NASA Dalke, Edgar A. - May 27, 1999
Interview with Edgar A. Dalke
Interviewer: Sandra Davidson
Date of Interview: May 27, 1999
Location: Dalke home, Burnet, Texas
Davidson: Good morning. Today is Thursday, May 27, 1999. I’m Sandra Davidson, a graduate student involved in the NASA/SWTSU [Southwest Texas State University] Oral History Project. Today I’m in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Dalke in Burnet, Texas, where I will be talking with Mr. Dalke about his experiences with NASA.
Good morning Mr. Dalke. How are you?
DALKE: I’m doing great.
DAVIDSON: Well, I’d like to start the interview by talking a little bit about your early life. Where and when were you born?
DALKE: I was born in Geary, Oklahoma, March 31, 1928.
DAVIDSON: And, what kind of--as you were growing up, what kind of education did you receive?
DALKE: Well, obviously I went through the regular grade schools . . . country schools. We were an agricultural community, and so country school for my first eight years—eighth grade. Then I went to high school in Geary. And then my folks moved up to Burton, Kansas, where I completed high school. And after . . . I stayed out one year after graduation, and then completed four years of college at Bethel College in north Newton, Kansas, which was about twenty miles from home.
DAVIDSON: What was your major in college?
DALKE: Mathematics. Minor in physics. I had always desired to be an aeronautical engineer, but I never made it up to postgraduate work.
DAVIDSON: Oh, okay. And were you always interested in space travel or did that seem like just kind of a dream when you were growing up.
DALKE: Actually, space wasn’t discussed too much when I was growing up. It was still airplanes—the early days of airplane designs and commercialism of air travel and things like that. So space really, in my mind, didn’t come into being until the early Eisenhower administration.
DAVIDSON: How did you get involved with NASA?
DALKE: Okay. After four years in the Air Force, I went to work for Sperry Gyroscope Company as a field engineer. I had been a RADAR system technician in the Air Force, so I was employed by Sperry Gyroscope Company as a field engineer. And while I was assigned at Greenville, Texas, which is just east of Dallas, my job with Sperry kind of took a little turn and actually, I kind of. . . . Some of the things that Sperry was doing was not in my liking, and I was kind of following the space program at that time, and I said, “It’s time for me to change jobs.” And it so happened that the local newspaper had an ad of a NASA interview team coming to Dallas, so I made an appointment and talked to the interview team and was promptly hired.
DAVIDSON: Just backtracking a little bit, how long were you in the Air Force?
DALKE: Four years.
DAVIDSON: Four years.
DALKE: Actually, I was over in Korea during the last year.
DAVIDSON: I see. And when was it? As I remember you were at Cape Canaveral for a while.
DALKE: Correct. When I was employed with NASA, there was still what was called the Manned Spacecraft Operations down in Cape Canaveral. And that was where my employment started in 1963. And in late 1964 and early 1965, there was a major re-alignment of responsibilities between the Cape and at Houston. By that time, you know, Houston had been set up as the Manned Spacecraft Center. So the organization I belonged to at the Cape, was really an appendage to the organization in Houston. So they said, “Your job has been transferred to Houston, and if you would like to continue employment with NASA you will move to Houston.” [laughs] So I moved to Houston in 1965 with a group of other NASA peers.
DAVIDSON: What were your duties when you worked at NASA? (Like, for example, at Cape Canaveral, and then in Houston.)
DALKE: When I went to work for NASA at the Cape I had just completed with Sperry. You know, when I was working for Sperry, I had been involved in some development work on an automated checkout system for some spacecraft systems that the Air Force was looking into. And so when I applied, I made it known that I was a computer-type person and had experience with checkout. So I was employed by a group that was responsible for the design and development of the Acceptance Checkout Equipment (called ACE) for NASA. And this particular equipment was used by NASA throughout the Apollo program for checkout of the spacecraft.
DAVIDSON: What exactly do you mean for people who might not understand the word “checkout”?
DALKE: Checkout is the function that takes place when you’re determining “how good,” or “have you built something properly.” In other words, when you build a black box or something like that, you have to check it out to verify that indeed the design and the production meets the specifications, and all of that criteria. And so there’s an activity called “checkout.” And of course, there are several levels of checkout. There’s black-box checkout. There’s integrated-systems, where you have a bunch of different black boxes put together. And then you have the final thing which is the vehicle checkout where you have everything working together. Of course, this is all ground checkout, in other words. This isn’t on-board checkout. This is purely, ground check out to verify functionality, and performance, and goodness of the configuration.
DAVIDSON: Okay. And, during your years at NASA, what other responsibilities did you have. You know, did your job change later on?
DALKE: I stayed in engineering throughout almost all of my NASA days. But after the Apollo lunar landing, that time phase. . . . In about 1972 was the beginning of the Shuttle program. So I switched over to the Shuttle program as an engineering-type concerned with the design of the computerized flight-control system, if you will. And I don’t know how knowledgeable you are of the Shuttle, but the Shuttle was a real advance technology kind of configuration for the avionics system. And so, my job was involved with the on-board--let’s see, what did we call it then? In Space Station it was called the Data Management System. [laughs] In the Shuttle days, I don’t remember exactly what we did call it to tell you the truth. But it had computers and all things like that.
DAVIDSON: Okay. Well, what is—what are some of the ways that NASA has changed in terms of personnel, in terms of equipment, in terms of technology. How has it changed over the years?
DALKE: Well, I think what has transpired is that it has gone more from hands-on engineering expertise—in other words, the NASA employees doing a large part of the activities, to becoming a agency where the engineers are more concerned with monitoring the activities of a contractor. In other words, it’s more emphasis on the contractor doing the design definition work and the NASA personnel become more of a contract monitor. Now, that doesn’t take anything away from their engineering expertise because you still have to have the engineering expertise to know what the contractor is doing. But I do think there was more “hands-on” in the early days because NASA was a relatively small organization in the beginning. And of course, as it evolved through the programs, it got bigger, and bigger and bigger and it became necessary to have more contractor involvement.
DAVIDSON: [about to ask question]
DALKE: Excuse me, let me just add one other thing. Administratively, I gotta’ add this little point, in the early days of NASA, there was a much more freedom in regulations. And as the government agency got bigger and bigger, there became a lot more of the traditional bureaucratic aspects of organization. In other words, in the early days we didn’t care about all the politics and things like that. And as it became later, you had to be more concerned with regulations and things of that sort.
DAVIDSON: Yes. How big of a role do you think politics has played in the space program?
DALKE: Politics has been always a major consideration in the space program. The fact is, in looking back to that book I referred to [a book published by NASA] on the beginning of the Mercury Program, there was a considerable amount of politics in terms of who was actually going to do the work. It became of case of “where is the work going to be done?” And so, there is, always in every government project, there is a considerable amount of politics. And so I can’t say that politics has changed that much. I think it’s just the standard politics.
DAVIDSON: What are some of the most vivid memories that you have in your work with NASA?
DALKE: Obviously, the accomplishment of putting a man on the moon, and I was in ground checkout so I wasn’t instrumental in monitoring the actual flight itself, but we as a team had very, very. . . . It was an emotional time when you sat there and watched the TV and saw that first man step on the moon. That has to be the highlight of anybody that was involved with NASA. There was a lot of pride in those days. I’m not saying that there isn’t pride today, I’m just saying that as a team, we had a lot of pride, and we were very—that was just a highlight.
I think the second one [clock chimes] was on the Shuttle. Now I kind of hinted that there was some advanced technology work. And just to add to that, let me say that not only was this the first flight vehicle that was flown by wire. By wire, I mean that a computer controls everything that takes place—almost everything that takes place in terms of the Shuttle operations. There were some unique communication techniques. Today’s e-mail uses modems, and things like that. Well, on the Shuttle, we used data bus technology which is the semi-equivalent to modem-type activity. In other words, we had computers talking over a data bus to the remote terminal units that controlled the actuators. So technology wise, it was a tremendous step forward in terms of how you actually flew an airplane. And since we were responsible for that, so the next highlight was when we dropped—and most people don’t remember this—when we dropped the first Shuttle from a 747. This was the first time we had a chance to see, “Gee, can a computer perform through this phase of operation? Will the thing communicate? Continue to operate? So, I was watching the first drop test from a 747 and your heart was beating [laughs] as you were watching it make big turns, and you say, “Golly, are the turns right?” “Is everything happening right?” And as it came in for the landing, you know, they had to drop the landing gear, “Golly, is the computer going to keep working?” And of course, everything worked, and after that, it was kind of, you know, that was just a high point for the Shuttle days. Those two events to me, were the biggest, high points of my life.
DAVIDSON: Do you ever look at the computers and the technology that you had in the ‘60s and marvel that a man was able to get on the moon?
DALKE: Yes. The fact is, you asked about politics and things like that, several of us have made the comment that with the environment today, it’s very difficult to do some of those big programs like that.
DAVIDSON: Why is that?
DALKE: It’s just the way government operates in a big environment. Dr. [Robert] Gilruth, who was the lead director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, was very much—this is second hand [information]. I’m not speaking from something because I didn’t talk to Dr. Gilruth except maybe once or twice. But it is said that he expressed the fact that if he was given a small team of engineers and allowed to go to wherever it is he wants to go, give a lot of freedom, he could do most anything. And so this is what I’m saying. When agencies get bigger, there becomes more regulations, and more politics involved. It becomes more difficult to get things done. And I’m not here to belittle the Space Station, because that was the tail end of my time with NASA, I was working with the Space Station program. And you saw it very much in evidence there. It becomes so big. It becomes so involved. It becomes so political that it gets very difficult sometimes to make things happen.
DAVIDSON: Tell me a little bit about your work on the space station.
DALKE: Well I was—In the early days while I was still in engineering, we were doing a lot of research work in fiber optic technology, in the computers as I was telling you. The fact is, when we wrote the initial requirements for the Space Station—and this was in the early phases, you know. There are phases A, B, and C, where Phase C is where you actually start designing the building. We had done a lot of research on distributed architectures, which, in today’s environment, is “How do computers work autonomously and independently and still communicate back together?” We were actually at the forerunning of a computer architecture that would allow many, many computers to work together to run the systems, instead of having one. So that was where I was involved in the engineering phases. Then towards the last two years or so of my stay with NASA, I went to the Program Office. And the Program Office is where you work with a contractor in performing the actual design development. So I was a project engineer for the Data Management System hardware, which included the computers. And we were again going with some networking systems and some CRT display systems. So I was Project Engineer in the Space Station Program Office for that area. That was called the Data Management System, by the way. Like I said, I couldn’t remember what we called it then [laughs] in the Shuttle.
DAVIDSON: Okay, thank you. When you went to work, and you can choose any point in your career, what was a typical day like?
DALKE: Well, I always—I guess to say, I kind of looked forward because there were always challenges. The fact is, I think that’s probably one of the unique aspects of NASA. Every day was a new day. Although, I mean I’m not trying to say that you never knew what you were going to do at work, but it seemed like there was always a new challenge every day. Something to accomplish. You sometimes kind of looked forward to going to work. My wife was a very good wife, and she made my lunch every day, almost every day. That’s not to say one hundred per cent. But I would go to work in the morning. We would sometimes gather together (We were a relatively small engineering group) and see what the challenges were for the day, and then we’d go off and do our thing. I tried to always get to work at least thirty minutes before starting time. In my life, I always kind of worked a little bit through lunch. While I was eating my lunch, I would sit there and do whatever I was supposed to do. I never went home before—I was always an hour, an hour and a half late going home. Later—my early days were in detail engineering. Some of the later days were more involved in managerial-type duties and supervisory-type work. So a lot of my days, as I got later in my years, was personnel-type things. Evaluating your employees. Doing budgetary work. Doing planning. I spent a lot of time in the later days doing actual program planning, project planning. You know, anticipating what we should be doing and detailing out a lot of that experience-—no not experience, detailing out a lot of the tasks that we had to perform. Putting together program plans, if you will.
DAVIDSON: How long did you live in Houston.
DALKE: From ’65 ‘til about 1990. We built this residence—the house was completed in 1989, the fall of 1989. We didn’t move up right away. I retired in ’89 and then went to work for McDonnell Douglas in that area, in the Houston area, for a couple of years. And then my wife moved up here, I believe, in ’92, at which time I continued to work down there. I actually commuted. [laughs] I didn’t work a five-day week. I was working like a three-day week. I would go down on Tuesday morning and come back on Thursday evening. So, then I retired from McDonnell Douglas in ’93.
DAVIDSON: Was it, well. Was it difficult to make a transition after NASA? Was there any difficulty. . . . You know, I hear a lot of people put in long days at NASA, and things like that. Did you have any difficulty in that?
DALKE: Absolutely not. I looked forward to my retirement. And that was not to belittle my NASA days. I’m just saying that I was ready to come up here to enjoy myself.
DAVIDSON: What have you been doing since retirement?
DALKE: Well, this place takes a lot of time. And you’ve heard this before. We never realized—how did we ever have enough time to go to work before we retired because we’re always busy. I’m fairly active in the civic matters. I belong to the local fire and EMS association for Hoover Valley. The fact is, I have a meeting tonight for the EMS council. Burnet County has formed a EMS council which is trying to integrate all the EMS activities into one thing. For about the last year and a half we’ve been trying to make that happen. Plus the fact that we, we the council, are responsible for the expenditure of the funds from the county to the unit that actually performs it. So, I’m a member of that council, and we meet every two weeks, has been. (Well, actually the second and the fourth Thursdays) and the meeting is tonight.
I participate in another civic function. Water is a major issue up here. I’m sure you realize that. And there’s a group of us that are the Burnet Water Council. So I’m involved in that.
My wife, of course, and I attend church, the local Hoover Valley Baptist Church. It’s so small that I had to become the music [laughs] leader. Can you believe that?
DAVIDSON: Oh really? Do you have experience in music?
DALKE: No. Well, I was a member of the band, and I always sang in church choirs and things like that.
DAVIDSON: What did you play in the band?
DALKE: I started with the coronet, and then I changed to the Sousaphone.
DAVIDSON: Oh that’s wonderful.
DALKE: But I was never great, don’t get me wrong. But it was enjoyable.
Let’s see, is there anything I’m leaving out. Now, I’m not talking about every week you’ve got to mow the grass, and you gotta’ water the lawn, and you gotta’ keep the house painted, and all these kind of things. I do gardening, and I fish. Well, I would like to be a fisherman, except that I never have time to go fishing, or I never have the desire to fish, I guess. But anyway, I do enjoy water sports. I go scuba diving. In fact, we’re going next month to Cozumel.
The other civic activity is I look at the taxpayer’s responsibility to know what government is doing. So I go to the commissioners court when they meet every other Tuesday. (Well, the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month.) And I make my comments known there when they’re doing something I dislike, or even tell them when I think they’re doing the right thing there. And the budget hearings are going on right now. So, I’m trying to maintain a cognizance of what takes place there.
DAVIDSON: That’s good. Good. Well, I’m curious about something. Where were you when you heard about Sputnik? Do you remember?
DALKE: Yes, I think so. [laughs] If I recall correctly, I was still working for Sperry Gyroscope and my wife and I were living in Enid, Ohio. I was assigned to the Wright Patterson Air Force Base as an instructor for some equipment that Sperry had provided to the Air Force. So if I’m not mistaken, we were living in Enid, Ohio. I don’t remember what the date was. Do you have the date of when the Sputnik first flew?
DAVIDSON: It was in 1957, but I don’t remember the exact date.
DALKE: ’67?
DAVIDSON: ’57.
DALKE: Yeah. Boy oh boy oh boy. That’d be about right. I think that was when it was.
DAVIDSON: What did you think about that?
DALKE: Well, I thought it was great. I thought it was—I was, of course, not unhappy. But it you know, would have been nice if America had done the first thing. And I monitored the periodicals. I wasn’t involved in it, so I didn’t have any direct responsibility for the early space exploration—not exploration but preparing for space flight. So, I was just hoping that we could get ourselves into space shortly thereafter. I was disappointed that we didn’t beat the Russians, but at the [clock chimes] same time I realized enough about what took place to know that it wasn’t disastrous. [laughs] In fact, it probably encouraged our work. Well, obviously, the Sputnik was something that made us pursue it quicker. We got into competition. The space race was no doubt I think good for the United States.
DAVIDSON: I think it was, too. What do you think the future holds for the space program as it is today?
DALKE: I’m going to go back and repeat something I heard many years ago. And I’m indirectly answering your question. Every time we went through a budget exercise for a major program, there was always the question, "Well, what is the United States going to do about space?” And I’ll never forget this one individual talking about, “You know, the first decision is ‘Should we go into space?’” And invariably when I talk to people around the United States—and I travel, and I do talk to people. Just in talking to people that you meet on the airplane, or wherever, everybody was for space. And of course, I think space is the right thing to be doing. I think what we’re doing is the logical progression. This particular individual that I referred to that says, “You know, if you make up your mind to go to space travel, there’s some logical steps. And the first one is not only do you have to get to space from Earth, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do with our early launch vehicles, and the Shuttle. The next thing you’ve got to do is learn to live in space. And of course, that’s the phase we’ve been in for quite some time with the Russians with the space station type activity. Because there are a lot of medical problems that have to be overcome before you can really do long duration space flights—if you want to go to Mars or something like that. To me, space research is a logical extension of technology of doing things. It’s just a logical extension to living here on Earth. And if we’re going to do that, going to space, then we need to take these logical steps. I look forward to people, perhaps—you know, I’ve monitored a lot of studies done by NASA on learning to live on the lunar surface. And that seems to be a logical thing to do, is learn how to live on the lunar space so that you could have a stepping stone to further space. Do we need to go to Mars? Well yeah, I think that ‘s the right thing to do. When? [laughs] I haven’t the foggiest idea [laughs] of when we’ll be able to do it, because we still don’t have a lot of knowledge about long duration space effects on people.
DAVIDSON: You mentioned something about medical problems that still need to be worked out. What are some of those?
DALKE: Oh, golly. I’m no doctor. But you know, you read it everyday that the body’s reaction to zero g causes a deterioration. I’m assuming that some people have told you, but every time the crew comes back from space on the Shuttle, they’re weak-kneed. And that’s only for a week’s duration. And I know some of the people that were on the Space Station. And when they come back, you know, there is a recovery period where they. . . . They’re not sick, but you know, you have to rebuild your muscles and things like that. I think probably the psychological aspects are one of the bigger aspects of living in confined spaces for long durations. The fact is, I don’t remember where it was, but I was just reading recently, where you get a confined group of people living for a long time in space like that, and you start getting on people’s edge. And I think you can see that in everyday life. You don’t have to live in a confined space.
But you get big communities and I think that’s what’s causing a lot of the problems today. You go into—it’s interesting, and I’m kind of departing here. Living out here in the country, you get on the road. There’s not a lot of traffic so you do your own thing. . . like Austin and Houston, it starts becoming a rat race. You get the big traffic, and you see speed increasing. As you get more congestion the speed increases instead of slowing down. And aggressiveness. I mean the whole mentality of people changes as you get more compact and throw more people in together. So, if you relate that to space, if you get five or six people in a little room like here, all of a sudden, they get on each other’s edge. So I think the psychological aspects is the big concern for the long duration of space flight.
DAVIDSON: I would think so, too. Throughout your life, what have you learned about man’s capabilities and his limitations?
DALKE: Whew! That’s a big philosophical question. Man’s limitations, and expectations?
DAVIDSON: And capabilities.
DALKE: And capabilities? Well, I never cease to be amazed at man’s ability to increase his knowledge. When I started computers, I mean vacuum tubes and things like that. And I am just totally amazed at the size of electronic components. So the ability of man to understand his Earthly composition astounds me. I can’t even begin to anticipate what the next twenty years is going to be like, for instance. I doubt if I’ll last twenty years, but if I’m still here twenty years from now, I can’t even anticipate what environment I’ll be in.
I hate to say this but I’m a semi-religious person. I’m a Christian, and I believe God has a big hand in what’s going to take place. I am disappointed to see the social environment—what I consider the morality aspects of society, going downhill. And I’m convinced that morally this—society is getting worse. How long that will continue, who knows? But assuming that God allows us to continue, I just can’t comprehend. I mean there are so many things that we don’t know, and we are getting scientists that are so knowledgeable. I mean, everything grows on top of each other. It just confounds me. I just can’t anticipate. My mother, she tells me of the days when the first automobile came along there. And her mother saw the first car coming down the road with a light on. Here comes the devil. [laughs] Well, we’ve gone many, many phases since then, so I can relate to some of these old timers who say “I just can’t believe what’s going to happen.” It’s a good life. I’ve enjoyed my life. And of course, I don’t have that many years left. Who knows how long I’ve got left, but I look forward to good things happening.
DAVIDSON: I think so. If you were me, what question would you like for me to ask you?
DALKE: [laughs] Boy, you’ve got some goodies! [laughs] If I were you, what question would I want you to ask? I think the question was, “Are you satisfied with your life?”
DAVIDSON: And what would you say?
DALKE: And my answer is “Yes.” I do not regret anything that has taken place. I mean there have been rough times. Don’t get me wrong. But would I do anything different? No. I’m happy with what happened. I’m happy with my childhood. I’m happy with my Air Force experience. I think everybody should have some [laughs] military experience. I enjoyed my days with Sperry. And I very much enjoyed my days with NASA. And I’m enjoying retirement.
I’ve got to add, and this probably relates to some of your earlier questions. As a young employee—I have the utmost respect for the early NASA people. Dr. Gilruth. Dr. [Maxime] Faget. Chris Kraft. These were some of the early people in the manned spacecraft program. And I really respected those individuals. Dr. Faget is still around. Dr. Gilruth—I don’t know if he’s still alive or not. He developed, I think he developed either Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. I don’t remember which one it was. But those people really impressed me.
DAVIDSON: And why is that?
DALKE: It just seemed to be their leadership. The way they carried themselves. You know, they were good people. They respected the workers. And you could tell they were sharp. I mean they knew what they were doing. Not that people today don’t know what they’re doing. [laughs] But you just have a sense you know, for someone who’s leading about how they manage things. And part of this may have been my youngness, my being a little bit naïve. The fact is there’s a group of us NASA folks that moved from the Cape—remember I said that we moved from the Cape in ’65 to Houston? We’ve always remained a kind of close-knit group, and most of us are retired. And we get together annually. And we just got together in Branson this last May—May the 3rd, in fact. And I brought that question up. “You know were those people that much better than they are now, or was is that we were just naïve? We respected their abilities. And I think it’s a little bit of both. We were young and naïve. But at the same time, I think they had exceptional talent.
DAVIDSON: That seems to be my impression from what I’ve read, and people I talk to.
DALKE: Yeah, I think we had outstanding leadership.
DAVIDSON: Well, who are the people that you get together with, in your group—you know, that moved from the Cape to Houston?
DALKE: Oh, golly I’m going to miss some names here. Cliff Bradford was the guy who was the head of the group that came. Remember, this group was a very select group. This was that acceptance checkout equipment, the people that designed that. Well, we were the group that was moved from the Cape to Houston. One of the groups. And Cliff Bradford was the one that headed that group up. Jim Hughs was there with us. Dan Marlow, who was Cliff’s right hand man, had a heart attack while jogging at a very young age. The fact is, Roy Smith has passed away. He had cancer of the lung. Russ Newland was a very jovial character. He had a nickname for every person that he ever met. My nickname was “Senator”. [laughs]
DAVIDSON: And why is that?
DALKE: One day, we went to a meeting in St. Louis for McDonnell Douglas. And he and I went there. And we were going to pitch a new concept. So I made the presentation. And he said, “Golly, you’re just like a Senator.” From that day on, I was “Senator.”
DAVIDSON: [laughs]
DALKE: Herb Bertzlaf [?] was another one of the peers. He was the software manager. Walt Murphy. He’s still down at the Cape—well, it’s not the Cape. Well, I guess it’s still called the Cape. The city is the Cape. He’s down in that area. Charlie Holder. Golly. [laughs] Oh, boy. Ed Lightsey. All of these people are retired. Jim Weldon. Yeah, he’s retired now, too. Oh, lordy. Who am I missing? I know I’m missing a bunch of people.
DAVIDSON: That’s okay, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.
DALKE: That’s okay, I don’t mind. That’s the first thing that goes you know. But I don’t have to tell you what I’m talking about. [laughs] It is interesting. You do remember some of these old, old things and what happens today, you sometimes forget.
DAVIDSON: Definitely. What did you all think about Houston when you moved down there?
DALKE: [laughs] [clock chimes] I gotta tell you a story. When we lived in Greenville, before I joined NASA, Greenville—they had the coldest winter. The winds blew the hardest that we had ever experienced. And my wife had to hang out clothes and she remembers hanging out clothes in the middle of winter, and they’d stand straight out frozen. [laughs] So then we moved to Florida and we were there for two years. And she enjoyed it very much down there. So when it came time for us to go to Houston, I didn’t feel like we had a choice. And she was kind of, somewhat upset. So when you move to Houston, there’s two types. You either like it, or you hate it. Well, I didn’t mind it so much. I felt it was pretty much like Florida, in terms of weather. I missed the water, the oceans. The Gulf [of Mexico] is dirty compared to the waters around Florida. So I missed that kind of environment. I enjoyed the work environment better in Houston. And in those early days, you know, I’ve got to say, as NASA employees we were. . . . okay, that is one thing I’ve got to say that I really enjoyed about Houston. At the Cape, the environment was all NASA, or military. I mean, you were part of NASA and the military. There was nobody else around there. When we moved to Houston, my neighbors were all sorts of different kind of people. Worked at the petroleum refinery companies, salespeople, everything. So you had a mixture of community. And I enjoyed that.
DAVIDSON: Where did you live in Houston? Did you live in a community with other NASA employees?
DALKE: NO.
DAVIDSON: No.
DALKE: I lived in Dickinson. Dickinson is about ten miles south of the NASA center. And there weren’t too many NASA people in the Dickinson community. I mentioned Dr. Gilruth. It turns out, I lived on the south side of the bayou and Dr. Gilruth lived on the north side. He didn’t know me [laughs] and I didn’t get in touch with him that much. And Dr. Faget lived on the other side of the freeway away from me. So, a couple of the leaders lived down there. Oh golly, on our street—we were just one little street that ended up on the bayou. . . . Oh, the medical doctor, I can’t think of his name—that was in charge of the astronauts. He lived down there for a while.
DAVIDSON: Oh.
DALKE: So, there were a few NASA people down there, but it wasn’t a big congregation like. . . . . A lot of the NASA people ended up in the Clear Lake area. In fact, a lot of the people I was just talking to you about who lived in the Sagemont area. They kind of seemed to congregate there. But myself and Jim Hughs, we settled down in Dickinson away from everybody else. And that wasn’t because we didn’t want to live with anybody, but it was on a bayou. I very much wanted to have trees, and I wanted to be close to the water. So I found this one addition there.
DAVIDSON: Is that the house you stayed in until the ‘90s?
DALKE: Yeah. We built the house, and when we sold it—well, we moved into an apartment complex temporarily until we moved up here. All our kids went to school in Dickinson. Our daughter--we have three children. Our daughter, she was in the—I think she was in the eighth grade when we moved to Dickinson from Florida. Our middle son was in the first grade, or second grade. First or second grade. And then our youngest one started [laughs] kindergarten and went through all the school down there in Dickinson.
DAVIDSON: And what kinds of [career] fields are they in?
DALKE: Well, you wouldn’t believe this, but our daughter [Angela Paulette Dalke] is a Methodist pastor. Our middle son [Brian A. Dalke] is now a captain flying for Continental. A 737. And our youngest, David, is in Austin, who by the way, is married and has two children. Our only two grandchildren. So they live in Austin. He works for IBM. Doing quite well there. So our only two grandchildren we get to see frequently, and that’s a highlight of our life nowadays, too. The youngest one is five, and the oldest will be nine this next month.
DAVIDSON: That’s great.
DALKE: They’ll be coming up this weekend to enjoy the waterfront. They enjoy swimming, water skiing, whatever.
DAVIDSON: Sounds good. Is there anything you’d like to add?
DALKE: No. [laughs] I don’t know anything.
DAVIDSON: [laughs] Okay. Well, thank you for talking to me today.
DALKE: You’re welcome. I hope it’s been worthwhile.
DAVIDSON: Oh, definitely.
DALKE: Good.
DAVIDSON: Thank you.