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This is a NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project transcript of astronaut James A. McDivitt, interviewed by Doug Ward at Elk Lake, Michigan, on 29 June 1999. McDivitt talks about flying F-86s in Korea, test pilot work at Edwards, and his first class at the Aerospace Research Pilot School. He also covers turning down Dyna-soar, joining NASA in 1962 and learning to be an Apollo Program Manager. He describes the Change Board and says decisions were not second-guessed.
“Jet Propulsion Laboratory”1 page
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-73 those people hanging around. And so, she left. And then I had this technical assistant, who was a—whose name was Ron Kobiche. I didn’t need a technical assistant. I didn’t want a technical assistant. So, the guy who was running the Systems Division, whatever we called it, left and I moved Ron down there. He had a real job, and he was—I still used him as my technical assistant. When I needed some technical information, I went to him and he got it for me. I had this administrative guy. We had a lot of administration. But he didn’t need to be my administration guy, so we sort of put him over running all the administration, which was sort of—he was supporting George and then when he did the other stuff, and I had—my part went to zero and the rest of it went out. So, I got rid of them. Then I had a secretary, an assistant secretary. That’s how I ran it. And I think my secretary was 23 years old, and my assistant was 18! But we—and as a matter of fact, when I got—we had a different management structure on Apollo than we did on Gemini, and I used to have management consultants from all over the world come over to try to figure out how we ran this thing. And they always wanted to know: Who were my key people? And I told them, well, I had the Command Module Deputy Program Manager, the Lunar Module Deputy Program Manager, a Systems Engineering Chief, and my secretary. “And your secretary?” I said, “Yeah! My secretary.” Her name was Suzie, and she ran the office like an iron fist. And we really needed to. It was tough to get everything done in 24 hours. And like I said, I had a great Command Module Program Manager, Aaron Cohen, and a great Lunar Module Program Manager, Owen [E.] Maynard—or Owen— WARD: Owen [G.] Morris. Owen Morris.
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