NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

By: Jim Hodges

A weekend that began Friday with NASA Administrator Mike Griffin congratulating members of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics for their contributions to the "nation and the world" ended on Sunday with Gary Price making the "world" part personal.

Price, a member of the organizing committee for the final NACA reunion, told a Sunday breakfast assembly at the Hampton Convention Center about working with Cheng Yong-Gen, secretary for Science and Technology at the Chinese embassy in Washington. Price got Cheng a tour of NASA Langley, and Cheng asked to see various facilities, identifying each with the work of a NACA aviation pioneer.

Suspicious, Price asked how Cheng knew so much about Langley.

"When I was studying aeronautics, we didn't have the text books you had here in America," Cheng said. "We used NACA reports."

A collective "ahhhhh" came forth from many of about 200 who gathered for breakfast Sunday.

"I'd forgotten about it until Griffin mentioned the contribution to the world on Friday," Price said.

Between the pronouncements of Griffin and Price, about 360 NACA alumni and spouses spent time together and apart, some visiting Jamestown and Williamsburg, others taking a boat trip around Hampton Roads, and all meeting Saturday night at Langley's cafeteria.

Others just reminisced.

"I went to look at where we used to live, on Clyde Street, just off Kecoughtan," said Virginia Stalder, who lived in Hampton when she went to work at Langley in 1946 as a computer.

The job involved doing mathematical computations for scientists and engineers before electronic computers were developed.

Three generations of family: Virginia Stalder and her son Kenneth and granddaughter Katherine, enjoy the farewell breakfast held at the Hampton Convention Center on the last day of the final NACA reunion.
Credit: NASA/Sean Smith.

Click on the image for a larger view
Stalder eventually worked at Ames Research Center.

"The apartment was still there," she said, "but it looked a lot different now."

Next to her, son Kenneth smiled. So did granddaughter Katherine, a recently minted graduate of Stanford with a master's degree in computational and mathematical engineering. The three drove from California's San Francisco Bay area to Langley for the reunion.

Virginia Stalder still carries the wonder of her work and of its place in history. "It's fascinating," she said. "It's like the people who are going to Mars and Jupiter and who knows where. It's just fascinating."

Everywhere, stories abounded.

Earl Andrews talked of being a co-op student at Langley in the early 1950s and of being dragooned by a technician to work on a model. Eventually, Andrews found, the model was used by Dick Whitcomb in developing the "area rule," which ushered aviation into the supersonic era.

And Emily Mueller walked over to a table of books about the history of NACA, former NACA facilities and the organization's aviation pioneers. She saw a book about women of flight from the Dryden Research Center and paused, then pointed somewhat in amazement.

"That’s me," she said of a picture on the cover of her on the far left of a line of women.

She was at Dryden from 1948-49.

But perhaps holding forth with the most stories was Jo Dibella, once secretary for NACA Administrator Hugh Dryden. Dibella, who lives in Washington, was dragooned into putting together the first NACA reunion, in 1976. She has never missed one.

Dibella recalled the reunion No. 11, two years ago in San Jose.

"I was on a plane (from Washington) and had a front seat," she said. "I looked around and all of these people had gray and white hair like mine, or bald heads, and I thought I would see them all at the reunion.

Jo Dibella with Milt Holt, an organizer of the reunion, during Saturday's night banquet held at the NASA Langley cafeteria.
Credit: NASA/Sean Smith.

Click on the image for a larger view
"Then the plane stopped in Las Vegas and all of them got off but me."

Everyone who heard the story, told Friday through Sunday, laughed.

She was of two minds about the reunion being the last. "Look around," Dibella said at the Air and Space Center on Friday, a day so exciting to her that she began by awakening in Washington at 1:30 a.m. "Everybody is old like me. I'm 92."

She was far from the oldest reunion visitor this weekend. Lois DeNeale was 97.

In a way, though, Dibella's avocation chronicles the reason for the end of the NACA reunions. "When I worked for Dr. Dryden, he had me do a card every time we lost someone from NACA," Dibella said. "When he died (in 1968), I kept doing it. I have three boxes of cards now."

But on Sunday, she told the group that, perhaps, the reunions should continue in some way. "I'll just report what Jimmy Doolittle said," Dibella said. "He said that as long as any of us are left, there should be a way to get together. I'm 92. As long as I'm alive and kicking, I want us to get together."

Regardless, the reunion attendees seemed to like an idea conceived with perpetuating the influence of NACA in mind. A graduate school scholarship, awarded in experimental aeronautics, received near universal support and Price is putting together details.

"It's something that can live long past us," said Duncan McIver, the reunion organizer.

So, too, will the impact of the work celebrated over the weekend of the final NACA reunion.

 
NASA Langley Research Center
Managing Editor: Jim Hodges
Executive Editor and Responsible NASA Official: H. Keith Henry
Editor and Curator: Denise Adams