Fifth Year at Rice

A month after Britany’s birth I finished my 4th year at Rice. In normal times I would have graduated with a BA in Electrical Engineering (a degree of participation, not worth much). With Viet Nam raging these were not normal times. I deferred my BA in lieu of receiving both the bachelors and masters at the end of five years. This was to sustain my student draft status. I will present this in greater detail later.

I transitioned to full time at the Houston Speech and Hearing Center for the summer and there there was a hiccup. I had been running a lab to detect deafness in infants and this lab was being given to a post doc.

My pride was hurt and I sought other employment.

Following the Russian space success in the late 50s, the National Advisory Committee for Aviation was renamed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and given control of the US space program.

Rocket design was going on in Huntsville, AL, and launches from Cape Canaveral Florida. There were some research centers at other places.

At this point in US history Lyndon Johnson was Majority Chair of the Senate and Sam Rayburn was Speaker of the House. They made it happen that if NASA were going to grow they would agree to locate the manned spacecraft effort in Houston.

Rice University donated land that had earlier been donated to Rice by Humble Oil Company (now Exxon/Mobil). and the Manned Spacecraft Center was established in Clear Lake, TX.

This NASA group operated in rental property along the Gulf Freeway near the U of H until buildings were ready for occupancy in the early 60’s.

One place I applied for a job was a company named Technology Incorporated. Until I interviewed I did not know that this was a NASA contractor with a contract to support the Cardiovascular lab at the MSC.

The interview went well and I left the Speech and Hearing Center and began working in Building 7A on the NASA Campus.

I will describe this work in a different section of this time.

I worked full time in the summer of ‘68 and went part time when school started.

Fifth year coursework was really interesting. It included more circuit synthesis, advanced math, biomedical engineering with John Clark and a course in electromagnetic.

When I went from full to half time at NASA I got Don Mauldin on as my ‘other half’. We took the same courses. We loaded up on Monday, Wednesday, Friday courses and commuted together to NASA on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

To say that I was busy this 5th year is an understatement.

My engineering advisor told me that I could not do a full load at Rice and have a part time job. that I would fail in my coursework. I did not have any alternative. I had to finish school and I had to support Kathy and Britany.

In his course he awarded points for doing assignments and passing tests. Over the semester he made about 110 points available and 100 points got a 1 grade (recall that at this time Rice graded backwards so a 1 was an A.).

To show him I busted my derrière and achieved about 105 points.

I did finish and graduate - not with honors - but I graduated.

With Britany as a full member of the family, we needed a two bedroom apartment so we found a nice two bedroom apartment near the medical center on Dreyfus Street. This was one block from OST.