Skylab Wind Down and Job Search

In the fall of 1973 the last Skylab mission was flown. NASA was sort of floundering at this point. Apollo Soyuz (the first joint US/USSR Space Mission) had not yet been approved. The space shuttle was a glimmer in someone’s eye. What we saw as a contractor to NASA was the potential end of the contract and a possible loss of employment. It was a tough time and Kathy and I talked about it quite a bit. It was clear that I needed to look for other employment as a contingency.

I posted my résumé with a job search firm called Robert Half (I believe that they are still around). A few job prospects popped up and I had a couple of interviews in the non-NASA market. None lit my fire.

A job came up with the employer’s being obscured, but the job was in Chicago and it had to do with interfacing medical laboratory equipment to computers. That seemed right up my alley. I had a couple of phone interviews that seemed to go pretty doggone well and I got offered a trip to Chicago for an in person interview. I flew to Chicago and stayed in the Drake Hotel on the Miracle Mile. At this point I had never paid over 150 bucks a night for a hotel room and this is in 1973 dollars. The Drake Hotel is located on the north side of downtown Chicago right where Lakeshore Drive curves to the west before proceeding north again. The view of the lake was excellent. It turns out that the Drake Hotel was owned by a member of the Cook County Board of Governors — just another indication of the rampant corruption in the Chicago governmental arena.

I took a cab to the Health and Hospitals Government Commission of Cook County, a building adjacent to Cook County Hospital. The building was actually a little dilapidated looking, and it turns out it had been the morgue before being converted into an office building for the Governing Commission. I interviewed with several folks there: Ishwar Gupta and Don Pugliese among them. The interviews went well. The job challenge looked interesting and I left on a high note.

Kathy and I talked about this quite a bit — not a surprise. This would entail selling our new house and relocating to somewhere in the Chicago area. We did no research on what relative house prices were between the Houston area and the Chicago area — we were in for a surprise. I don’t know if I made a commitment first or they offered a house hunting trip first. Just before Christmas, Kathy and I flew to Chicago, stayed in the Drake again, had a rental car and looked at housing both west of downtown and north of downtown, mostly in Evanston.

Interestingly this was during the first ‘oil crisis’ following the institution OPEC. All over Houston we were urged to save energy by not installing Christmas lights. We were shocked that this word had not made it to Chicago - it was lit up ‘like a Christmas tree’.

One of the people I’d interviewed with at the commission was Caron Maxwell (destined to be a long-term friend). She was very high on Evanston and suggested we really take a good look at this north shore suburb. It is the first suburb north of Chicago, so it’s relatively close in, with a very diverse population, and Northwestern University is in Evanston.

House hunting out west was OK but the house prices boggled our minds. We would have to do a lot more searching to find a house that would hold our small family at a price we could afford.

In the Evanston area the housing situation was much the same, but we liked the area. We found an apartment — or what in Chicago is called a flat. It was the upper story of a two-flat home. It was a relatively spacious 3-bedroom apartment that would do for a while. The people leaving it were anxious to get out and desperate for us to take over their lease because they were moving to Wisconsin. We actually purchased their window treatments, although I was aghast at the price.

We signed the lease pending a credit check by the landlord, Max Kamm, and his wife Sylvia. We were committed to move to where there were four seasons.