Labor Problems at the Missile Center

Socio-economic problems went hand in hand with the engineering problems encountered in sending men to the moon. The relocation of a large number of people - many of them from urban centers - to the small towns of Florida’s east coast where newcomers were not always welcome, the tenfold increase in population in Brevard County within 20 years, and the construction of many buildings and the assembling of highly complicated machinery in a previously quiet corner of a nonindustrial state brought about dramatic changes in the quality of life.

Many factors complicated the relations of labor, management, and government at the Kennedy Space Center, especially during the construction years, chiefly 1963 through 1965. Disputes of various kinds held up work on the assembly building, on other phases of LC-39 construction, and in the industrial area. The major labor issues will be discussed here.

First, Florida had an open-shop law, called by its supporters a “Right to Work Law.” Such laws tend to create a climate of suspicion for union workers and are accompanied by strife between union and nonunion workers. At KSC, the unions were wary of any increase in contracts with nonunion contractors or subcontractors.

Second, Florida was not an industrialized state. In central Florida, the Cape-KSC area was at once the largest industrial center and the area where labor relations most closely paralleled the practices of more industrially developed states. As a result, some labor leaders did not hesitate to use the KSC arrangements as a possible club over contractors in nearby areas. One of the building trades unions, for instance, jockeyed for advantage with an Orlando contractor by using KSC arrangements as a lever.

Third, many contractors failed to enter serious contract negotiations until workers actually went on strike. Most of these strikes were short, and the contractors could have avoided them had they settled with the union one day before the strike, instead of agreeing to union demands after a one-day walkout.

Fourth, jurisdictional disputes caused endless problems. To understand the worker’s point of view in this regard, one should remember that the welfare of an entire trade often depended on the protection of certain tasks that came within its jurisdiction. If a trade lost a particular type of work, the union simply found its members unemployed. Further, precedent so influenced jurisdictional assignments that unions zealously and carefully protected their existing areas. Sometimes, however, these jurisdictional disputes went beyond common sense and outraged everyone concerned. Carpenters walked out in a dispute: ironworkers were installing aluminum door frames. Labor leaders on occasion acted in the “public-be-damned” spirit of the 19th century industrial “Robber Barons.”

Fifth, certain attitudes of construction workers, such as carpenters and plumbers, differed from those held by industrial workers, such as steelworkers. The more highly centralized industrial unions tended to heed decisions made on a nationwide basis or at national headquarters. The loosely bound construction locals, on the other hand, enjoyed greater autonomy. The construction worker never felt the same loyalty to his employer that the industrial worker felt. His term of employment was relatively short and his job security came from the union hiring hall, not from the company. It did not really matter a great deal to a plumber whether he was putting pipes in a motel, an industrial plant, or a missile site. He had little emotional involvement with the work itself or with the company he worked for at the moment. When he finished a job, he looked to the union for another. The construction worker thus tended to identify himself with his craft and his union, not with his employer or even with a major purpose such as sending a man to the moon.

Many construction workers were transient by background. Accustomed to moving where the work happened to be, oftentimes they did not put down roots. Some men came in for only a few days, sometimes sleeping in their own cars, then moving on. With the increase of work at the Cape and at KSC - the only diversified construction activity in Florida at the time - so many new workers came in with permits from other locals that they swamped the local unions and made their business agents edgy. At one time, for instance, between 600 and 700 electricians worked at KSC with permits from locals outside the region. The building trades thought they saw a lack of consistent policy and felt they had to scrap for everything they could get. These factors often made dealing with construction workers more difficult than dealing with industrial workers, as several officials at Kennedy Space Center were to comment.¹ Labor troubles at missile sites, especially the Cape, had grown acute even before President Kennedy issued his lunar landing challenge to the nation.

On eight days from 25 April to 5 May 1961, the permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Government Operations had held hearings in Washington. Senator John L. McClellan (D., Ark.) chaired this subcommittee, whose prestigious membership included Senators Ervin, Muskie, Jackson, Mundt, and Curtis. They took testimony from 38 individuals. The witnesses showed that work stoppages and slowdowns were commonplace at missile sites.²

The hearing brought to light many abuses including excessive overtime, exorbitant wages, low productivity of workers, improper classification of work, and inefficiency by contractors. The subcommittee criticized both labor and management. Work stoppages resulted in a total loss of 87,374 man-days at Cape Canaveral during a 4 1/2-year period in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Wildcat strikes, slowdowns, and a deliberate policy of low productivity further delayed progress. Workers gouged the taxpayer with unnecessary and exorbitant overtime costs. The international unions did nothing to discipline the locals. Some contractors, operating under a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract, did nothing to stop skyrocketing costs in excessive overtime payments. They overmanned jobs and did not properly supervise.

The subcommittee insisted that the military and civilian officials on construction sites try to rectify unsatisfactory labor conditions. It pointed out that while Congress had passed the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 to keep construction wages on government contracts consistent with the wages prevailing in a given area, some labor leaders improperly used it as a device for settling jurisdictional disputes. To conclude its findings, the subcommittee pointed out that work conditions at the missile sites improved for a time after the subcommittee began its hearings, then deteriorated.³

The Center’s Labor Policy

Such was the industrial climate at the Cape shortly before NASA was challenged to send men to the moon. Only four days before President Kennedy gave that call on 21 May 1961, he signed Executive Order 10946, establishing the Missile Sites Labor Commission, with Secretary of Labor Arthur J. Goldberg as chairman. He and three representatives of management were to establish policies and procedures that were intended to improve labor relations within the missile and space industry. Section 2 of the order provided for the establishment of local on-site committees to anticipate problems and to prevent their becoming acute. The Missile Site Labor Relations Committee at KSC included one representative of each of the following: the Defense Department, NASA, building contractors, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, the industrial contractors, the industrial unions, and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.⁴

The work of the committee, coupled with other factors, resulted in a marked decrease in man-days lost at the Cape. The threat of further action by the McClellan Committee weighed heavily. McClellan introduced Senate bill 2361, which would have outlawed strikes and called for compulsory arbitration at strategic defense facilities.⁵ One of the most important achievements of the Missile Sites Labor Commission at the Cape stemmed from a series of meetings between representatives of the Department of Defense, NASA, building and construction contractors, and international and local building trades unions. On 20 February 1962, they agreed to the Project Stabilization Agreement that standardized local arrangements between various unions and contractors. Two years later all parties were to accept a slightly revised agreement for three years more.⁶

A major dispute between NASA and certain of the building trades unions concerned the point where construction work ended and installation of equipment began. Further, the Air Force and NASA took different views on this question. Contractors working for the Air Force early reached an understanding with the construction unions and established an unwritten range policy to allow construction trades to install almost all ground support equipment. NASA never really accepted this policy.

Because of the research and development nature of its work, NASA maintained that each missile firing was essentially a laboratory experiment for the purpose of gathering data, testing feasibility of design concepts, operational techniques, and future development; and, therefore, all ground equipment, including launch controls, plumbing, and instrumentation that connected directly with the missile formed an integral part of the missile system. Thus, all such equipment should come under the direct control, from installation to final use, of the NASA missile teams. NASA saw many advantages to this viewpoint. It ensured quality control, increased reliability, reduced cost, and rendered unnecessary elaborate contract specifications for installation of launch facilities. At times, too, KSC saw the advisability of having the firm that built a piece of equipment bring its own workers to Florida to assemble it. The next chapter will discuss this issue with regard to the crawler-transporter - and the union disapproval that resulted. In line with NASA’s attitude, and in spite of the Air Force’s unwritten policy differing from NASA’s, some Air Force missile contractors would have preferred to have their own personnel do the entire job. This had come up in at least one significant case with Convair before the Senate hearing on work stoppages at missile bases.⁷

The Air Force had also drawn up ground rules that allowed the use of nonunion contractors, but never on the same specific job as a union contractor, such as inside the same blockhouse at the same time. The Air Force, further, won an agreement that disallowed picketing on the Cape itself. Although the commanding general readily listened to the complaints of labor leaders, the Air Force rarely intruded in disputes that arose between contractors and their workers.⁸

NASA did not duplicate all these policies. As a result, many unions had one set of rules east of the Banana River and another on the west bank, and the difference showed from time to time. On one occasion, construction unions walked off their jobs, causing a loss of 491 man-days to NASA contracts and 3,867 man-days to NASA-financed Corps of Engineers contracts. At the same time, Air Force contracts and Air Force-financed Corps of Engineers contracts of about the same size did not lose a single man-day.⁹

As the Launch Operations Center moved toward the period of construction, its Industrial Relations Office increased in importance. In June 1963, Oliver E. Kearns, who had worked with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in Toledo, and before that had been field examiner with the National Labor Relations Board in Seattle, became Industrial Relations Officer. Later in the year, John Miraglia, who had worked in industrial relations for NASA at the Cape, returned to the Space Center as Industrial Relations Chief, with Kearns as his deputy. In the NASA-wide administrative reorganization of early 1964, Paul Styles became Labor Relations Director, with Miraglia his deputy. With this new office added to his duties at KSC, Miraglia served as trouble-shooter at NASA centers throughout the country.

Miraglia had experience both as a textile worker and a representative of the textile workers’ union and had worked with the National Labor Relations Board. He understood that many labor problems were emotional as well as economic and that the first essential was proper communications.¹⁰ He and Kearns would have plenty of opportunity to develop the art of communication and to extend their patience to the limit during 1964, an especially trying year. But all the construction years at Kennedy Space Center would prove exasperating.

A Spring and Summer of Strikes

In early February 1964, KSC signed an agreement with the Florida East Coast Railroad for the operation of a spur line on NASA property. Eleven nonoperating unions, such as telegraphers and maintenance-of-way workers, had been on strike against the railroad for 13 months in an effort to bring their pay up to the national scale as accepted by 190 railroads in 1962. Violence during the strike had caused suspension of passenger traffic. But the Florida East Coast continued to move freight, and during the week before the agreement two trains had been blown up.¹¹

NASA Administrator Webb had warned board chairman Edward Ball that a paralyzing strike might endanger the nation’s space and security program. Vice President of the railroad W. L. Thornton believed that the unions would not shut down the Cape operations because such action would constitute an illegal secondary boycott. Thornton had refused President Kennedy’s recommendation for “final and binding arbitration” the previous year. Thornton did not seem to take seriously the pledge of the almost 12,000 spaceport union employees to honor picket lines.¹² The railroad, in fact, had tried to operate a train on NASA property before the agreement. A confrontation with NASA security personnel had prevented unloading of the train.¹³

The nonoperating unions placed pickets at all entrances to the space center and to Cape Kennedy on 10 February, halting construction on the Cape and Merritt Island.¹⁴ The National Labor Relations Board obtained a temporary restraining order from the Federal District Court of Orlando on the grounds that in halting space construction, the pickets violated a ban on secondary boycotts.¹⁵ The unions removed the pickets on 12 February and the workers returned to their jobs, even though the attorney for the union contended that the Florida East Coast came under the purview of the Railway Labor Act, and thus the National Labor Relations Board had no jurisdiction.¹⁶ In his weekly report to Debus, Miraglia correctly assumed that one or two months would elapse before pickets reappeared.¹⁷

The meetings that followed between Assistant Secretary of Labor James J. Reynolds and the officials of the railroad transcended the local situation at the spur line to KSC. Reynolds suggested that the President’s Missile Sites Labor Commission arbitrate the strike - a proceeding that Ball had steadily opposed for 13 months. When President Johnson spoke at Palatka, Florida, later in the month, a blast blew up a Florida East Coast train 25 kilometers away.¹⁸ Ball continued to oppose compulsory arbitration and the dispute dragged on. But wider aspects of the battle did not affect the situation at KSC.

Paul Styles represented NASA at a meeting of the Missile Sites Labor Relations Committee on 20 April 1964. In the previous year, jurisdictional disputes between building trades unions and disagreement over working conditions had caused 33 work stoppages. Styles stressed the need for a new dedication by labor organizations and contractors to adjust jurisdictional disputes without work stoppages. The representatives of the contractors and the union pledged greater efforts to follow the prescribed methods of settling such disputes. Government, labor, and management all felt the meeting successful.¹⁹ Actualities were to betray their hopes.

The Missile Sites Labor Relations Committee held a special meeting to avert picketing of KSC and the Cape by members of Steelworkers Local 6020 of Tampa. This union had been on strike against the Florida Steel Company of Tampa for 12 weeks. KSC used steel from this company, and the union felt that placing pickets at the spaceport would bring the dispute to the attention of the public. KSC prevailed upon the union to postpone action until a committee had studied the situation. The committee suggested that a reduction or possibly total elimination of the use of steel from this company would remove the threat of picketing.²⁰ This was obviously a case of a union using KSC as a lever to win a strike against a particular firm.

So many work stoppages occurred during the next few months one might well have thought that the building of the space center would stagger on forever. In late May and early June the ironworkers refused to work for the American Bridge Company in the assembly building, alleging unsafe practices; 736 man-days were lost. Since workers left their jobs contrary to the orders of union representatives, the walkout indicated a loss of control by the union. At the same time, 20 pipe-fitters left their jobs on complex 36B in the cable terminal building. When Akwa Construction Company sent several nonunion workers, the carpenters’ business agent pulled out the remaining union workers. The firing of 5 men for allegedly drinking and gambling on the job provoked 129 laborers in the assembly building and 29 cement masons in the industrial area to stay off the job beginning 3 June. Conciliation brought about the rehiring of three of the men on the basis of inconclusive evidence and termination slips for milder reasons for the other two, so as not to impair their chances of future employment. Eight laborers and 9 carpenters walked off the job on 1 June at the cable terminal building and at the site of the communications ducts to protest the hiring of 4 nonunion carpenters. Nonunion men then took over.²¹ Twenty-five operating engineers left their jobs on 5 June to protest the discharge of one member; 11 man-days were lost. The business agent ordered the men back to work at the direction of the Corps of Engineers.

On the morning of 8 June, Locals 2020 and 717 of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Ways placed pickets at all entrances to Merritt Island and the Cape at 5 a.m. without giving prior notice. Members of the building trades honored the picket lines, closing down nearly all construction work at KSC and at the Cape. About 4,000 of 4,500 workers stayed away. The railroad trouble had surfaced again.

At a meeting of the Missile Sites Labor Relations Committee on the following day, Paul Styles admonished the building trades unions for violating the no-strike clause - Article 6 of the Project Stabilization Agreement. The committee insisted that the unions needed more effective leadership and that the contractors had to discipline violators of the agreement. Styles urged the heads of 14 building trades unions to get the men back to work. The union officials responded that the workers had refused to cross the picket lines spontaneously and not under orders from the union leadership.²²

On the same day (9 June 1964), Styles notified all employees of the Florida East Coast Railroad, its subcontractors, and its suppliers that they had to use one entrance to the Merritt Island area. If unions wanted to picket, they could do so only at the one gate. This decision of the Director of NASA’s Office of Labor Relations followed a procedure established at many multiemployer work sites throughout the country and repeatedly upheld by the National Labor Relations Board. At this juncture, Federal District Judge George C. Young ordered the maintenance-of-way unions to cease picketing the railroad at Kennedy Space Center. His temporary injunction would last until the following Monday. Early the following week he extended the injunction until Friday the 19th. In the meantime the National Labor Relations Board issued an opinion that the railroad unions involved, principally the telegraphers and the maintenance-of-way men, fell under its jurisdiction. Judge Young extended the injunction indefinitely.²³

And the month of June had barely passed the midway point!

Representatives of the unions and contractors who had signed the Project Stabilization Agreement met in Orlando on 18 June to find out if the unions intended to adhere to the no-strike provision. Representatives of NASA and the Department of Defense attended. The meeting failed to produce any change in attitude of union representatives toward the Project Stabilization Agreement. Basically, the locals resented this restriction agreed to by the international unions and tended to ignore it. International unions, in turn, were not insisting on compliance by the locals.²⁴

Strikes and work stoppages piled one on top of another with such frequency that Debus penned these words at the bottom of Miraglia’s weekly notes: “John: The continuation of the ‘little’ walkouts precipitated by sometimes unknown causes is very alarming. What can be done about it?”²⁵ Jurisdictional strikes especially galled. At one time several jurisdictional disputes took place simultaneously and were to drag on through much of the summer of 1964. Carpenters walked off the job at the assembly building following a dispute with the contractor, Morrison-Knudsen, Perini, and Hardeman, over the assigning of aluminum door frames to the ironworkers.²⁶

In the third week in July, Kearns, who gradually assumed more of Miraglia’s duties at KSC, thought it noteworthy to record that no jurisdictional disputes had caused work stoppages during the past week, although three previous disputes were still pending. Now a new area of dispute took center stage. Five plumbers left the operations and checkout building in the industrial area protesting the award of a contract to a nonunion prime contractor who had subcontracted the mechanical work to another nonunion contractor. The strike lasted one day.

Unions began to show concern over the number of contracts that went to open-shop employers. The Brevard Building and Construction Trades Council asked for information on the number of nonunion contractors winning contracts from local government agencies - even though many open-shop contractors did use union workers or subcontracted to firms that had union workers. A cursory check by NASA during late August showed that 94% of the workers on KSC contracts were union men. This represented a rise in nonunion workers from 1.7% in June to 5.8% in August. The percentage of contracts let to nonunion contractors was between 15 and 20%. By dollar volume, however, it was only 5%.²⁷

The Orlando Sentinel for 8 September 1964 depicted NASA’s relations with labor as being in decay. To the Industrial Relations Office at KSC, it appeared that Clifford Baxley, the coordinator of the Brevard Building and Trades Council, had given false information to the newspaper, and Kearns recommended boycotting informal, off-the-record discussions whenever Baxley represented labor. In his report to Debus, Kearns mentioned that Baxley did not have to support all unions and that his conduct completely destroyed the purpose of meetings, particularly when the information Baxley gave to the press was not accurate. On Kearns’s report, Debus wrote an emphatic “No!” and underlined the word twice. “We cannot take this attitude,” he insisted. “Discuss this with Mr. Siepert.”²⁸

In line with the insistence of Debus, Kearns wrote the following week:

NASA will continue to attend these informal labor management meetings if they are resumed. Other Government agencies that have participated in these meetings agree that certain rules be established to retain the trust and confidence the attendees must have towards each other in order to assure the success of such meetings. No date has been set for another meeting.²⁹

The long hot summer of 1964 proved frustrating for Miraglia and Kearns; indeed, labor relations were not to improve during the construction period at KSC. One of the most significant strikes came in mid-September 1965, when construction neared its conclusion throughout Merritt Island. Most other strikes had been purely local, or at most regional, such as the strike against the Florida East Coast Railroad. This one was part of a nationwide walkout of Boeing Company employees. The strike directly affected only about 50 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers on KSC’s Saturn program, and about 225 on the Air Force Minuteman program at Cape Kennedy.³⁰ Revolving around a new contract, it hinged on such issues as the grading of employees, insurance coverage for dependents, and the union shop.

When contract negotiations broke down, the union struck Cape Kennedy and KSC on 16 September 1965. W. J. Usery, regional representative of the machinists, made considerable but fruitless efforts to prevent the walkout of the nonstriking machinists (those who worked for firms other than Boeing). The striking machinists, in general, honored the one-gate picketing procedure that Paul Styles had set down in the railroad strike of the previous year. A large number of construction workers walked off the job for a time in support of the machinists. All the workers from the Marion Power Shovel Co., who had come south to assemble the crawler-transporter, went home.³¹

Boeing would not grant the union shop request. But the negotiations eventually resulted in a new contract that satisfied the international leadership of the union, and the spaceport machinists voted on 4 October to end the 19-day strike.³²

The Spaceport’s Impact on the Local Communities

During the years that Merritt Island changed from citrus groves, sand bars, and swamps to a major launch site, the local communities reflected dramatic growth. The area had no major city like Houston; further, no one community dominated the Cape area as Huntsville did the environs of Marshall. Instead, the newcomers dispersed over a wide area.

A short distance south of Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach early assumed a central role in the space program. Many industrial contractors located there. Numerous motels and an excellent beach imparted a holiday atmosphere and made the town popular with tourists. The area’s night life centered there. The nation came to identify the space program with Cocoa Beach rather than with other communities in the vicinity. Time magazine carried a lurid picture of activities at Cocoa Beach night clubs on weekends and especially at launchings and splashdowns.³³ Cocoa Beach, however, had no television station - there was none in Brevard County. As a result, the cities of Orlando and Daytona Beach influenced the region through their television facilities, even though they were 64 and 80 kilometers distant, respectively.

In 1963 NASA funded three studies of the social and economic development of the area. A regional planning commission looked at roads and water systems, a Florida State University team dealt with community affairs, and a University of Florida research group studied population and economics. The study groups were to finish their reports within two years. The three principal investigators met profitably with NASA’s local officials and delegates of NASA headquarters. They further got in touch with representatives of the various Brevard County communities. Florida State University set up an urban research center in the area and published materials developed by the three studies.³⁴

Between 1950 and 1960, the population of Brevard County, 106 kilometers long and 32 kilometers wide, had grown faster than any other county in the country - from 23,653 to 111,435 - an increase of 371%, in contrast to the 79% increase for the state of Florida and 19% for the entire nation. Most of the people settled in four towns: Titusville, the county seat, in the north, Cocoa in the center, Eau Gallie and Melbourne in the south. Titusville reached only half the population of each of the other three in the 1960 census.³⁵

In 1950 Brevard County’s 13 schools had an average daily attendance of 4,163; by the school year 1963-64 there were 46 schools with an average daily attendance of 39,873. Classrooms grew from 117 to 1,473 in the 14-year period.³⁶

An infinitesimal percentage of the residents of the four main communities of Brevard County had been born there. Roughly one-fourth of the newcomers came from each of these categories: villages of less than 5,000, towns between 5,000 and 25,000, cities of 25,000 to 100,000, and cities over 100,000. Industrial firms transferred 13% of the newcomers from plants in other areas; 25% freely accepted Florida jobs with a firm they already worked for; and slightly over 25% sought better economic opportunities by coming to the area on their own to seek employment. Some 35-40% came from southern states other than Florida; close to 20% from other counties of Florida; and 15-20% from both the northwest and the midwest. Thus over half were southerners.³⁷

In community involvement, the churches and PTAs led the way. Recreational and hobby clubs grew faster than economic and service-related institutions. Not surprisingly, women tended to involve themselves more in community participation than men. Melbourne, Cocoa, and Cocoa Beach developed active theatre and musical groups, including the Brevard Light Opera Association in Melbourne and the Brevard Civic Symphony in Cocoa. The Surfside Players at Cocoa Beach presented six plays a year.³⁸ Recreationally, Titusville suffered in a way the more southerly areas did not. Its nearest beach, the rough but challenging Playalinda, was so close to the new launching pads that it would remain closed during many months each year.

A Florida State University survey showed slight participation of the newcomers in the political activities of the community or even of the nation. While only 23% of the old-timers, for instance, had failed to vote in the 1960 presidential election, 43% of the early migrants and 52% of the most recent arrivals did not go to the polls.³⁹ Registration requirements naturally influenced voting patterns. The newcomers, in general, willingly lent a hand in such activities as the United Fund; but they did not in any noticeable degree seek political control within the community. The few who did hold office often found older residents suspicious and uncooperative. The main loyalty of the newcomers lay with the space program, with their particular firm, and sometimes with a particular project of that firm, so that many did not feel Brevard County their permanent home, but merely a temporary assignment, as a soldier might look at a tour of duty.

The 1960 census gave Brevard County 111,435 residents. In May 1963, the Florida Power and Light Company estimated the booming population at 156,688. In the estimates for three years after that, the company expected the 72,650 people in southern Brevard County to admit over 52,000 newcomers; the 54,940 in central Brevard to grow to 100,000; and the 25,760 in northern areas at least to double.⁴⁰

A month later (June 1963) Paul Siebeneichen and his staff at KSC’s Community Development Office presented more detailed statistics on the population of the county. By that time, 42 new residents were arriving every day. Nine out of 10 homes were single-family units, and each housed an average of 3.4 people - the statistic the Florida Power and Light Company had used the previous month. The number of men approximated the number of women. Three out of every four men over 14 were married. More than one-third of the women over 13 had jobs. The median income per family was $6,123 - far and away the highest in the state. Consistent with this, the median value of homes was $13,000, compared to the state’s average of $11,800.⁴¹

In May 1964, NASA and the Air Force took a residential survey by questionnaire of more than 28,000 military, civil service, and contractor employees in the area. This study, tabulated by a team from Florida State University, showed that up to that time residents tended to remain where they had located in the late 1950s. South Brevard had 42.1% of the population, with 20.8% on the mainland and 21.3% in the beach areas. Central Brevard had 40.4%, with 12.7% on the mainland, 15.6% on the north beach area, and 12.1% on Merritt Island. North Brevard (the general area of Titusville) had 12.4%. Orange County had 2.4%; Volusia 1.6%.⁴²

As the population of the area continued to grow, the automobile remained the only significant means of local transportation. Two roads that figured prominently in KSC plans were the north-south Merritt Island road (U.S. A1A ) and the Orsino Road, an east-west street that deadended near the Indian River. The industrial area was southeast of the junction of these two roads. KSC improved the Merritt Island road as the main north-south artery within NASA property. A four-lane divided highway extended from 1.7 kilometers south of the industrial area to the Titusville Beach road, about 8 kilometers north of the assembly building. Studies by the Joint Community Impact-Coordinating Committee, which antedated the Regional Planning Commission, gave no indication of the tremendous growth ahead for the residential area on Merritt Island, about 16 kilometers south of the KSC industrial area.⁴³ As a result, the State of Florida did not widen the two-lane road (Florida Highway 3) that ran south from the KSC area through Courtenay to the Bennett toll road (Highway 528). After 1964, four FHA-backed apartment complexes were to spur extensive residential growth in that area of Merritt Island. As a result, Florida Highway 3 became a bottleneck during peak traffic hours.

East-west traffic was never to present a problem. The four-lane divided highway (the old Orsino road), a few blocks north of the industrial area, ran east a kilometer, then turned southeastward to a two-lane causeway over the Banana River to the Air Force Missile Test Center industrial area on the Cape; there it connected with the four-lane traffic artery to the Cocoa Beach area and south. The building of a five- kilometer long, four-lane causeway across the Indian River to the west connected the Orsino road with U.S. Highway 1 on the mainland a few kilometers south of Titusville. Originally intended as a limited-access road for KSC-badged personnel only, this road became a public highway a few years later with the opening of the Visitors Information Center several kilometers west of the KSC industrial area. On the west, beyond U.S. Highway 1 on the mainland, state road-builders were ultimately to continue the east-west road as a four-lane divided highway just north of Ti-Co Airport to its junction with Florida 50 near the intersection of Interstate 95. Thus traffic could move rapidly west from the industrial area across the Indian River and on to Titusville to the north, Cocoa, Rockledge, Eau Gallie, and Melbourne to the south, and the suburbs of Orlando to the west.

While the national government took steps during this period to increase the opportunities for employment of members of minority races, aerospace employers had few openings for blacks. Black engineers were few. Black applicants in other categories of work often lacked the necessary background, training, or union membership. Thus while the white community multiplied, the black population of Brevard County remained the same, declining noticeably as a percentage - from 25% in 1950 to 11% in 1960.⁴⁴

KSC and many contractors tried to improve the situation. An Equal Employment Opportunity meeting of 21 April 1964, with most contractors represented, planned a program to draw on the local black population rather than recruit from outside sources. The meeting set up two committees: one for job development and employment, the other for education and youth incentive. There was an obvious need to develop jobs suitable to available blacks, and to include in the local high school curriculum such courses as shorthand, typing, and the like. A month later NASA representatives attended a luncheon meeting sponsored by the contractors’ Equal Employment Opportunity committee. That organization set up a program for employing local black teachers during summer vacation to give them first-hand knowledge of the academic skills necessary for employment at the space center, so that they could better counsel their students. Principals of three local black high schools, a representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and an Air Force Equal Employment Opportunity coordinator attended this meeting.⁴⁵

Harry W. Smith, Chief of KSC’s Recruitment and Placement Branch, attended a meeting on 30 March 1965 of Governor Claude Kirk of Florida, his cabinet, and black leaders of the State. Smith participated at the request of the black leaders and explained KSC’s Equal Employment Opportunity Program. The black leaders commented favorably on the program and hoped that the State government would adopt at least a part of it.⁴⁶

In order to give wives and children a better understanding of the activities of their husbands and fathers, Kennedy Space Center’s Protocol Office began to hold Saturday tours of Merritt Island and launch complexes 34 and 39. The Air Force had begun such a program in 1963 and KSC followed in the summer of 1964. On each of the first two Saturday trips, more than 200 wives and children made the trip.⁴⁷

By late 1964 other visitors besides the families of employees wanted to see the growing wonders of Merritt Island. As a result, on the first Sunday of 1965, KSC began a Sunday tour. Guards handed out brochures and a letter of welcome from Director Debus as the cars passed through the gate. More than 1,900 visitors came the first Sunday, some from as far away as Nebraska and Ontario. As the Sunday tours grew more popular, KSC laid plans for a permanent Visitors Information Center. In late June 1965, a group of architects met with Debus and other KSC officials to discuss design possibilities, while the National Park Service estimated the potential visitor attendance by 1967 to be in the millions.⁴⁸

Familial and Personal Tensions

The move of Hans Gruene’s launch vehicle team and Theodor Poppel’s design group in 1964 and 1965 brought about 1,000 families from Alabama to Brevard County. Except for 40 Boeing families, newly arrived in Alabama, most had lived for some time in the Huntsville area. In spite of the best efforts of the Community Impact Committee to provide information about Florida’s east coast, relocation proved difficult for many of the newcomers. The families settling in the Titusville area found no large shopping center closer than Orlando. Titusville had only one small department store. Sears and Penney’s would arrive three years later, in response to the rapid population growth.⁴⁹

To provide a place where all could come together on occasion for relaxation, a group of employees developed a recreation area five kilometers east of Highway 3 on KSC, halfway between headquarters and the residential area farther south on Merritt Island. Situated on the west bank of the Banana River, with 762 meters of shore line and a boat basin, the tract, one kilometer square, boasted a setting of live oak, palm, persimmon, and pine trees, and provided playgrounds, picnic areas, and a swimming area.⁵⁰ The Spaceport Travel Club also organized a year-round series of trips that specialized in Caribbean cruises and air journeys to Europe, Hawaii, and the Orient. In spite of these efforts, the KSC employees remained segmentized, close to their own division or contractor, united only in the purpose of sending men to the moon and bringing them back.

Mobility was a major factor in the lives of many on the Apollo project. Military men had grown accustomed to it and accepted it as part of their lives. Engineers who worked for a particular contractor expected a change of residence when a contract was completed. Some saw the east coast of Florida as only a temporary home and did not sell their residences near the Douglas or Boeing central plant. Others viewed it as their permanent home and intended to find permanent employment when their work at KSC ended. Still others lived in constant uncertainty - a factor that influenced their entire family life.

These tensions made family life difficult in many ways. Articles in the local newspapers and national magazines regularly carried features on the domestic strain in the space communities. As Time magazine was to state:

The technicians who assemble and service the rockets have chosen a tense career, and it has taken its toll on their personalities, their marriages and their community.... The rhythms of life at Cape Kennedy are set not so much by the clock or the seasons as by the irregular flights of the missiles. Bouts of furious activity and 14-hour days may be followed by periods of idleness.⁵¹

The Time article saw some difficulties stemming directly from the nature, training, and background of the engineering profession. Many engineers were perfectionist males, surrounded all day by scientific precision, who could not brook the sight of an unwashed coffee cup in the sink on their return home. Many carried their work home with them, spending the evening hours not with their families but in reading technical material. Intelligent, but not liberally educated, their interests focused primarily on the technical world.

Debus told an interviewer:

There is so much tension, so much anxiety in putting men into space. Yes, we’ve lost men because of family problems. When a man is so dedicated that the NASA program becomes his personal life, it takes much time away from wife and children. We need a great many understanding wives here... in the end we usually have to tell them their husbands will be working even harder next year.

Such exposure to stress is rare elsewhere. We live with it constantly. In fact, it is so much with us that we are studying it - how it is affecting our hearts, our nerves, our functions, our aging processes. We don’t know yet.⁵²

Putting men into space caused grave family problems. But readjusting to the decline in employment that followed was to cause even greater problems, especially to children. A prominent pediatrician of the region, Dr. Ronald C. Erbs of Titusville, noted a high incidence of ulcers in children, especially during the last half of the Apollo program. “Before coming to this area,” he stated, “I did not see ulcers in children, except for rare examples.”

It is my opinion that the life generated by the Space Program was basically unhealthy for the families of space personnel.... With the decline of the Space Program, these highly trained men became very insecure regarding their futures. It is extremely difficult to keep the emotions of work away from the emotions of the family, hence increased family tensions. These tensions then were felt by the children, and since the problems were not usually discussed, the children had no outlet for these emotions, leading to the development of ulcers.⁵³

Dr. Erbs had recommendations for future space programs, but they came too late for Apollo.

One compensating social attitude was the almost total lack of snobbishness among the space workers in the neighboring communities. No doubt it stemmed partially from most of them being newcomers trying to set up homes on Florida’s east coast. A major contributing factor was the sense of the importance of each member of the Apollo team to the success of the mission. The most brilliant design engineer knew that the man who bolted on the hatch hinges did an important piece of work. All saw the unheralded contributions of countless persons around them. This appreciation of the worth of the individual carried over into the communities beyond KSC. One technician asked: “Where else in America would my closest friends be two men who make twice as much money as I do?”⁵⁴