as you can imagine, but she enjoyed her visits with me, and I enjoyed them with her. After spending 111 days in traction, I was put into a 3/4 spica cast, which covered me from my right foot to my armpits and down to my left knee. But I was mobile, and could have liberty. Time with Susan after that became even more pleasurable than before!
We were married on December 27, 1966. You can imagine that she was more than casually interested in the Apollo 11 landing on July 20, 1969. And now I just have to consider building a model of the LEM, er, LM.
Bob