NASA Crow, O'Dell - May 28, 1999
Interview with O’Dell Crow
Interviewer: Christopher Quinn
Date of Interview: May 28, 1999
Location: Quinn home, Austin, Texas
QUINN: Today is May 28, 1999. This oral history with O’Dell Crow is being conducted at 8905 Bubbling Springs Trail, the home of the interviewee, in Austin, Texas. The interview is being conducted for the NASA – Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in conjunction with Southwest Texas State University, History Department by graduate assistant Christopher Quinn.
Thank you, Mr. Crow, for joining me today. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about where you grew up and where you went to college? Go right ahead. It will pick you up. You don’t need to lean into it.
CROW: I grew up in West Texas, in the vicinity of Lubbock, Texas. Lived there the early part of my life until I became, graduated from high school. I went to pharmacist school in Denver for a couple of years. And this is before the degree time that required, and I received my degree in pharmacy and practiced in Colorado and New Mexico and I also practiced pharmacy in Brownfield, Texas for two years.
And after that time, living in West Texas, my early life through high school I had a longing for to be studying to make myself an engineer, or try to make myself an engineer. And after two years working in a drug store, I decided that the time was right for me to begin another career because at that time doctors made house calls and went out into farming areas and many times I went with him to accomplish, help him do what he was going to do for sick folks in that area. So it was a difficult situation, living in that area and working eight to ten hours a day in a drug store and then accompanying the doctor on his calls during the evening. So I decided that I would change my ability to do something else that did not require any night work, or, of that nature.
So I decided that I would resign my position in 1937 and attend Texas Tech, beginning in January of 1938. So at that time after I completed my job there, I requested, I returned to Texas Tech to study civil engineering. During the time I was in college I was like most students at that time, we accomplished our work and worked on the side to help pay tuition and room and board. So that’s what I did for a period of time and going to school three hundred sixty-five days a year. For two years I accomplished what I thought was extraordinary going the year round. I got a job the third summer with the Corps of Engineers surveying the Lubbock, proposed Lubbock Air Base, in Lubbock and worked out there during the summer months, then resumed my work in 1939-38-1939. So that’s what I did toward civil engineering.
So the war broke out in 1941 and I was in junior in civil engineering. Just a fair student, between a C and a B average. My call number happened to a low one and so the Recruiting Board got a hold of my number and I received at least two deferments during my junior year. And so it gave me an opportunity to pick up some of the rudiments of civil engineering in my junior year. Some of the courses I took were those courses that pertained to my senior year. So in 1941, Uncle Sam said, “Come” and not being a straight A student I had to go. And I could not get any more deferments. So in January, later part of December, I decided, Uncle Sam decided that I was going to have to go into military service. So in January, I quit school and at the end of my final examinations I went to join in the military service.
QUINN: Where did you serve?
CROW: Well I served in the Air Force. At the time I went in it was all one – Army-Air Force. So my personal assignment, first assignment was after I got into the service, [I] went into training at Galveston, Texas. I camped down there and after a year or so of training, why I taught school at the military post. Taught engineering subjects, mathematics and trigonometry. And so that gave me further insight into looking at what the military was. So while I was there at Galveston in the old post, there, it was an army artillery seacoast post, I received a request to follow the commanding general of the area to apply for officer training. And at that time, I didn’t want to feel like I was in anyway capable of being an officer. But in about ninety days the officer came back and reviewed the troops on that station. He singled me out the day that he was there. I had an interview with a major-general officer, commander of the, I believe it was the eighth corps. So he said that I would be hearing from the headquarters from his command in just a few days. Sure enough, I did, I got a letter requesting me to report to officer training school in Aberdeen, Maryland. Break.
QUINN: Okay.
CROW: Beginning my military career and going to what they call “The Wonder School” [Officer Training Camp] to make second lieutenants. I pursued the best that I could to be an officer and train myself in regard to many subjects while I was there in the six months of training. So I received my second lieutenant’s commission and during the war, I [was] with the Air Force, part of the military, with the base, what they call base civil engineer, which was in line with the training that I had had in college. So during my four and a half, or five or six years, I became a field grade officer, a major, in the Air Force as a base civil engineer. So that helped me to further my education and experience in the military doing maintenance, air base maintenance, in a war, under war conditions. So that covered a period of about 1942 to 1949. And after that war was over I came back to the States and began to pursue further the work of a civil engineer.
My first opportunity was at the Corps of Engineering in Dallas, [they] needed some people, so I applied for a job and received it there in the Southwest Division of Corps of Engineers. And [I] began to work in a laboratory there in Dallas for just about a year. Following the years’ work in the laboratory it reminded me some of my college days when I was taking chemistry and some of the other things that’s necessary to get a degree in civil engineering. All these things came back to me. And as that happened after about a year in the laboratory, I was transferred to the construction division of the Southwest Corps of Engineers, which serviced Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, and the Inter-Coastal Waterways in Texas. Now I worked in the construction office there in Dallas for, trying to recall the years, to 1962.
After that, NASA began operations in the Houston area. So I had a friend who was connected with the construction work, so [I] made contact with him and he invited me to transfer from the Corps of Engineers to NASA in Houston. So that I did in early or late 1942 [1962]. That began my career in the construction end of the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
QUINN: What originally drew you to NASA?
CROW: I suppose it was my idea of something that was different. NASA Space was just beginning to grow and to do a lot of publicity work. But the NASA end of it, it was the construction end of it that fascinated me. Because that friend of mine that was working for NASA that wanted me to come be with him was the fact that they would do a lot of buildings that was peculiar to NASA-type works.
QUINN: In what way?
CROW: In the fact that the design and the building of the buildings and NASA had to do with training, specifically, the astronauts and those people that were related to air space and design of the material that was to be used in NASA Space.
QUINN: So what you are telling me is that you are going beyond designing of a normal project. This is something that’s going to be new and different.
CROW: Yes it was new and different in the fact that the design of the Houston, NASA, Johnson Space Center was in such a way that the design would represent or more or less a university city. The buildings were such, [to] be designed in such a way, that they could be converted by removal of the inside and rearranging the space that’s inside of all the buildings, except some of the special buildings that had to be built for the training of the astronauts.
So at the time [that] the construction began I moved to Houston. The fascination of NASA and the work that had to go on there. I understood before I went down there that the building would be designed in such a way that they would house some projects that they didn’t know what they were going to be until they were designed and built and then placed inside the buildings. So there was a combination of work designing the building to fit the needs of training astronauts. An example was one of the buildings would house a centrifuge that would use a capsule and it would spin the astronauts around and get them accustomed to zero gravity. So that was the beginning of the things that fascinated me far as construction management engineering was concerned.
QUINN: So up until this point, you could see at NASA that this was going provide with enough challenges to keep you stimulated.
CROW: Yes, definitely, it was very challenging things. Every day was something new. We just had to keep our eyes open and ears to the ground to see as the construction began then how things begin to develop in such a way that everyday there was something new and challenging in the work down there in the construction of the NASA site.
QUINN: That’s great. Let’s take another break.
You had explained to me that your friend who recruited you down to NASA, he became your supervisor. Now what were your job responsibilities?
CROW: Job responsibilities were to create a system that the contracts could be monitored with. That system was already available to us. So we took the contracts which at the time it was beginning of the construction. There were approximately five or six major contractors on the site that was bidding on it and contracts awarded to those main contractors for construction of certain type buildings and certain type construction.
NASA had set up a computer system. In fact, it was one building that housed all the computers and so we took those contracts that these contractors had won and put them on a system that monitored the contract daily in such a way that we could see work going into place. It was set up in such a way that as work progressed, it would affect other work that was going to be happening during the other contract. Of course the prime contractor had sub-contractors doing certain types of work, the plumbing, the electrical, and the other types of work that was going on.
So all of this was monitored through a man that we called the construction inspector. [He] came in and turned in reports every afternoon on the progress of the work. This was put into the computer at night and by the next morning it was all printed out. We sat there in the construction management office [and] we received copies of the copies of each contract that was going in force. We had the thing set up so that if any work had been delayed for any particular reason, it would affect other work that was coming up behind it, so we had the contract, had the computer printout with an asterisk any item that was slowed down or affected some of the other work that was going in place. Then we would call the contractor to halt this other work that’s due while the other work is stalled so we could report back to the contractor that he had certain things that [had] to be done that he could not accomplish. We used this type system on all the contracts there. This was done daily maintenance, earliest thing in the morning. We reported and checked all of those printouts on each type building.
Course each building was designed, that NASA was designed on a university type design in a circle and where all of the buildings were around a particular circle and the ones that had a relationship with each other were built closer together and I said before the buildings were designed such that partitions could be removed to change around so it was built like a university just in case if NASA ever did quit that university would probably go to some other type college or university and be available for that particular area. It was under that [that] it was done in conjunction with the University of Houston in mind.
QUINN: In essence, NASA decided to leave, not only were the buildings interchangeable while they were functioning for NASA, but if they decided to leave, or vacate the premises, they could easily sell this to a university.
CROW: That was the idea in design of university type buildings there. There were some type buildings that were designed with certain type of equipment, like the centrifuge building. Mostly construction there was what they called steel framework and they hung prefpanels, which was prefabricated concrete panels and hung on the steel framework. [We] had to do that on some of the buildings because the fact that this was having manufactured certain pieces of equipment and they didn’t know what size it was going to be finally. These buildings had to be such a way that this coordination between the equipment that was going to be put in them and the coordination between the construction contractor.
So, it was very meticulous in some of these things, especially, when some of the equipment that NASA had let contracts to build to fit in these buildings to train astronauts had never been built before. And it all had to be done from the basic ground up. It was just designed along with buildings construction there and that was just one of the jobs that the construction management engineer people had to watch very, very closely. All during the construction.
QUINN: So in a lot of ways, your job was probably the most important because you had to make sure that you implemented the design from NASA while at the same time coordinating and making sure that the projects got done on time and under budget.
CROW: Well, not necessarily as important but it was the fact that certain jobs had to be done before others could be done and that was our responsibility to report those things that would delay doing something that had scheduled to be accomplished today could not be accomplished because some material or something was doing away with the time and the other behind could not do and hold off. So it was a delay and wait and the contractor had to move his people over to another area or do something else for work when the delays occurred and that had to do with the construction as well as the manufacture of equipment that was going into the buildings. So it was quite a deal that the construction management office had to keep on top of all the time. It was no rest. It was continuous day by day.
QUINN: Were you working an extraordinary amount of hours per day and days per week?
CROW: No, sometimes it was. It all depends on how big a delay something had caused. Whether it was material or whether or not it was equipment to go in the building. That way it was some delays, especially, when it was equipment to go in the building and the contractor was doing the work. He could not proceed to a certain section of it until such time as the equipment that was built it was going in it.
I know of one particular case, the contract for the equipment was made and the test item that was used to go in there collapsed and they had to redesign and start all over again and so that delayed the construction contract several days. The contractor, course, we would delay a contractor, we’d give him a specific time to complete the building. We had to have an understanding with the contractor that he would do something else in the meantime and if he was delayed too many man-hours why, course, it’d cost the government. Why a modification to the contract of the delay, could delay work. So, it was a pretty good size job for the three of us to handle that. One time, we had as many as twelve contracts going there on NASA site.
QUINN: Wow. Did you have the power to modify the contract on site?
CROW: No, the contracting officer was the only one who had the power to modify it but the construction inspector was the one that was closest to that. When the contract had to be modified, the construction inspector was instrumental in providing information to the contracting office that handled the official contracts on that. And then that contract modification would make, would be changed in the contracting office.
QUINN: Okay. Let’s take another break.
Okay, go ahead with what you were saying.
CROW: In the beginning of this project, it was estimated that it would take approximately eight years to complete the total project. President [John F.] Kennedy indicated to us that he would like to have that cut half in two. Well, that meant we had to do something. Sure enough we urged the contractors to double their duty and work as much as possible around the clock. That took place very smoothly. The primary job was completed in four years. The complete site was not completed in four years. But, the primary work where the astronauts could start training began within the period of four years. It was a fantastic development by all of those contractors working on the site.
QUINN: Because you were on a deadline, were there higher than normal incentives for a contractor to get done?
CROW: No, there was no incentive except the fact that it was built into a contract a given time that he had to complete his contract. The fact that there were delays, now there’s all kinds of delays, weather delays or rain where men cannot work, that’s normal. [We] had to consider many days in that particular area down there that hurricanes and things of that nature come in and disturb that why, then course, that was act of God. They would give him extra time for that. Most of the contractors were faithful and knew what responsibility that NASA had to begin to get a man on the moon. They were all, would go and go and that’s what it was.
QUINN: So there was sort of some sense of nationalism working there.
CROW: Yes, it was. Every contractor, most of them were, the large contractors had been in the business a long time and they realized what it meant to the United States to accomplish the job because the Russians had already put a sputnik out in space. They began to turn to work out as faithfully as they could. Far as we could determine, there was no bypassing or doing any shoddy work. All of it was a good, nice, clean work according to the general contract specifications. There was no shoddy work at all. It was all, all just good stuff. We, in the construction branch, always appreciated that. Occasionally, we had a slip up or some subcontractor, but we let the prime contractor take care of that necessary item. [He would] get it all straightened out himself because he had a prime contractor with the government and he had a subcontract with the individual organizations.
QUINN: So, although many of the construction workers were not dealing directly with putting a man on the moon, it meant nothing less when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. There had to have been a great sense of pride there.
CROW: Yes, it was. When they went out, first capsules that they sent out was a one-man capsule of course. Then they shot those off. The first one, I believe, did not go out into space. It went just below the space and landed out into the ocean, the Pacific Ocean, I believe it was and they picked the man up. They had standby ships out there in the Pacific, where they had planned mathematically to fire the rockets at the right time and the capsule would land out in the Pacific. That was the one that John Glenn, I believe, was the first one that went out into space, just out into space, and he made. I believe that’s correct. [He] made a loop around the earth a time or two and then came back.
The timing was perfect, all these. They had men that, what they called frogs, Navy frogs, where they’re available when the capsule hit the water. These men were available to put floatation collars on the capsule and get the astronaut out and pick up the capsule and bring it back. So, it was a fantastic job all the way through from construction to even to building the space capsules and sending them off from Cape Canaveral, which was another story was watching those things.
QUINN: Do you remember when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. You guys were done with the prime building or the stuff to get the astronauts working. Were there any delays, was there, just in a sense that everyone took a break and enjoyed it?
CROW: Yes that was a day of elation there in NASA. Practically everything stopped and celebrated the landing on the moon. What a fantastic day that was. I believe the manager of the station allowed people to take time off and to see. Televisions were placed in various offices around the site and people gathered there to watch all this going on. It was really a great day when they landed on the moon. Everybody just hollered and whooped and had a good time for the success of what they’d been looking for – for so long.
QUINN: What you describe sounds like a great sense of teamwork on the construction site.
CROW: Yes, it was. Relation was in the fact that of what had been accomplished through the contractors and those of us that run the pencils and check sheets and all the other paraphernalia that had to go on into this was a day of elation. Everybody had a feeling of being accomplished what the goal had been set out to be.
QUINN: Right. It’s a very good point in the sense that you don’t often get to hear about what a sense of elation comes from the people making the buildings.
CROW: Oh yes, it was fantastic. Seemed like we wanted to rejoice there over holidays, but it wasn’t. It was just a holiday to reinforce our efforts to accomplish the other things that was to be finalized in a spaceship that would take several astronauts to the moon. It just progressed, each seemed like, each year that the design people of the capsules, they would just increase bigger and bigger ones to take care of two men and four men and then they come up with the final, the one that the type that we have now. All ended up in final success in accomplishment by everybody working together. I don’t think that there were any lazy people around that area there for a long time. Everybody had a grateful heart and always had a feeling of accomplish something and being a part of the whole thing that was going on and looking forward to the day that NASA would begin to put a space station in space, which they have accomplished right now.
QUINN: Let’s take another break.
You worked with NASA through the final Apollo projects, is that correct? You left around 1972.
CROW: Yes, I left NASA. I retired from NASA in 1972. Primarily, most of the contracts and most of the buildings were completed. Only thing that was left as far as construction was concerned were as NASA progressed, equipment changed. NASA had to change and modify their buildings to cope with the change in equipment. The primary work, course as thing changes, they had to modify each building that has to do with the relationship of what the change in equipment is concerned. Course, that takes place, that really they built the type of buildings that they did so the outside remains the same but the interior parts of it may change. So that’s really what takes place. Most of the time now is the fact that the astronauts training changes, things change and they have to change buildings to cope with the changes in astronauts training. And you also have to change training equipment for other things that have changed. For example, the space walk, they have a large water tank to train the astronauts in. That is, give them the feel of being out in space and no control except the control of themselves by some force that works to get them to where they want to go. That’s about the only modifications that they changed to the buildings is that fact that as equipment changes, then the other things have to be changed within the buildings. But the outside buildings remain the same.
QUINN: So you felt that after, about that time you felt that you had accomplished what you wanted to accomplish and you felt that it was a pretty good time to move on.
CROW: Yes, I did. My wife and I both worked for NASA. She was a division secretary, in fact, she was a construction division secretary. She had to retire because of health. I felt that many of the engineers that had been there from the very beginning – age and stage and time to retire and NASA was offering some good retirement possibilities. They were trying to bring on some new, young engineers, which is the thing that was necessary for that type of work with new ideas. So that gave incentive to a lot of us that were, had been there twenty, twenty, twenty-five years, that is, in this type of service. That was the time that I felt that I had accomplished the big part of construction in the site and helping with it.
I was not only one there. I was just one of the thousands of men and women that help produce putting astronauts on the moon and getting the larger capsules made for, for what is being used today. So that brought my NASA career to an end with all the goodness and all the buildings I used. I did not regret any of it. I wished that I could’ve been more forceful in helping get the job done. That was my ambition was to accomplish what it was set out in the first place.
QUINN: You just mentioned an interesting point. I had interviewed a design engineer and he alluded to the same thing that you just said that the space program is a young man’s job.
CROW: Yes.
QUINN: It sounds like you would agree.
CROW: Yeah, a hundred percent.
QUINN: When you left NASA, you left Houston as well?
CROW: When I left NASA, during the last two or three years that I was with NASA, I attended the University of Houston, equipping myself for real estate broker. I attended night classes for almost two and half years, equipping myself to do something else after I’ve retire from NASA. So it was when I retired from NASA, I had my broker’s license and ready to do something else for a while and not just completely sit down and do nothing. We had planned to move out of the Houston area. We had looked for several areas.
We looked at a little place down here called Wimberley. It was fifty miles southwest of Austin. A little place on the river and, so, we bought some real estate out there. I built a house, a rock house, in Wimberley, overlooking the river and went into the real estate business for two or three years there in Wimberley. I enjoyed that. It was a little different from in the construction site, where being out in the open, free to go when I wanted to go. I always appreciate what NASA had done for me and I have never forgotten all of the good things that NASA has done for me and my personal life. And I guess I’ll carry them with me until I start pushing up soil.
QUINN: Well, it sounds like it was a wonderful experience for you. Do you still keep up with the program?
CROW: Yes, I still keep up with the program and I get a NASA paper every two weeks. They send me what’s, the newspaper, what they call the Round Up. It gives things that’s going on and what’s happening down there in Houston. Not only in Houston, but things that are happening in other NASA sites. Course, NASA has several sites around the United States. So, it keeps me going on what, what the NASA is doing, far as development and far as space is concerned. Keeps me up to the minute.
QUINN: That’s good. That’s wonderful. Well, I thank you for your time today. I think that should about wrap it up. I guess my last question is if you were going to do this interview, if you were going to do this interview, if you were going to interview someone from NASA, what did I leave out or what would you like to add that I have not covered?
CROW: I think you pretty well covered it. Some detail things that’s not very important and I believe I have tried to give you an overall view of the happenings as far as the construction office is concerned. That is part of it, it’s not all of it. It’s just the construction management part of it where we had to see to it that things that delays and how whip the delays and coordinate all the work that was going on in the, on the site there in NASA Center.
QUINN: Well, good. Thank you again.
CROW: Your welcome.
QUINN: I appreciate it.