Some of us fall by the wayside,
Some of us soar to the stars . . .
Tim Rice, “The Circle of Life,”
sung by Elton (“Rocket Man”) John
Wernher von Braun was a rocket scientist, the most famous—some would say infamous—of them all, the man who led the engineering and scientific teams that were most responsible for giving rise to that still-familiar expression, “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that . . .”
At times, most of us ponder the unknowable meaning of life, or at least the meaning, if any, of our own lives. From boyhood on, von Braun knew the meaning and purpose of his life: to develop and build the rockets that would enable humanity to explore space, to go to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond. On two continents, through cycles of peace and war and Cold War, he lived his life’s dream and made it a reality. He did so at a sometime lethal price along the way. He did so even though he needed deathbed reassurance that the space glories achieved had been worth the price—that he and his Old Country and New World colleagues had “done the right thing” in using the military as the means to their end.
Beyond his burning drive and opportunistic flair, what was Wernher von Braun like as a human being? Some who knew him well view him as a space age renaissance man whose intellectual interests and personal pursuits seemed as diverse and as vast as the universe. They say his enviable human qualities—a sense of fairness and of compassion, an unbridled joie de vivre, uncommon powers as a speaker and listener and retainer of information, an ability to make the fullest use of his time—were as vital to his success as were his technical brilliance and leadership prowess. And some say, genius or not, he was light-years away from perfection.
In speeches and letters during the push toward lunar triumph, von Braun’s ringing recruitment cry was: “Come join us! We’re going to the Moon!” He believed that if man ever stopped exploring the unknown, he would cease to be man. He believed that in exploring the cosmos, man would find . . . himself. A perhaps surprisingly religious man, he believed every man and woman, of whatever faith, owes a final accounting to the Creator for what he or she does with the precious gift of life.
Edward G. Uhl, a U.S. Army engineering officer in World War II, inventor of the antitank bazooka rocket, and later founder of an aerospace company, came to know and admire von Braun and ultimately to recruit him for the corporate world. At the 1993 Von Braun Exploration Forum in Huntsville, Alabama, Uhl observed:
[Von Braun] was indeed a scientist, a rocket engineer, a teacher, an astronomer—the list goes on. And he was a leader. . . . People wanted to follow him. . . . When we won World War II, we got no territory, we got no ships, no factories, no gold, no war spoils. We got one very important asset. We got a team of 117 professional scientists and engineers, led by a pied piper, Wernher von Braun. And that team helped the United States become the space leader of the world.
I began writing about Wernher von Braun in 1957, shortly after joining the staff of the Huntsville (Alabama) Times, and continued to cover him and his team, as a reporter, editorial page writer-editor, and correspondent for national technical and trade publications, until his death in 1977. We became acquainted in a workaday way early on in that span of two decades. Between 1979 and the late 1990s, nearly a dozen books were published about von Braun and his rocket team. Some, written by unabashed admirers, portrayed von Braun in a most favorable light; others, by acknowledged critics, presented dark interpretations of his place in history. But none had dealt fully with the total man: not only the professional figure, but also the personality, the character, the “human side” of this complex man.
In 1998, I decided to write a biography of von Braun. As a newspaperman who had closely observed, reported on, and otherwise written about him in Huntsville and Washington, D.C., for twenty years, I believed that I could bring new insights and journalistic objectivity to the story.
So, with a “starter supply” of material gathered over decades, I set out to conduct a series of interviews with the dwindling number of contemporaries of von Braun around the country and in his twenty-year hometown of Huntsville. One revealing interview led to three more, then to a dozen, and then to scores more. Tracking down some sources involved lengthy detective work. Archival research of correspondence, speeches, articles, and other material took many months. The biography project took on a life of its own. The years 1998 and 1999 came and went, as did 2000, and 2001, and 2002. . . . The number of in-person and telephone interviews, taped and transcribed, exceeded one hundred. Interviewees were, with the rarest of exceptions, cooperative and forthcoming, and some were amazingly candid about intimate details. There was too much for a single book, and the one you are reading is about half the length of the original manuscript. I have put myself in a few places in the story, mostly instances where I had direct interaction with Dr. von Braun.
Writing a book may be a solitary pursuit, but researching one is not, nor is turning a manuscript into a published work. From the material-gathering process to an author’s need for sounding boards to the creation of the finished bound volume, it is a collaborative enterprise.
I am indebted to many people for their help and advice. Foremost are friends and space-writing colleagues Ernst Stuhlinger and Frederick I. Ordway III, both longtime associates of von Braun. Their steadfast assistance in multiple ways during the seven years spent writing this book was boundless. And their selfless help was given, in a sense, to a competing author: their two-volume biographical memoir of 1994, Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space, remains in print. Their work, and the books of other biographers and historians, formed an impressive body of work to build on with this new biography.
Adding their insights to the record were the more than one hundred men and women interviewed for this book. I thank every one of these contemporaries—friends, acquaintances, associates, colleagues, critics—of von Braun. They include such well-known figures as Walter Cronkite, John Glenn, and Hugh Downs, and scientists James Van Allen and the late William Pickering and I. M. Levitt. They also include wonderfully helpful von Braun secretaries Dorette Kersten Schlidt, Bonnie Holmes, and Julie Kertes; von Braun special assistants Frank Williams, Jay Foster, Jim Daniels, and Thomas Shaner; most of the dwindling band of surviving Peenemünde rocket experts who followed von Braun from war-ravaged Germany to America in 1945–46 and later; and many American-born insiders from his U.S. Army and NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) days of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s.
I extend special thanks to John Glenn—former astronaut, senator, and then astronaut again—for his foreword, as well as for our interview, and to Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 astronaut, gifted author, and former director of the National Air and Space Museum, for his contribution to the epilogue.
My great gratitude for their encouragement, assistance, and incalculable advice goes as well to my gentlemanly friend, the World War II naval aviator and early space age catalyst Frederick C. Durant III; to the late Dr. Carsbie C. Adams, health care administrator, space writer, and von Braun family friend; to my late, distinguished lawyer friend, Patrick W. Richardson, longtime personal attorney to Dr. von Braun; to the former thirty-year Associated Press correspondent at Cape Canaveral, Howard Benedict; to authors Ben Bova and Diane McWhorter; and to Ruth von Saurma, von Braun associate and friend, and translator par excellence.
Particular appreciation for their help must also be expressed to Edward O. Buckbee, founding executive director of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center; to Irene Powell Willhite, the center’s indefatigable archival curator; to the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library’s Raneé Pruitt, skilled archivist, and the ever-helpful Thomas Hutchens of its Heritage Room; to David Christensen, veteran space engineer-manager, writer, and prodigious saver of space stuff; to NASA retiree Robert Lindstrom for sharing a trove of von Braun correspondence; and to friends and colleagues at the Huntsville Times for their valued support over the long haul.
My research assistant in the critical latter phases of this trajectory, Kathy Woody, has my undying thanks for her sunny disposition and inordinate skills as a fact-checker, ferreting out photo images, taming computers, and organizing material and this writer. My deep thanks also go to my son Robert Hanly Ward for his mega-help with my innumerable computer gremlins. For their inestimable help in bringing this book into being, I thank my supportive editors at the Naval Institute Press, especially Mark Gatlin, without whom there would be no book, and Linda O’Doughda, as well as freelance editor John Raymond. My most heartfelt appreciation, however, must go to my sharpest, most honest editor—now and through the years—my beloved wife, Barbara Ann Byrne Ward.
Bob Ward
Huntsville, Alabama