Source: The Wall Street Journal
From a small staging area atop the rocket launching pad, Guenter Wendt directed final preparations for NASA’s manned space flights from their start through the moon shots and beyond. His was often the last face astronauts saw before being blasted into space.
Mr. Wendt, who died Monday at age 85, was long a favorite among American astronauts, whose lives depended on his last-minute attention to their life-support systems, their spacesuits and hundreds of other checklist items.
“It’s easy to get along with Guenter. All you have to do is agree with him,” said astronaut Pete Conrad.
The ticking clock made agreement mandatory. Motioning with his cane at the countdown clock during a 2002 tour of a museum exhibit of his launching pad “white room,” he told an Associated Press reporter: “That, that was always my enemy.”
It became a preflight tradition for Mr. Wendt and the astronauts to exchange humorous gifts. For the 1965 Gemini V launch, these included a plumber’s friend labeled as a “repair kit.” For the 1969 Apollo 11 launch that resulted in the first man on the moon, Mr. Wendt gave the crew a four-foot long “key to the moon.” Astronaut Michael Collins reciprocated with a mounted seven-inch trout, a comment on Mr. Wendt’s fish tales.
Born in Berlin, Mr. Wendt was shot down twice during World War II, according to published accounts. In 1949, Mr. Wendt moved to St. Louis, where he joined his father, who had become an American citizen before the war. He supported himself as a mechanic and airline ground instructor. In 1955, he became an American citizen and joined McDonnell Aircraft Corp., lead contractor for the Mercury program’s spacecraft.
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