When Robert Goddard moved to Roswell, N.M., in the 1930s, trucking in mysterious long objects that residents knew had to be rockets, a 10th-grader named Lowell N. Randall was curious and fascinated. "I wanted to go to work for that guy," Randall said last week.
In an interview two days before his 89th birthday, Randall recalled his repeated attempts to find employment with the man now acknowledged as the father of modern rocketry. Randall went on to a distinguished career with the U.S. space program.
He is believed to be the last surviving member of the Goddard team, pioneers who launched the U.S. space program. Randall was interviewed while in Salt Lake City to address the Rocky Mountain NASA Space Grant Consortium, meeting at Salt Lake Community College.
"Many of the young graduate students who were in the audience came up and talked with him after his speech," said Gil Moore, retired Utah State University physics professor who accompanied Randall.
Goddard had moved to Roswell, Randall's hometown, to find a quiet, open place for his rocket experiments. Back in Massachusetts, where he was a professor at Clark University, Goddard had been brutally ridiculed over his ideas about rocketry, including the notion that a rocket could someday reach the moon.
Randall graduated from high school in the middle of the Depression and went to work for a furniture store, laying linoleum, hanging blinds and installing carpets. He approached Goddard three times asking for work and was rebuffed.
During the third visit to the Goddard home, the scientist agreed to let him see his workshop. "So he says he'll be about 20 minutes, and then he would call," Randall said. "So he went back out to his shop, which was just about 50 yards from his house.
"Twenty minutes later I went out there, and I was looking forward to see this rocket. All I saw was a beautiful machine shop," a clean workshop with machinery on tables. "There was something over there at the side of the building, all covered up with sheets," he added.
But Goddard shrouded his rocket with canvas for the visit. Goddard had shrouded his rocket with canvas.
Later, Randall was attending ground school for a pilot's license, and Goddard gave a demonstration on the principle of the gyroscope. Randall happened to be seated beside Goddard's wife, Esther.
Randall had been working on a gyroscope that could sense an aircraft's speed and had built a prototype. He asked Mrs. Goddard "if I could bring my invention around to have it evaluated by Dr. Goddard."
She agreed, and he showed up at the appointed time, right after dinner.
"She was clearing the dishes off the supper table, and Dr. Goddard came to the door and invited me in." The gyroscope was rumbling inside the box he carried. The box had an indicator at the top that told about its movements.
"So I walked around the dining room and showed him that if I stopped, I would have an indication." The indicator also noted if Randall moved forward or backward. "So I showed him that I could measure acceleration," he said.
Goddard asked a question about the device that threatened to stump Randall. "But before I could answer, he said, 'How would you like to come to work for me?'"
Randall was so excited, "I accepted right on the spot."
Later, as he was setting the gyroscope on the seat of the Essex, he realized he had not asked about wages or when he should start work. He needed to give two weeks' notice at the furniture shop. Embarrassed, he went back and knocked on the Goddards' door.
"We didn't say anything about wages," he told Goddard. "I'm making $18 a week. I have a wife and a baby. I would have to have at least $18 a week."
Goddard replied, "Oh, I think we could handle that."
When he had finished his first week's work as part of the Goddard team, he opened his paycheck and found it was for $25.
"And I thought, 'Man, this is great!' "
If he could have, he would have worked for nothing, the adventure was so exciting.
Goddard was a wonderful boss. "He was always making puns," he recalled.
"He was in good spirits all the time, amazingly good spirits — but extremely secretive." However, the secrecy did not extend to the group of researchers, which eventually numbered eight.
"We all worked as a team and exchanged ideas," he said.
"There were no secrets among any of us. But we had an understanding, and Mrs. Goddard made that clear to me my first day, 'You do not talk to the outsiders, you don't say a word to the outsiders.' "
When World War II started, the Goddard team moved to Annapolis, Md., working on a Navy project to develop rockets that would help "flying boat" aircraft take off from the surface of the ocean. Among Randall's contributions was a new device to control "chugging" as liquid propellant moved through the liquid-fuel rocket.
Those heady days with Goddard catapulted Randall into a career that brought him to the top of the American space program. Eventually he worked on the Bell X2 rocket plane and helped design systems on the Redstone rocket that took astronauts on suborbital hops. He wrangled with Werner von Braun and won. And he headed teams working on vital military space projects.
In August, Utahns will have the chance to hear more of Randall's tales of the early days of the space program. He is scheduled to address the small satellite conference in Logan, a meeting hosted by USU and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com