Bill

 

Bill

Bill Beasley was the third charter member of our lab research team. He was raised in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and he never lost his native accent. He was the kind of person that you just had to like. You would have to work hard to find anything bad to say about him. Actually, his family doctor did get upset with him one time. Bill was so devoted to his family (he had a wife and two young daughters) that his doctor complained that he needed to stop bringing his children for an office visit for every minor complaint, such as a common cold. Bill had a degree in Nuclear Engineering from VPI, but so little background in courses relevant to NASA’s needs that he would never have been hired if LRC had not been desperate to fill the drain of personnel to private industry and to Arnold Engineering. He was a dedicated worker with tremendous metabolism. I would watch with awe while he munched down enough sandwiches and cookies to fill his lunch box with no space to spare, and more than enough calories to surpass my full daily allowance. And yet he stayed thin.

One of Bill’s neighbors was another NASA engineer, Bob Kilgore. They were friends of a sort, not only because of being neighbors, but also because they attended the same Methodist church, and because they participated in a ride-sharing program – a program that NASA encouraged because of the oil shortage that was brought about by the OPEC oil embargo. They had many things in common: the same employer, the same church, the same neighborhood, similar families (Bob had at least one daughter). But one thing that they did not share was personality. Bill’s personality was the embodiment of the conventional family man. He lived life pretty much in accordance with all that was typical of the general middle-class population.

But that could never be said of Bob. Bob was anything but typical or conventional. In some ways he was a throwback to an earlier kind of NACA engineer. In the 40’s, many of the local residents referred to the NACA engineers as “NACA nuts”, but pronounced, “Nacka nuts”, because of a few whose behavior departed so widely from the social norm. For example, when Bob got frustrated with trying to maintain his lawn in Tidewater’s summer climate, which rapidly alternates between flash-flood and drought conditions (a climate that seemed ideal for growing weeds and “trash grass”) he solved the problem by pouring a few inches of concrete over his entire front lawn. Then, to simulate grass he painted it green.

By 1960 NASA had absorbed NACA, and had instituted a liberal advanced education program. Bob found a way to take full advantage of this education policy. He opted to take his free year of graduate work at Oxford, and chose to take his family along with him to England. This plan would provide him with another degree, and an opportunity for his family to tour Europe on his accumulated leave days after the school term ended. It would also provide him with a potential means to solve another problem. He wanted more shade on his lawn, but he had no lawn in his concrete front yard, so he decided the optimum location to plant a tree was at the rear of his back yard. But first he did extensive research to find a tree type that would grow rapidly in our semi-tropical climate, and expect it to get a good start while he was in Europe. I don’t know just what kind of tree it was, but it more than fulfilled his expectations. When Bob’s family returned a year later, that tiny sapling had grown nearly into a full size tree. And it kept growing so fast that by the end of the growing season Bob’s neighbor who lived behind him complained that its roots were clogging the drainage ditch between the two properties. I don’t remember just how that problem got resolved, but I think he had to cut it down.

Bob had such an optimistic feeling that everything would somehow work itself out that he didn’t waste time by doing a lot of advance planning. Bill told us about the stress that he experienced when he drove Bob’s family to the airport for their flight to England. They spent the twenty minute drive removing various items from their suitcases for Bill to return to their house, having decided that those items were, after all, not essential.

When Bob’s session at Oxford was complete, and his family started off on their European tour, his cash was pretty much depleted, so he lived from paycheck to paycheck. That was well before the days of electronic funds transfer and ATM’s, so NASA had to send his check to his European location, which was changing every few days. By the time his check arrived at the local consulate, he had gone. But Bob didn’t worry. He merely borrowed funds from the consulate, and when a paycheck did catch up with him, he would repay the American government.

All of these adventures of Bob and his family were reported to Joe and me during our noon hour lunch breaks, to our great entertainment and amusement. However, Bill wasn’t trying to be funny. He was just fascinated by the way that Bob lived, and I think he had a certain admiration for Bob’s adventurous lifestyle. But his artless hillbilly dialect as he related Bob’s bizarre antics made it impossible for us not to laugh.

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