NASA ALUMNI LEAGUE
JSC CHAPTER
NEWSLETTER
SEPTEMBER 12, 2012
BIENNIAL CHAPTER ELECTIONS OF OFFICERS AND DIRECTORS
In July the JSC Chapter held its biennial elections for Officers and Directors for the two year term of office running from September 1, 2012 through August 31, 2014. We elected new Officers (President; Vice President; Secretary; and Treasurer) and eight Directors. The ballots were distributed to the membership electronically, along with a candidate information sheet in early July and a two week voting period was established. Ballots were sent by paper mail to those members without email service. About one third of our members voted.
The results of the elections, which established the group of folks who will lead our Chapter for the next two years, are as follows:
President Chester Vaughan
Vice President Wayne Hale
Secretary Norman Chaffee
Treasurer Susan Braymer
Directors(8) Bill Bates
Larry Bell
Phil Deans
Estella Gillette
Denny Holt
Gary Johnson
Rick Nygren
E. Bob Stewart
Congratulations to these folks who will be working hard to keep our Chapter moving forward over the next two years. All of the new Officers and Directors are anxious to hear your ideas for improvements to our programs and services, so please let us hear your ideas.
We want to express our deep appreciation for the services over the past years of the outgoing Officers and Directors. They have played critical roles in our growth and success.
Frank Hughes is the outgoing Vice President and has served our Chapter for many years in a number of roles, including Chapter President. Frank will continue to support our Chapter’s Education Outreach efforts.
Mary Wylie Stang is the outgoing Treasurer and served one term in that position. She has relocated to North Carolina and will continue as an active member, and we hope to see her frequently on trips back to Houston.
Dr. Harold Doiron served one term as a Director and has taken on the task of coordinating the informal Working Group on Climate Change which emerged from the two Climate Change Workshops we sponsored over the past year.
Audrey Rivers served one term as a Director and will continue to serve the Chapter in the areas of Communications and Planning
John Lee has served several terms as a Director and has been the Chair of our Chapter Audit Committee for several years. John will continue to provide guidance and advice to our Chapter.
Guy Thibodaux is a charter member of our Chapter and was responsible for its regeneration from a period of inactivity in the 1990s, and has served as a Director for many years. Guy will continue to provide his wisdom and guidance to the Chapter.
We also want to thank our fine Nominating Committee, which put together an outstanding slate of candidates for the election. The Nominating Committee members were:
Gary Johnson
Carl Shelley
Dr. Wayne Young
REVISION AND UPDATE OF OUR CHAPTER BYLAWS
During the late spring and early summer of 2012 we formed a Bylaws Review Committee led by Vice President Frank Hughes, with strong support from Directors Audrey Rivers, Phil Deans, and other Officers and Directors. This group completely reviewed our Bylaws and updated and revised them, and the recommended product was presented to the membership during the summer for a vote of approval. The membership accepted the recommended changes overwhelmingly, and the new Bylaws are available for your review at our Chapter web site at www.nal-jsc.org
CHAPTER WEB SITE
As noted above, our Chapter web site at www.nal-jsc.org has a great deal of information about our Chapter and is constantly being updated by our Board, with the excellent assistance of Frank Hughes and our capable Webmaster, Irene Chan. Please visit our web site and review all of the information and features. Let us know what you think, and send us any suggestions for improvements.
SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOR VISITS HOUSTON/JSC NEXT WEEK
The NASA 747 transport carrying the Space Shuttle Endeavor on its journey to its new museum home in Los Angeles will overfly the Houston area, including JSC, on the morning of Monday, September 17 (weather and other conditions permitting). It should be in the JSC area between 9:00 a.m. and 10:45 a.m., when it will land at Ellington Field. The 747/Endeavor will be available at Ellington for public viewing on the afternoon of Monday, September 17, and all day on Tuesday, September 18. It will depart Ellington at dawn on Wednesday, September 19 for the trip to Los Angeles. Too bad it’s not staying in Houston!
SPACE SHUTTLE MISSIONS SUMMARY REPORT
NASA has recently issued the Space Shuttle Missions Summary Report, giving details of each of the Shuttle missions from STS-1 through STS-135. The late Bob Legler and our member Floyd Bennett worked on this excellent reference summary. JSC indicates it is available at the following website: http://www11.jsc.nasa.gov/history/shuttle.htm It is an 82MB PDF file.
ENGINEERING AND DEVELOPMENT DIRECTORATE REUNION
The veterans of the JSC Engineering and Development Directorate will celebrate a reunion on October 20, 2012, at the Gilruth Center Alamo Ballroom from 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m. The theme of the reunion is “The First 50 Years of Engineering and Development Excellence”. The event is open to E&D alumni, current members of the Engineering Directorate, and friends of E&D. All retirees who are alumni of the Directorate should have received several emails or mailings about the event, but if you were somehow missed or have misplaced the information, the time to register is fast expiring.
You can go to the Reunion web site at http://users.hal-pc.org/~apolloedreunion/ to find all the details and instructions for registering to attend. A maximum capacity of 500 attendees has been set, so take action now if you plan to attend.
Cost of the tickets is $18. For further information you may contact either of the Co-Chairs, Nick Lance ( phone 281-488-6534) or Teresa Sullivan ( phone 281-488-3766).
JSC SPACE SETTLEMENT DESIGN COMPETITION FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
Our Chapter is once again serving as a sponsor of the JSC Space Settlement Design Competition.
JSC is expanding its annual Space Settlement Design Competition for High School Students to offer a new Fall Competition the weekend of October 12 – 14, 2012 at the Gilruth Center. This program has been offered for 15 years, traditionally in mid-March. The Competition is an intense industry simulation game in which 160 high school students will be formed into four competing teams to prepare a conceptual design and operating plan for a very large human base in Lunar orbit which will serve as an entry/exit port for humans and cargo arriving at and leaving the moon, set in a realistic and detailed scenario in the early 2030’s. The Competition emulates the experience of an aerospace engineer working on a company proposal team to respond to a major Request for Proposal from an important customer. The requirements are complex, the available information is large and the time available is limited (just like in real life). High school students, grades 10 – 12 are invited to participate in this exciting learning experience for potential engineers and scientists. JSC and contractor employees, along with many NAL members, serve as mentors and judges for the Competition.
Please encourage students in your extended family (children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, etc.) to consider participation in this unique learning activity. Students from areas within 200 miles of the Houston area are targeted for this activity. Complete information is available at https://sites.google.com/site/SSDCOctober2012 and can also be obtained from Competition Coordinator, Norman Chaffee, at 713-944-2461 and
WELCOME TO NEW MEMBERS IN 2012
We want to welcome all the new members we have gained during 2012. We have an agreement with JSC Human Resources to supply us with the names and contact information of all JSC retirees and we attempt to contact each and tell them of our Chapter and its activities, and invite them to join us. In addition, when retiring employees are checking out through JSC security in Building 110 they are given an informational flyer about our Chapter which includes an application form. Our new members for 2012 are as follows (sorry if we have inadvertently omitted someone – we value all of you highly)!
Tom Barry
Bohdan Bejmuk
Valencia Martin Budd
Christine Cole
Mike Conley
George Dawson
Cynthia Draughon
J. Doug Drewry
Judy Ernull
Jeanette Fanelli
Lindy Fortenberry
Roberto Garcia
Phyliss Grounds
Gary Gutkowski
Edward Henderson
Carol Homan
David Homan
Jack Lister
Michael Luse
Don Morrison
Robert Neil
Louis Parker
Don Peterson
Patsy Ritterhouse
Ned Robinson
James Romig
Larry Schmidt
Ernest Smith
O.K. Stafford
We also appreciate all of our renewing members who maintain their memberships each year. Some of our members have allowed their memberships to lapse and we will be contacting those folks in the near future to see if they would like to renew.
MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL – The national Headquarters of the NASA Alumni League in Washington, DC, should send each member a renewal notice and form about a month before their membership expires (membership must be renewed annually). However, Fran Evans, who performs that task at NAL HQ, has had some health problems recently, and some members have not received their renewal notices. If you notice that your membership – or your JSC access badge, is about to expire - and you have not received a renewal form, you can send your renewal to our Secretary, Norman Chaffee, and he’ll forward it to NAL HQ and will tell JSC Security that you have renewed your membership so you can renew your NAL JSC access badge. Annual dues are $30 (we get to keep $5 and have to send $25 to the national office), and we appreciate an additional donation of $10 to help support our education outreach programs at Space Center Houston and at the Challenger Center at the Museum of Natural Science (we target underprivileged schools and students). If you make the additional $10 contribution, please send your payment through Secretary, Norman Chaffee, to ensure that our Chapter retains the additional funds. You can send the renewal and check to Norman Chaffee at:
NASA Alumni League – JSC Chapter
2206 South Memorial Court
Pasadena, TX 77502
MEMORIALIZE YOUR SHUTTLE WORK AT SPACE WALK OF FAME – The Space Walk of Fame Foundation in Titusville, FL, has created a series of monuments memorializing the aerospace workers who contributed to the several NASA manned flight programs. Monuments now exist for Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, and work is underway on the Space Shuttle monument. You can have your named inscribed on the Shuttle monument (and on the monument for any of the earlier programs you worked on) by sending your information and $100 per monument to the Space Walk of Fame Foundation. Their address is:
U.S. Space Walk of Fame
4 Main Street
Titusville, FL 32796
The website is spacewalkoffame.com to see the form for requesting an engraving.
You can call and use a credit card at 321-264-0434
This is a nice way to memorialize your contributions to these programs for your children and ancestors to see in the future, and it helps the Foundation with the costs of the monuments. You can also buy an engraving for a relative or friend, as long as they actually worked on the particular program.
WALKWAY TO THE STARS AT SPACE CENTER HOUSTON – In a similar program to the Titusville monuments, Space Center Houston has a program entitled “Walkway to the Stars”, in which you can purchase a customized brick paver to be installed in the Space Center Houston’s Grand Plaza. The customized brick paver will contain three lines of text (up to 16 characters per line), and will cost $199.95 regularly (although there have been special sales prices). You can also buy a keepsake brick – not installed in the plaza – for $50. You can get more information at www.spacecenter.org/walkwaytothe stars.html or at the information desk at Space Center Houston. This purchase will help support Space Center Houston’s ongoing mission to educate and inspire the next generation of explorers.
DONATE YOUR PAPERS AND RECORDS – Each of us took a large amount of material into retirement, and as our ranks thin, it is feared that much material of historical interest will be lost because family and survivors will not know what to do with the accumulation. NASA maintains an archive of historical information at UHCL, which is managed and administered by archivist, Lauren Meyers. Ms. Meyers would appreciate having your personal papers for the archive. No preparation on your part is required – Ms. Meyers and her staff will receive your donation of your papers and records, will go through them carefully to remove any items of a private nature to return to you (such as personnel documents), will systematize your records and keep them in a form that can be accessed by historians and researchers, and by your family and descendants in the future. Don’t put it off! Don’t let the trash man dispose of your important legacy! You can contact Lauren Meyers at or you can call her office at 281-283-3936.
EDUCATION OUTREACH ACTIVITIES – Our Chapter makes regular annual donations to the Education Office at Space Center Houston, and to the Challenger Center at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Hermann Park. Annually we donate $1500 to each of these organizations, designated to help support the visits of underprivileged schools and students. We appreciate your donations of an additional $10 with your membership dues to help support this activity. If you would like to donate to this fund, please renew your membership through our local address so that we are assured of receiving the additional donation.