By today’s standards it’s not a very good picture.
“I was using an old Kodak and I didn’t have a zoom,” Don Donald said.
But the photo still captures the scene he sees crystal clear in his mind, the spot where he stood 50 years ago and watched American astronauts make history. As his 3-year-old son, Brooks, scratched in the sand on a beach near Cape Canaveral, Florida, he and his wife, Mary Charles, and 5-year-old son, Donny, watched the Apollo 11 mission lift off toward the moon.
‘Golden age’
“On the way back to Huntsville we stopped at my parent’s home in Pine Apple, Alabama, and watched the moon landing on a black and white television on July 20,” Donald said. “This was the golden age of space exploration and I was very fortunate and proud to be a part of it.”
The beach wasn’t his only part in it — that was merely the icing on the cake. Donald worked as a propulsion engineer for NASA for 31 years from 1962 until he retired in 1992. Most of that time was spent in the test laboratory at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
“We were involved in the early development of the Saturn V Apollo propulsion system, from building them to testing them,” he said.
In 1967, after a tragic fire killed the three astronauts of Apollo 1, the first crewed mission of the U.S. Apollo program, Donald and his colleagues were tasked with testing the insulation flammability of the Apollo space capsule.
“That fire resulted because of a 100% pressurized oxygen atmosphere so we simulated various mixes, like regular air, which is mostly oxygen, nitrogen and helium,” he said. “We did that and as a result of that program I was selected to be a launch honoree for Apollo 11.”
‘Great career’
That’s how he and his family ended up on the beach in Florida that day.
In the days and years that followed he experienced a “great career” with NASA, working on the space shuttle and acting as lead test conductor on all the dynamic tests that were completed in Huntsville. Later he was one of the test directors and lead engineer on an external tank test, and he also worked on a space telescope in Sunnyvale, California.
Then in 1992 a few dozen early retirements were up for grabs and he took one.
“I moved back home to Pine Apple and we went into the real estate and appraisal business which has been very good to us,” Donald said. “I’ve been fortunate to be able to come home and get really involved in church.”
Today he serves as the lead deacon at Bethsaida Baptist Church, Pine Apple, in Pine Barren Baptist Association.
“My walk was been a blessed one,” he said.
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