Chapter 21

Rocket Scientist

Marvel “Jack” Parsons—Pasadena

Marvel Whiteside Parsons was born into a wealthy Pasadena family on October 2, 1914. An only child, Jack, as he was known, was surrounded by attentive servants in the family’s huge Craftsman-style home at 537 Orange Grove Avenue that his grandfather, Walter Whiteside, had built. His neighbors included chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, beer baron Adolphus Busch, and the widow of assassinated president James A. Garfield. His mother, Ruth, was a patron of the embryonic Los Angeles art scene, and it was not unusual for world-class musicians and opera singers to give private performances at the twenty-room Whiteside manor.

At a young age, Jack was abandoned by his adulterous father and raised by his doting mother and aging grandparents. Home schooled until the age of twelve, Jack, a spoiled, solitary child, spent most of his time reading. He devoured books about Norse and Greek gods and King Arthur, as well as books written by science fiction pioneer Jules Verne. Jack religiously bought all of the science fiction pulp magazines, which fueled his imagination and interest in the possibility of space flight.

A limousine brought Jack to Washington Junior High School every day. His polite and proper manner did not win him friends at school, and he was often picked on for his fancy clothing and long hair. But all of that changed when Jack met Edward Foreman, two years his senior.

Foreman’s family had earlier moved to Pasadena from Missouri, where they had been farmers. While not poor—Foreman’s father was an electrical engineer—they were the underclass in prosperous Pasadena. Ed was tall, handsome, and streetwise, everything Jack was not. The two hit it off right away and remained friends for the rest of their lives. Foreman protected his new friend and clued him in on getting along in the real world. Together they pursued their mutual interest in science fiction and rocketry. With Jack’s money and Ed’s father’s engineering skills, the two young men had everything they needed to pursue their flights of fancy. They started building rockets out of black powder and balsa wood tubes. As they experimented, the boys started adding fins and nose cones to their rockets, which they would launch in nearby Arroyo Seco.

In 1929, Walter Whiteside sent his family to Europe for a working vacation to buy antiques for the new home that he was having built at 285 North San Rafael Avenue. It was the only time Jack traveled outside of the United States.

Finishing up their high school classes through alternative means, the inseparable Jack and Ed continued sending their rockets into the atmosphere. Many of their launches exploded on liftoff, creating concussions that would rattle windows all over Pasadena.

The Great Depression hurt the Whiteside family, as it did most families in America, and when the old man died in 1931, Jack took a job at the Hercules Powder Factory. His knowledge about explosives led him to better positions within the company and made it easier for him to steal the ammonium nitrate, nitroglycerine, and gelatin that he needed for his and Foreman’s rocket experiments.

While Parsons worked at the Hercules Powder Plant in Pinole, near San Francisco, Foreman began work as a metal apprentice at the Los Angeles Hercules plant. Both of the young men started thinking in terms of creating an engine for their rockets that would condense the thrust and allow for better control. They started building their rockets out of metal, but soon realized they needed help, as there is a lot of math involved in rocketry. They found what they needed at the nearby California Institute of Technology where, despite their lack of academic training, they joined the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory and worked under Frank Malina and Theodore von Kármán. Dubbed the Suicide Squad for its daring launches, the team started making real progress with the use of solid-fuel rockets.

In 1942, Parsons devised a mixture of asphalt and potassium perchlorate, basically ushering in the jet age with this development. Using Parsons’ new formula, the team developed Jet-fuel Assisted Take Off (JATO) rockets to help lift heavy aircraft into the air. The United States government took immediate interest in JATO, and the Suicide Squad saw itself funded with more money than it could ever imagine. The project became the now world-famous Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The project group went on to form Aerojet, to manufacture rockets, missiles, and JATOs for the United States military.

Parsons’ life wasn’t all rocket science, as he had grown into a handsome and athletic man and had moved into his grandfather’s old home at 1003 South Orange Avenue. It was a very good place in which to throw parties. Parsons and his wife, Helen Northrup, married since 1935, were followers of British occultist Aleister Crowley, and they led the Pasadena branch of Crowley’s magical order, Ordo Templi Orientis. The couple held services at the mansion, and the Black Masses attracted the Hollywood party crowd, which thought that the mock rituals, usually involving naked women, were a hoot. Parsons, who had his first psychic experience as a boy, seriously believed in Crowley’s dog and pony show and forwarded him the tithe collected from the congregation. The destitute Crowley welcomed the money, but thought that the Pasadena chapter was not following his teachings correctly. Crowley wanted Parsons to replace its current head occultist, Wilfred Smith. Crowley also wanted Parsons to keep an eye on another follower, science fiction author and future founder of the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard.

Helen’s half-sister, Sara Northrup, moved into the mansion when she was seventeen, and a few years later became a serious student of Ordo Templi Orientis. The friction created by the femme fatale caused nothing but problems for the elite of the cult, and soon the church turned into a soap opera. Jack started an affair with Sara, and Helen ran off with Smith. Sara ended up dumping Jack for Hubbard, who also took twenty thousand dollars of Parsons’ money, which he was supposed to invest in surplus ships.

On the business end of Parsons’ life, things were not much better. He was forced out of Aerojet as an active partner. Some of the partners were never comfortable with the brilliant man who had only attended a few semesters of college, and the United States government was not happy that the genius behind rocket-powered flight was not only a political leftist, but also a full-fledged follower of Crowley, who was once described as the most evil man in the world. In 1944, the General Tire and Rubber Company bought fifty-one percent of Aerojet stock. Parsons sold his interest and lived somewhat comfortably, but had he hung onto the stock, he eventually would have been worth millions of dollars.

Parsons lived a relaxed life at 1003 South Orange Avenue. He sporadically worked as a consultant for explosives companies and tinkered with fireworks and rockets through his own company, Vulcan Powder Corporation. He rented out rooms in his twenty-room home to a variety of scientists and misfits. When he needed to rent a room to make ends meet, he placed an ad in the paper that read “only bohemians, artists, musicians, atheists, anarchists, or other exotic types need apply.” The parties continued, as did the Crowleyan occult ceremonies.

With the Cold War between the United States and Russia booming, the FBI, which had been keeping a file on Parsons’ shenanigans, pulled his security clearance. He was unable to work for any company that held government contracts. To make matters worse, his new wife, Candy, left him.

Parsons started working several menial jobs, even pumping gasoline on the weekends. His friend Ed Foreman was not doing much better. Eventually, Parsons got his security clearance back and obtained employment with Hughes Aircraft. He also started to negotiate with Israel to take over its fledgling rocket program. Caught by the FBI, Parsons was investigated for espionage. Interviewing witnesses of, and participants in, the Black Masses held at Parsons’ house unleashed buckets of juicy gossip, which flew around the Los Angeles area. Accusations of drug use and ritual sex sold magazines. Parsons’ house was bugged and he was followed by agents.

Candy and Jack reconciled and leased the coach house at 1071 South Orange Grove. The house was the only original building standing on the property, which was once home to the Cruikshank estate. The bottom floor of the house had been converted into a laundry room/laboratory, where Parsons brewed absinthe and stored his explosives. Jack and Candy hosted many parties, which attracted artists, writers, and musicians of all kinds. Jazz great Charlie Parker is said to have attended these fêtes, at which bongos were played into the early morning hours.

With all of the war and science fiction films being made, Parsons found his skills valuable to the film industry. On June 17, 1952, Parsons received a rush order from a Hollywood special effects company to make small explosives that mimicked a body being shot. Being in a hurry because he and Candy had planned a Mexican vacation for the next day, Jack found himself the victim of his own innovation when something went horribly wrong in his backyard lab and two almost simultaneous explosions shook Pasadena at 5:08 p.m. Jack Parsons died from his injuries shortly after arriving at the hospital. He was thirty-seven years old.

When the fire department arrived, they were so stunned by the amount of volatile chemicals that had not exploded that they called the army’s Fifty-Eighth Ordinance Disposal Unit to deal with the removal.

Jack’s mother, Ruth, was so shocked by her son’s death that she followed him four hours later with an overdose of barbiturates.