(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Hello and welcome to The Bookmark, I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today, my guest is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, editor of "Making Space for Women, Stories from Trailblazing Women of NASA's Johnson Space Center."

Jennifer, thank you so much for being here today.

- Thank you for inviting me, it's a pleasure.

- I'm so excited to talk about this book, which is just chock full of stories of really interesting women doing really interesting jobs, as the kind of subtitle implies.

But before we get into all their cool jobs, I wanna talk about your cool job, because this is another job I never conceived of, which is, your job title, I think is historian for the Johnson Space Center.

- Yes, that is true.

And a lot of people actually ask me, what do you do as a historian at the space center?

Because when people think of NASA, they always think of astronauts, flight controllers, technicians, scientists, engineers, but historians don't really seem to make that list.

And so, I do a wide variety of things.

We have a very large oral history project, if you go out to our JSC history portal, you'll see that we have over 1300 oral history interviews with former and current staff members, that include astronauts, technicians, but also other folks, like some of the wives from Apollo, some of the children from Apollo, you know, some of the guards, some of the, you know, various trainers, just a lot of various different folks who worked out at the Johnson Space Center.

But then I do other things too, I work with our cultural resource manager, we have a lot of historic properties on site, so they want to know about the history of the buildings at the Johnson Space Center, when they were built, what they were used for, how they've been re-envisioned over the years, why they might be significant to Texas history, or NASA history.

Work with the education folks, do a lot of outreach, do a lot of talks, and, you know, talking about the impact of NASA on the state of Texas, or the local community in Clear Lake, Just a wide variety of things, I never know what the day is going to bring.

I do some writing, of course, here, with "Making Space for Women."

So, it's always fun to pick up the phone.

Of course, with COVID things changed a little bit, and I was at home mainly, but, you know, we made things work.

(Both laugh) - So, I wanna hear more about the oral history project, 'cause that's kind of where the book grew out of, correct?

- Correct.

Yes.

And so, as I mentioned, we have an oral history project, it was established in 1997 by our former center director, George Abbey.

He was very interested in Stephen Ambrose's work at the time, and he recognized that many of the folks who worked out at the manned spacecraft center, now known as the Johnson Space Center, were passing away, and we were losing their stories, their history.

And so, he asked someone who was in charge of the astronaut selection office to please go to the Navy and figure out what they were doing.

And so, this project was established, and it's basically, you know, to capture the words from the people who were involved in the human space flight business.

But we're really known as the center of oral history across the agency, we actually do oral histories for NASA headquarters, and we do specialized projects.

For instance, once the space shuttle was closing out, we did something called the space transportation system recordation, and we captured the history of the space shuttle over its 30 plus years, from design and development through retirement and transition.

So that was a very interesting project.

And lots of other projects that we did over the years, a herstory project that the NASA chief historian asked us to work on, capturing the history of women at NASA.

Of course, women played a role within the agencies, we'll talk a little bit more about today.

And just a wide variety of other projects.

So, I think on the website, I mentioned to you, we have over 1300 interviews just for the JSC oral history project alone, but we have other interviews out there as well.

- Is this still ongoing?

I mean, is the goal to capture as many voices, every voice that's possible who's ever been a part of the Johnson Space Center?

- Boy, that would be great.

It's funny that you say that, because inevitably, when funding comes up on a regular basis, we've heard, hey, aren't you all finished with that now?

And as we point out, we're making history every day at the Johnson Space Center.

We would love to capture everyone's history, unfortunately, there's only two of us doing oral histories.

So it is ongoing, and I see it continuing for many years, it will evolve.

We are going through a transition right now, where I will no longer be the Johnson Space Center historian, I will be the human space flight historian.

So the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project will evolve, and it'll be more of a NASA oral history project, but we definitely will continue to capture the histories of folks who worked out there.

I just wish we had more staff to do that.

- Of course.

How do you conduct these interviews?

I mean, do you travel to people, do they come to you?

Is it a mix of all different types of... - It's a wide variety of things that we do.

First of all, you know, we have to decide who are we going to interview, and lots of people are interested in participating.

We, of course, can't force people to, there's a lot of folks that we wanted to interview who've passed away, and the first thing out of someone's mouth is, why didn't you interview this person?

Well, we tried.

(laughs) It took us, for instance, a decade to get Chris Kraft, who was our former center director and our first flight director, to agree to do some interviews with us.

So we do ask people, and invite them multiple times, in some cases.

In other cases, people nominate themselves.

I was at an exercise class, maybe a month ago, when someone's wife found out that I was with the oral history project team.

And she said, "Oh my gosh, I want my husband to do this."

And you know, "Will you please do this interview?"

So, over a wait, we agreed that I would do his interview, and we're gonna do it next week.

But we do them over the phone, we will do them over Teams, thanks to COVID, we've sort of perfected that.

Our preference, though, is to do in-person oral histories, you know, one-on-one, it's so much easier to read body language.

The recording is much better because we get a lot of requests from people who are working on documentaries, people who do radio programs, people actually want that audio, and if you record over Teams, or over the phone, it's just not broadcast quality for what people are looking for.

We will go to people's homes, sometimes we have them come to our offices.

Sometimes, if we're traveling, we go to another NASA center, You know, we just need a quiet space, that's the big thing that we really need.

- And do you just, I mean, I guess this depends on the person, do you just let them talk, or do you kind of point them, ask them questions like I'm doing right now?

Or, how does that work?

- Well, we actually do a lot of research before we do our interviews.

I really encourage people who are working on oral histories to, you know, sort of understand the time period that person was working in, get a better sense of what that career entails.

You know, some of the things that were happening during that time, some of the missions that were flown, you know, just a wide variety of things that I encourage people to look at.

Because we found, you know, if you go talk to someone and you give them a very general question, like, "Hey, so you worked at NASA, what was that like?," you're not going to get very good questions and answers, excuse me.

But if you show them that you've put in a lot of research and effort, you get some really great responses.

And we've had over the years some interviews where people say, "Well, how did you know that?"

Or, "I've never told anyone this, but..." And so, you know, that's, I think, what we really wanna get at, especially when we interview folks like astronauts, who have been interviewed time and time again by the media, we don't wanna keep recapturing those stories about that mission, we wanna capture, you know, maybe lessons learned, or some of the anecdotes or stories that hadn't been captured previously.

And I know I've occasionally pushed some folks, one of the astronauts I was interviewing several years ago, Jeff Hoffman, you know, I was just asking him about a mission he had flown, and he was like, "What else do you want from me?," you know, "I've already given you all the information."

And then he thought about it for a second, and he said, "Oh, you know, I think I remember, we flew this Hermes scarf."

You know?

(Christine laughs) And it was something I had never heard of, and he had forgotten.

And you know, it's this Hermes scarf that's in Paris at a museum.

But you know, those are the kind of details that we kind of like to have.

- The personal touches.

- Absolutely, yeah.

- Are there any that stand out as particularly memorable, good or bad?

- Probably my most memorable interview was with Al Bean.

And Al Bean was a moonwalker, he died just a few years ago, and he was also commander of a Skylab mission.

He was in charge of astronaut training for the first two classes of shuttle astronauts.

And those two classes included women for the first time.

So, I was very interested in hearing more about that experience from him.

And so, we reached out to him and he said, "Sure, you can come on over."

So we went over to his house, and it was very interesting.

He was very adamant that we only had one hour when we got there, and he kept pointing his watch, one hour.

So, of course, we always abide by people's conditions.

And so, we sat down, we set up our equipment, we rolled, and he just started talking.

Because this happens a lot when you do interviews, right?

You will ask someone a question, and two or three hours later, you might not have had a chance to ask any other questions, and you have to tell them it's time to wrap up.

And so, I made a very clear point of, I'm watching my watch, and I see we have 10 minutes, and he said, "You know what, you've been so kind, so generous, I will answer your questions.

I know I've been chatting a lot."

So, you know, I got a chance to ask my questions, and we we're packing up, I'm still waiting, 'cause I'm thinking it's beyond the hour, 'cause I was thinking someone was coming, there's a medical appointment, someone's visiting with him, he has to leave.

No one ever showed up, so, we were sitting in his art studio, he became an artist, a very famous artist.

If you ever look at the price of his paintings, you'll be shocked, (Christine laughs) they're worth more than most people's homes.

But I was very curious about his paintings, they included the imprint of a moon boot, and so I asked, "well, how did you get that moon boot in the painting?"

And so, we spent, probably, another hour and a half, two hours in his studio, and he was walking around showing me his paintings, and, "Well, this is how I imprint a moon boot," he had a moon boot there.

And then he showed me some of the patches from his missions, and they were cut in half, and he said he wanted to do something really special for his paintings.

And so, he removed some of the threads from his patches and included them in his paintings.

- Oh wow.

- And then, this was the best part though, I wish that our recorder was still going, because at the end, and he said it, and for extra special, you know, paintings, he pulls out this entire bag of moon dust.

- Oh my goodness.

- And he said, "And I sprinkle my paintings with this moon dust."

(Both laugh) And so, it was great, he actually pulled out some books and he signed the books for us, and he said, "You know, you're great.

You're prepared, your equipment worked."

And so, we left, and it was just, we were kind of in a daze, because we had expected one hour then we had to leave, and we actually spent all morning with him.

- [Christine] Wow.

- So it was one of those just kind of amazing moments that you won't ever forget.

- Sure.

That's amazing, that's so fascinating.

Well, okay, that leads perfectly to my next question, with so many, I'm sure there's so many wonderful stories, so many wonderful people, how do you pair that then down to 21 for a book?

- Right.

So, you know, I had an idea for the audience of the book, I did not want it to be a technical reader, I was envisioning, in my mind, the reader being more like a young girl, a woman in college who might be interested in aerospace, but might not be, might think NASA is really cool, but there's really no opportunities for women at NASA if I'm an English major, or if I wanna be an attorney.

And you know, so I was thinking, I wanted to include a wide variety of women, not just the women engineers that we've talked with, the female computers that we've interviewed.

And so, you know, I read through the existing interviews that we had, and some of them were just so technical, it was like, nah, I really cannot use this.

And I realized also, as I was going through them, they were all with white women, and I really didn't think a press would be interested in a book of all white women.

And you know, we've got great diversity at the Johnson Space Center.

So, I met with the head of our oral history program, and pointed out to him that I wanted to include more women of color, I wanted to include women in other aspects at the Johnson Space Center, not just astronauts, not just technicians, but a wide variety of folks.

And so, we came up with a list of some other people that we could interview, so I actually started out on sort of my own oral history project, trying to capture their interviews and their experiences.

So, I wanted to include folks from mission support, people don't often realize that, you know, attorneys, accountants, procurement people, HR people, managers, a lot of people work at NASA, they just think of the highly technical, really cool jobs, you know, rocket engineers, that's what they think of.

So, I wanted to include those sorts of people, just to give folks a flavor of some of the people who worked over there, and I knew that they would not be technical either, so that was very, extremely important to me as I was envisioning the book.

- And I think that makes the book so rich, because some of my favorite, I mean, of course I loved reading about the astronauts and their stories in space, but some of my favorite stories were of the people I haven't thought about.

And it's not quite chronological, the book, but you do kind of start at the beginning of NASA, and it sort of follows, you know, the path through.

But some of the first stories in the book are from secretaries, which probably was the only job women could have in the '50s at NASA.

Talk about that a little bit.

- Right, so, another component of the book was that I wanted people to understand how careers evolved for women at the Johnson Space Center, that women weren't always astronauts.

You know, I think people think, oh, women are astronauts now, that's the way it's always been, women are flight directors, they've always been flight directors and center directors, and that wasn't really the case.

When you looked at NASA in the late 1950s, when it was established, it really was about men.

And we were originally known as the Manned Spacecraft Center.

And so, women primarily worked in administrative jobs, they were stenographers, they were secretaries, they worked as file clerks.

And I really wanted to capture that history, because today, most people don't work with a secretary, we do all of our administrative functions, you know, it's the rare person who has a secretary to handle their correspondence, to keep their calendar, to do their travel arrangements.

But they were really so vital during the Apollo period, as I think Estella Gillette and Jamye Flowers point out, all of the different types of work that they did and accomplished during those years was so extremely important.

And back then, we also dealt in paper.

Today, we all have digital files, it's all born electronic.

And back, then you needed somebody who knew where these files were, you needed somebody who knew how to type, and use white out, and type in triplicate, there weren't really spell checkers, you probably had a dictionary on your desk.

But you know, their role was so vitally important.

But not only that, I think Jamie flowers points out, you know, they were part of this bigger family, especially in the astronaut office, working with the families themselves, babysitting, you know, things that we wouldn't imagine today, things that, you know, you have boundaries with your staff, and you would never ask your secretary to please babysit your children.

But you know, she thought nothing of it, you know, and taking work home, and that was part of her job.

- Yeah, as you mentioned, it's also, it's not the main focus, but you do get a sense of how technology has changed, not just the roles of women have changed.

'Cause as you say, they're typing, they're having to walk paper across, you know, they're not just filing off an email and being done.

I mean, the work was more, and it was maybe harder, because there was all these things we don't even think about anymore that it's not as convenient to do that kind of business.

- No, clearly not.

You know, I mean, typewriters, things that they were dealing with.

I think some of the greatest stories were ones where Estella Gillette, for instance, she was an admin in the astronaut office, as you read, talked about bringing computers on board, and the challenge of getting people to even want to use a desktop computer, but then knowing how to operate it.

And, you know, they were working with it, and working with the computer, trying to figure out, well, where does the paper go?

You know, I'm filling out this travel form, but I can't figure out, how do I insert it and print it out.

And, well, you know, this is a computer, things work a little differently, it's on a network.

(Both laugh) - Yeah.

There's another job that would, it's traditionally feminine, traditionally a woman's job, is that of a nurse, and she tells her story in this book, I would've never thought of the idea of an aerospace nurse, but when you do think about it, it makes sense, of course astronauts are gonna need medical care before and after.

And her story was so fascinating, she was one of the very entertaining ones too, it was not technical at all.

But, another job that I didn't think of existing that I love learning about.

- Yeah, I loved her story, I loved the fact that she sort of pokes fun at herself, the fact that, you know, she and her girlfriend decide they're going to go down and sign up, enlist.

And you know, she calls herself a dinosaur, you know, back many years ago.

But she's got some wonderful stories, you know, there's a lot of jokes in there, but there's still that sadness that she talks about.

And then the nervousness, you know, the first launch of Alan Shepherd and John Glenn, and what that was like for her, and meeting the astronauts for the first time, yeah, I mean, she's just, she's wonderful.

And what I also love about including her is that was one of the few jobs, as you pointed out, for women.

And when I've talked to some of the other women, you know, they don't remember seeing a lot of other women on site.

You know, Poppy Northcutt, who's not in the book, but got a lot of attention during the Apollo anniversary, I asked her about other women, and she was like, I didn't see any other women on site, even secretaries.

Carolyn Huntoon, who is in the book, remembers having a relationship with Dee O'Hara, but that she was one of the few professional women on site.

So I thought she was really important to include, yeah.

- Yeah, her perspective was fantastic.

There are a lot of firsts in this book though, a lot of women who were the first in their position, or in their job, or even in their, maybe their building or their status or whatever.

Did you notice any commonality in kind of the stories, or traits or experiences of these women who were the firsts?

- Yes, so, so many of these women that were first, you know, the media really likes to plug those first.

And we also ask about 'em too, when we do oral history interviews, because we think they're interesting.

And one of the things that really commonly comes up is that they didn't really think it was that important.

You know, they were just like, well, it just happened to be me, and I didn't think it was all that important at the time, why is there so much interest?

You know, I love Peggy's story about being the first woman chief of the astronaut office.

She was selected in 2009, we had an astronaut office since 1959.

And what did that mean for her?

And her answer was, it really wasn't that big of a deal, what was more important was the fact that she wasn't a military astronaut, she was a scientist astronaut.

So I think that sort of speaks volumes about that.

Plus, I also think so many of these first women just wanted to be part of whatever group that they were part of.

You know, Jean Alexander talks about laying out the clothes for the STS-7 crew, and Sally ride, and how they intended, originally, for Sally to change during a training exercise behind, you know, a curtain, so she could have some privacy, and she just, you know, started changing with the rest of the crew.

And so many of those first women astronauts selected in '78 really just wanted to be part of the group.

Anna Fisher, who I didn't feature in the book, I couldn't feature everyone obviously, but she remembers going out with Sally, and picking out khakis and polos because they wanted to be one of the guys.

They didn't wanna stand out, they didn't wanna be known as the female astronauts, they just wanted to be known as astronauts, yeah.

- Being first can be difficult for a lot of reasons, but one of the ones that maybe we wouldn't think of, of course now, is the physical limitations.

There weren't women's restrooms in some of these buildings, they didn't know if a man's space suit would work on a woman's body.

I mean, there's all these like external features that these women describe in the book.

- Yeah, that's extremely important, so many of the women talk about, you know, being in buildings where there weren't restrooms, they had to walk, because they had not considered, they built the center so quickly, trying to achieve Kennedy's goal in the '60s, they hadn't considered women.

And when women came on board in flight control teams in the mission control center, that really was a challenge for some of the old guys, because all of a sudden the rooms that they were used to using, the men's restroom, suddenly became a woman's restroom.

And when they were bringing on women astronauts, they had to think about, well, what sort of things would women need?

And so, they had to talk to some of the women who worked at the center, like Carolyn Huntoon, she encouraged them to bring hair dryers in.

But then, there were moments where they clearly had not thought about asking women.

Some of these stories aren't necessarily in the book, but Alan, excuse me, Al Bean, when I did that interview that I mentioned to you earlier, talked to me about the fact that they had come up with his hygiene kit for the first women astronauts, and how proud he was of this kit and things that they had included, they had a reason behind all of them.

But it turns out the women weren't very excited about this kit, because they had included things that women wouldn't really want to use, like Mennen underarm deodorant, women didn't want that, they of course wanted something more feminine.

And boxer shorts, they didn't think that women needed special panties in space, they thought boxers would be totally appropriate.

So one of the first women had to go approach him and explain to him, well, hey, maybe this is not appropriate for women.

I'm not even sure that they asked the secretaries, or their wives, hey, do you think that women would like to wear boxers shorts?

But yeah, there are lots of those stories where the men just kind of thought, you know, we'll come up with something and the women will be fine with it.

But, you know, women needed to be included in some of those discussions, clearly.

- I also wanted to take a moment to ask you about this cover photo here.

- Oh, yes.

So, when I was thinking about the cover for the book, I really wanted it to illustrate what was inside of the book.

And we went through numerous photos, and I didn't want it to be a secretary, because I was worried people would think it was just about secretaries, when it's not.

And so, I chose this image after I did an interview with Michelle Brekke, and she was the woman who was selected as the first women flight director.

And she didn't end up actually leading a mission, she realized that she just wouldn't have time to be a flight director and raise a family, so she moved on.

But she shared this image with me after an interview, which oftentimes happens, people will come and do interviews and share memos or photos, letters.

And this is one that she brought to me, and I was like, oh, this is amazing, and I wrote down the number, and I thought it captured the book perfectly, because if you look closely at the photo, you'll see that there are two women, Michelle Brekke and Susan Creasey, and you'll see that the jackets have the names of two crew members from STS-2, Dick Trully and Joe Engle, and, they working in the SMS trainer at that time, and they were cold, it was very cold at that point.

And so, I thought it really sort of illustrated the whole point that I was trying to bring in, is that, you know, women were part of human space flight, and I just thought it was a great picture.

I would not have found it if Michelle Brekke had not brought it to my attention, I actually went and looked, and it's listed as STS-2 Training.

And if you had thought about it, you would've thought, oh, these are pictures of Joe Engle and Dick Trully.

- Sure.

Well, we are running short on time, so on our final couple of minutes here, what do you want the takeaway from the book, from this project to be, for people watching or listening?

- Yeah, well, a couple of things.

One is that space is for everybody.

I really think that so many people think, oh, you know, space is only for, now especially, entrepreneurs, wealthy people, or astronauts, nerds, geeks, people interested in engineering and science, but that's really not the case.

NASA hires historians, attorneys, graphic designers, divers, you know, there's a lot of people who work at NASA's support staff.

But you know, also, I think it just depends on your perspective when you pick up that book, you know, it can inspire you if you're a younger reader, if you're a person who's, you know, maybe early career, you might take a lot of lessons learned from this book, I've actually given a number of presentations on what you can take away from the book and apply to your career.

Or maybe you're in management, and you look at the book from a completely different perspective, and you know, what is a good boss?

A lot of these women talk about, you know, their favorite bosses, and why they were important, and how they helped shape them in their careers.

So I think it's a book that, you know, you can take away so many different things, depending on your perspective.

- I think that's absolutely true.

I would've loved this book as a young girl, I wish I'd had it 20 years ago, because there are so many wonderful, inspiring stories in it.

So thank you for bringing these stories to light, for giving us this book, and thank you for being here today, I really appreciate it.

- Yeah, so thank you for inviting me, it was a great pleasure.

- Wonderful.

Well, that is all the time we have for today.

Again, that book is called "Making Space for Women."

And until next time, I will see you again soon.

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