Interviewer(s): Jennifer Ross-Nazzal
Interviewee(s): Richard D. Burghduff, Betty K. Burghduff

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Today is June 13th, 2019. This interview with Betty and Dick Burghduff is being conducted at the Clear Lake United Methodist Church for the JSC Oral History Project. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. Thanks again for taking some time to meet with me. I really really appreciate it. I wanted to start by asking both of you what you thought when you heard Houston would be selected as the home of the new Manned Spacecraft Center. You were living in Virginia at that time, correct?

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: I was at Langley [Research Center, Hampton], Virginia, which was NASA, and a lot of the people that were there were going down here to join, and we had a couple of reasons. One, we’re Midwesterners. Two, Betty’s sister was a doctor at UTMB [University of Texas Medical Branch] in Galveston, and that put us into contact with her. It really was a no-brainer for us to want to come down with them. We waited until the first wave of them got down, because I was finishing up an experiment, but we got here as soon as we could.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Had you been watching the weather and seeing what was happening down here with Hurricane Carla? Was that weighing on your mind?

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, we always watched it, because my sister lived in Galveston. That didn’t seem to bother us though. We were just excited about a new kind of frontier if you will, a new hometown. That was my thoughts I had written down at one time. It was all very impressive and exciting to go to a new hometown.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Dick, did you come out here for a look and see trip? I understand that they allowed some members of the STG [Space Task Group] to come out and take a look around.

Richard D. Burghduff: Yes, we did. I came here, and I stayed a couple nights with Betty’s sister and visited. They hadn’t even built but one building when I came down, and housing was brand-new. There were very few that had sold yet. It was very brand-new. I like the Midwest, so it appealed to me, and what they were doing. A lot of the NASA offices were down the freeway, they weren’t here on site. It was looking like something I really wanted to do.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Was there still any destruction left from Carla when you got here?

Richard D. Burghduff: I don’t remember any destruction.

Betty K. Burghduff: I don’t remember it, no.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: What did you tell Betty about the area when you came back? Did you take any photos or any film?

Richard D. Burghduff: I didn’t take any photos or film.

Betty K. Burghduff: We were just ready to go.

Richard D. Burghduff: Yes, and the kids were pretty young.

Betty K. Burghduff: Six and four.

Richard D. Burghduff: We got down here so they could start school. Didn’t have to take them out of school, and I think that all worked out well. Our place in Virginia was very close to Langley.

Betty K. Burghduff: We lived in Newport News and in Hampton.

Richard D. Burghduff: The wind tunnels, when they went off in the middle of the night, were very noisy; we could hear them pretty good.

Betty K. Burghduff: I’d forgotten that.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I bet, I bet. When did you officially move down here?

Betty K. Burghduff: Halloween of—I wrote it down—1964. We bought the house and moved into the house, and then we had children at the front door. We had no candy.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Oh my.

Betty K. Burghduff: We were not very popular.

Richard D. Burghduff: There weren’t very many kids. There weren’t very many houses occupied at that point in time either.

Betty K. Burghduff: I think there were only two houses that were lived in on our street at the time.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You said you lived on Redway [Lane].

Betty K. Burghduff: On Redway. It’s the Del Webb planned community.

Richard D. Burghduff: It was still a pretty rustic area. We’d see snakes in the street. We would look out through the front door, and there’s cows walking down the street. Cattle was breaking out.

Betty K. Burghduff: I don’t remember that.

Richard D. Burghduff: It was an interesting time, but it grew up pretty quick.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: When you were here initially did you put down earnest money for a house? Did you look at Clear Lake City and decide this is where you wanted to go?

Richard D. Burghduff: I did look at it, but no I did not.

Betty K. Burghduff: We actually didn’t buy the house till we got here.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Where did you live initially? Did you rent property?

Betty K. Burghduff: No, we stayed at the Ramada Inn that was across from Building 1 and we stayed there almost a month. The kids had a good time because there was a swimming pool.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: That would be fun.

Betty K. Burghduff: But that’s no longer there, the old Ramada Inn.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Is that where Space Center Houston is now?

Betty K. Burghduff: Across the street. Let’s see, what’s in there now? I’ve forgotten.

Richard D. Burghduff: There’s that big building where you walk up the stairs. It’s a contractor building.

Betty K. Burghduff: That’s Joan’s building, yes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Is that the SAIC buildings?

Richard D. Burghduff: I think that’s what you call it. It’s a big stairway going up.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I think I know which ones.

Richard D. Burghduff: Our daughter worked there for a while.

Betty K. Burghduff: Somewhere along there is where that hotel was.

Richard D. Burghduff: Yes, there wasn’t anything else there.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Besides it being kind of rustic, as you said, what are some of your other memories as you came here? Had you been here before since your sister lived here?

Betty K. Burghduff: No, I’d never been here before.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: What did you think as you came down the Gulf Freeway?

Betty K. Burghduff: It was a frog-choking storm, and we were in a Rambler station wagon with the kids in the back. They didn’t have to wear seatbelts. We just thought, “What are we getting into,” because it was really stormy. We had packed up our house and [there were] just a lot of unknowns.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: What about the area itself when you came into Clear Lake? Were you surprised by how the area wasn’t really developed? By the fact that there wasn’t much here, and they were building this massive Center devoted to Apollo?

Richard D. Burghduff: We didn’t even have a grocery store for a little while.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. They had the original little shopping strip where Aldi is now. That shopping strip. There was a Piggly Wiggly, a Walgreen’s on the corner, and a dime store, a Woolworth’s store. If we wanted any serious shopping, we had to go down the freeway to what they used to call the Sage store. It was a big-box store.\n\n For clothing and that sort of thing, we went downtown to Foley’s, and you rode the elevator up, and you had lunch at the Azalea Room. Kids loved that.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Oh, I bet, kind of an adventure for them.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. We had to go downtown for shopping for clothes or anything like that.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Was traffic as bad as it is today?

Richard D. Burghduff: It’s not got better.

Betty K. Burghduff: It was always under construction.

Richard D. Burghduff: Highway 3 was a two-lane road, very poorly lit. I guess the freeway was there, but it wasn’t used very much.

Betty K. Burghduff: Not as busy.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: What about the streets in Oakbrook? Were they paved by that point?

Betty K. Burghduff: Oh yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: Yes. Del Webb had paved the streets around the houses that were built, which basically were only a few blocks on each side of the golf course.

Betty K. Burghduff: Right, and the rec center was built, everything was built before we got here: the rec center, the golf course. The first neighborhood of course was Oakbrook, and then after two or three years another builder came in and Friendswood [Development Company] left, and then they built with other builders on the other side of the golf course.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You live in a Del Webb house.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: I think they had like four models, maybe it was five. We just bought one of the models, and that house was replicated every block.

Betty K. Burghduff: There were the 100 houses and the 200 houses. The 200 houses were larger, and we thought, “Oh, we don’t need that space.” But guess what.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: With kids it’s amazing how much stuff you accumulate.

Betty K. Burghduff: We lived in the house 52 years. Same house, the only house we’ve ever owned.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: That must have been hard to say goodbye, a lot of memories.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, but it was time.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I live in the neighborhood, so I know that. You mentioned there were only about two houses finished on your block when you came. How quickly did the rest of the street fill out?

Richard D. Burghduff: I think within six months to a year all our street was filled.

Betty K. Burghduff: The houses were built, they weren’t sold. Our next-door neighbor had moved in just before us. Within a year, I think, all the houses were sold.

Richard D. Burghduff: NASA was importing a lot of people at that point.

Betty K. Burghduff: They were recruiting, yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: They were filling this up.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Were most of your neighbors affiliated with NASA, or were they affiliated like old-timers, farming, ranching, petrochemical?

Richard D. Burghduff: They were mostly NASA.

Betty K. Burghduff: All NASA people.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: All NASA, that’s unusual.

Betty K. Burghduff: When you move away, you don’t have any extended family. Then they became your family.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I was going to ask about that, because I think that is very interesting to me, the fact that people moved here, they didn’t have anyone to depend on, so they had to depend on each other. I wondered if you would talk a little bit about that and how that helped to create this Clear Lake area community.

Richard D. Burghduff: You were at home, so you would have a better feel than I would. I was traveling.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. Most families, most of the time, the mom was home. We had morning coffees with the neighbors and that sort of thing, and I think that helped build a sense of family. We all of course were NASA people, so whatever went on at NASA we were involved in. Then about five or six years later my mother moved from Wisconsin and she had an apartment here in Clear Lake, the Kings Inn or something. What was the name of that place? She had been widowed, so she came to be with the grandkids. That was a big help.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Oh, I bet. When you guys were having morning coffee, I know that the guys were constantly talking shop, even when they were off work. Were you talking about that? Or were you focused on kids, family?

Betty K. Burghduff: Just family and kids and that. We all in the background knew that our husbands were traveling or whatever. It was just mostly mom stuff.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: How did you juggle that? I wanted to ask you, Dick, too about how much you were traveling, and where you were traveling to. I’ve heard people were working 60-, 70-hour workweeks. Were you working those kind of hours? Were you able to spend much time with your family at that point?

Richard D. Burghduff: Probably not as much as I would have liked. But it was so exciting, what we were doing, and new, that the time went fast. Then there was a lot of travel involved. Some of us were heading for Europe for meetings, so you were gone a lot more than you would like to be.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: What were you working on that took you to Europe?

Richard D. Burghduff: When the Shuttle was first designed, the Europeans wanted to build a living quarters they’d put in there. NASA decided that, I think there were three or four of us, should go over there and make sure that they built something that would fit in and that had the human factors touch to it, that if you got a red sign that means something or a gray sign. We went over there for a few months and spent some time at a German factory in Bremen, Germany. Germans didn’t care for us too much. We bombed the heck out of Bremen in World War II, and they were sort of grouchy.

Betty K. Burghduff: Then you traveled to California a lot, to Downey. We’d go with him sometimes, go to Disneyland. We had a good time on those trips.

Richard D. Burghduff: They played all day, and I worked.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I think that works the same way today. I try and do it as well. I probably don’t travel as much as you did. You were working on the command module? Was that your assignment?

Richard D. Burghduff: Yes. I was cockpit for the Orbiter.

Betty K. Burghduff: Guidance and control.

Richard D. Burghduff: I was in the Guidance and Control Division so everything in the cockpit became my necessity. When we started designing, we went around the country on two different tours to visit different companies to see what modern airplanes were using. We built on that data.\n\n The astronauts that were senior at that time were used to flying mechanical instruments because they were a little older. They weren’t used to CRTs [cathode ray tubes]. There was a little bias against CRTs. We built the original cockpit without them, and we added them later on.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I forgot to ask. Where was your original office? You moved here and the Center wasn’t built.

Richard D. Burghduff: Original was Building 16.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Were you located off site before the Center officially opened?

Betty K. Burghduff: No, it was open by the time we got here.

Richard D. Burghduff: It was open by the time we got here I think. Building 1 was finished, and 16, we were moving in.

Betty K. Burghduff: Then you were in 36 for a long time, and then you went to Building 1.

Richard D. Burghduff: That was probably only—36 was ready, and Building 1 is when I ended up—

Betty K. Burghduff: In the Space Shuttle. Chief Engineer for the Shuttle.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Nice way to end one’s career.

Richard D. Burghduff: It was, it was.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Feather in your cap. I wanted to ask you about your friends in the area. Were most of your friends also from NASA? What sort of things would you get together and do in terms of entertainment?

Richard D. Burghduff: We didn’t do much of that.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, we were pretty much homebodies. We didn’t do the splashdown parties and that sort of thing. The only one that I remember is at the Astrodome after the Moon landing, they had a huge event there. Frank Sinatra came and a whole bunch of Hollywood people. I still have the program for that, but we didn’t do a lot of partying. We were just homebodies really.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Did you guys bowl or play cards? Trying to think of things that people might do.

Richard D. Burghduff: No. I played tennis after work. Had a couple other people, and we played doubles tennis. Then we got into the track deal at a school over in Webster.

Betty K. Burghduff: Webster.

Richard D. Burghduff: We would go over there and run laps just to unwind, but we didn’t do much socializing I guess. The church was involved.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. We had neighbors. We did a couple of block parties and that sort of thing, just neighbors. They were all NASA people anyway.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I was curious about that, because that’s something that people don’t do today, these block parties, these neighborhood parties. I wondered if you would talk about it, because it seems to me kind of like a spontaneous thing. Just come out and take your kids and let them play and bring a dish and pass it around.

Betty K. Burghduff: That’s it. Yes. It was safe. The kids played out in the street during the day. We felt like they were safe.

Richard D. Burghduff: For the block parties we somehow got the street blocked off so you couldn’t drive down it.

Betty K. Burghduff: We were on a street that was just one block.

Richard D. Burghduff: The rec center was a very active place, and the playgrounds around it.

Betty K. Burghduff: Went to the swimming pool, spent the day at the pool.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I think Joan [Robertson, daughter] mentioned either there was just an outdoor pool and then the indoor pool came, or was it the indoor pool first?

Betty K. Burghduff: The outside one was first, and then they added the indoor with a new extension there. Yes, the rec center was busy. Of course during the week it was school. That’s where our son went to school that first year. He was in first grade with Mr. Royal. Mr. Royal.

Richard D. Burghduff: Then they finished the—

Betty K. Burghduff: Then they finished the school and John was in the first class that attended the Clear Lake Elementary. Then through the years our son, our daughter, and our granddaughter went to the same school, and she’s doing her practice teaching there.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Oh my gosh.

Betty K. Burghduff: So it’s really something.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Yes, multigenerational, that’s great.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, and the school has changed a good deal of course.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I bet. It seems like the area has changed. I think Joan, for instance, mentioned that she didn’t remember you guys ever locking your door. You pretty much just left things open.

Richard D. Burghduff: You don’t dare do that anymore.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: No.

Betty K. Burghduff: You made an effort to know your neighbors.

Richard D. Burghduff: There were no apartment complexes, for quite some time.

Betty K. Burghduff: The only thing they had was where Mom moved into, remember? Those were rental, I’m pretty sure. She was there for about two years, and then she bought a house over on the other side of Highway 3.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You mentioned the Clear Lake Rec Center, which I think is interesting. I’ve read some of—is it Betty Ulrich?

Betty K. Burghduff: Ulrich, yes, she was around the corner from us, yes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: She included a few of the community newsletters [in her papers], and she has letters in there that she wrote home to family and talked about all the different things that were going on at the rec center. Things like Thanksgiving dinners and different parties and events. I wonder if you would talk about some of those that you might recall, even if you didn’t participate. It seems like it was a real center of community for at least this area.

Betty K. Burghduff: Right. I remember going. She started a library there, and that was of interest to me, because I’m a librarian of course. She started what grew into what is now the Freeman Library. I think the children’s room at the Freeman is dedicated in her honor. She lived around the corner from us.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Where was the library in the rec center itself? I know there’s a whole bunch of different spaces in the building.

Betty K. Burghduff: When Friendswood left there was a sales office that was right on the corner of where the tennis courts are now. They had a portable sales office. It was just a little small building. The Freeman Library started there. Then they made room for it right inside the rec center on one side of the rec center. Then they built the building later. So it started in the sales room.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Did you end up volunteering there?

Betty K. Burghduff: No, I didn’t, I was busy with my kids. I didn’t really get back into library work till my kids got older. I’ve always been a homebody.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: And that’s okay. I’m kind of the same way.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. I had to be there for the kids.

Richard D. Burghduff: I was traveling a lot. It would have been tough to try to do that.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You had also mentioned something in your history that you wrote, Betty, that I thought was fascinating, and that was if you bought a house here, you had a one-year membership to the country club. We moved here in 2003, and I think it had been closed. If you could talk about that, because that also seems like a space where there might have been a lot of community building going on. Did you ever go over there?

Betty K. Burghduff: My mom was a champion golfer, so she was very happy about that. Yes, they gave us a year membership. Every Sunday afternoon they had a buffet. It was a free buffet for the residents. They had a swimming pool, and our kids would go swimming there.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Oh, another pool.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. It was very nice.

Richard D. Burghduff: It was well kept up. I don’t think I played golf but a couple times.

Betty K. Burghduff: We’re not golfers. My mom was very happy about it, but she was club champion for three years.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: The country club, am I correct, was it off of Diana? Or was it off of—Ramada or Reseda? I’m trying to remember which way the roads run.

Betty K. Burghduff: Where the rec center is now, you go down the same lot towards Ramada or Reseda.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I always forget those two.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, I get them mixed up. But anyway it was on that corner where the retention pond is.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I think that was the first phase [of Exploration Green].

Betty K. Burghduff: What was interesting, there were rumors that they were going to close the golf course, so they had some kind of a reunion. I remember going to a fancy dinner there. They were closing the golf course. A lot of the original people came to that dinner. Can’t remember when that was.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: That might have been around when we purchased our house, because I think it was open for a short time, and they made the decision to close it. We bought in 2003, maybe 2004, 2005.

Betty K. Burghduff: Something like that yes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I know we were disappointed, because we liked the golf course. We don’t golf, but it was a nice view. Did you guys know any old-timers or people who actually were from Webster, Seabrook, Kemah? Or was it literally all new people for you?

Richard D. Burghduff: Everything was NASA, new people.

Betty K. Burghduff: All NASA, new people. Gradually there would be like some Exxon people, but most of the time they were all either NASA or contractor.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: That’s pretty unusual to have such a brand-new community, I think, in the twentieth century. I kind of think it’s almost like a nineteenth century community in a way, because you guys were building this community almost from the ground up. Everything had to be established by all of you. But at the same time you were united by this one goal, which I think is really interesting.

Betty K. Burghduff: The churches—that was another place to connect with people, the church of course. When we moved here, Dick was Lutheran, and so there was House of Prayer Lutheran Church we belonged to.

Richard D. Burghduff: Which was only block from the house.

Betty K. Burghduff: As charter member. Yes. Dunkin’ Donuts is where the Lutheran church used to be. We were there five years. Then there were some problems, and we moved to this church now. A lot of our friends, of course, are here at this church.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I was curious about the fact that there were so many families in this area too, because I think that helps to bring together people when you have young children running around. Like-minded people, and comparing my kid is doing this, is your kid doing the same thing. Or just having parties or just getting together to play. Although I think it’s a little different these days. I wonder how that might have contributed to building that community.

Betty K. Burghduff: You knew your children’s classmates in school, and we had room mothers, we’d have those connections. There were block mothers that when the kids were walking home from school you had a little sign in the window that you were a block mother, and that sort of thing.

Richard D. Burghduff: Safety if you had to run, you could run to one of those signs.

Betty K. Burghduff: That wouldn’t work nowadays.

Richard D. Burghduff: No.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You were a block mom, right? That’s what Joan mentioned.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. You knew all the neighborhood kids.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You mentioned that Clear Lake City Elementary had school at the rec center one year.

Betty K. Burghduff: One year, yes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Did they house the kids in the gym? Or was it in some of the—

Betty K. Burghduff: Where the office buildings are now. During the day, I don’t know how many grades they had. John was in first grade. Then after school there was a dance school, Jill Rauscher’s dance school. Her mother actually. My daughter started dance there when she was six or seven maybe. Jill is still here in the community. My granddaughter teaches in that school now.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Oh, does she?

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, my granddaughter is 21, she’ll be, and she’s one of the instructors at the school.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Houston really became your home.

Richard D. Burghduff: Oh yes.

Betty K. Burghduff: Oh yes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You talked about wanting to be part of a new hometown, and it really did for both of you.

Richard D. Burghduff: We were far enough from Houston proper that we were like a little community. We had the advantages of the big stores downtown but we had the advantage of the neighborhood.

Betty K. Burghduff: Small town.

Richard D. Burghduff: Originally after we moved in, one of the things that was always interesting is the cattle would get away from wherever they were fenced off and go walking down the street in front of your house. It was interesting to see the country and the city intermix there.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: That is interesting. You would not see that today.

Betty K. Burghduff: No, all kinds of rules and things.

Richard D. Burghduff: And snakes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: And snakes. Did you guys have a lot of problems with insects? I was curious about that. Was that something you had issues with?

Betty K. Burghduff: We came from the Midwest, where there are no bugs outside of mosquitoes. One of the first few nights in our house we had a roach problem, and we didn’t know what they were.

Richard D. Burghduff: One flew off. The little sucker jumped and landed on her.

Betty K. Burghduff: In my hair.

Richard D. Burghduff: In the middle of the night.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Oh, yuck.

Betty K. Burghduff: That was new for us.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I can imagine lots of Raid.

Richard D. Burghduff: We never had any trouble with snakes, although we found a dead one every once in a while in the street. They didn’t learn how to cross the street, I guess.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Were you seeing other animals like alligators or skunks?

Richard D. Burghduff: There’s an alligator that’s still there. I think he’s still there. The ditch by the golf course.

Betty K. Burghduff: The kids going to school, most kids walked to school. They’d go over the bridge.

Richard D. Burghduff: Go over the bridge with the alligator.

Betty K. Burghduff: That was a concern.

Richard D. Burghduff: Probably not the smartest thing in the world.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: That’s unusual.

Richard D. Burghduff: There’s coyotes that roam the present golf course at night still to this day, people that live on the course, and then they got the wild hogs.

Betty K. Burghduff: That’s further down.

Richard D. Burghduff: Yes, it’s not where our house was, but it was further towards the other side, that still dig up neighborhood yards.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I did not know that.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, they still have them.

Richard D. Burghduff: One day that new shopping center, what is it, HEB?

Betty K. Burghduff: HEB is up that way.

Richard D. Burghduff: We were driving up there and a herd of—if they’re herds—about five or six went running across the road. They had been messing around where the houses were right there.

Betty K. Burghduff: They tear up the landscaping and everything.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Oh, well, that’s good to know.

Richard D. Burghduff: That was just five years ago or so.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I would have thought by now most of the wildlife was in another area.

Richard D. Burghduff: I think those hogs are very conducive to reproduction.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I wanted to ask a little bit more about the schools. You volunteered, Betty, in the schools as well?

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, in the library.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Do you know was there an emphasis at all on space? Was there any interest in space books or any space programs you recall? Maybe, Dick, did you ever go over to the school and talk about what you were doing at NASA? Or were you too busy?

Betty K. Burghduff: I think it was just a cultural thing that everybody knew about it, and so we just sort of—“Oh, your dad is an astronaut, so what.”

Richard D. Burghduff: Most people knew each other from work.

Betty K. Burghduff: Families.

Richard D. Burghduff: One of my bosses was right down the street. I think it was just sort of normal. We worked, we came home, and then we did other stuff.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: So no big deal for folks. No differentiation for the kids between I’m an astronaut kid while your dad is an engineer.

Richard D. Burghduff: I don’t think so.

Betty K. Burghduff: I don’t think so. I was in a bridge club for a while, and two of the ladies were astronauts’ wives, two or three of them I remember. But then I got tired of bridge so I dropped out.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I was going to ask about that, because that seems to be a popular card game. People don’t really play bridge anymore. But back then I think people did a lot more.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. At the Crossings they have some big bridge players there, where we live now, because they’re all our age. We have a cardroom.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Oh, you have a cardroom?

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: There’s a lot of sheepshead players out in Rockwell Downey, they used to have sheepshead games out there. That’s a card game.

Betty K. Burghduff: That’s a Midwestern card game.

Richard D. Burghduff: It’s a German card game. One of the contractors that was supporting Rockwell International was AC Electronics, is that what they’re called?

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: They were from Milwaukee.

Betty K. Burghduff: That’s where he was from.

Richard D. Burghduff: Where we grew up, or I grew up.

Betty K. Burghduff: Where he grew up, yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: We got together whenever I was out there and played cards in the evening.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Did they ever bring you anything from the Midwest? My in-laws and my husband is originally from Wisconsin.

Richard D. Burghduff: Oh.

Betty K. Burghduff: Oh, really.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Yes. I’m trying to think of the dessert. There’s a dessert out there they stock up on. [A kringle].

Richard D. Burghduff: Sounds German or something.

Betty K. Burghduff: Sounds German.

Richard D. Burghduff: I grew up in a Norwegian house with all Norwegian stuff.

Betty K. Burghduff: He’s Norwegian.

Richard D. Burghduff: Mine was all Norwegian.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Did they bring you anything?

Richard D. Burghduff: Lutefisk.

Betty K. Burghduff: No, that’s another thing.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Doesn’t sound like Betty liked that.

Betty K. Burghduff: No, it’s terrible.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I wanted to ask about childcare because even in your history you talk about how it was a real issue even for the church because there were so many kids that the church wasn’t necessarily equipped to handle it. How did the moms handle it in a day and age when day care really wasn’t a thing? Did you rely on all the other mothers?

Betty K. Burghduff: Number one is not as many mothers were working. Most moms were home. Then slowly, like my mom that moved here, slowly their parents would come down here and retire. In the church, like I wrote about in the history, that’s how Mother’s Day Out started, because other mothers would help other mothers.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Was that something that you were involved in? You were a newer member at that point, but was that something that you joined in on?

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. As our kids got a little bit older, as teenagers, then they got involved in the Mother’s Day Out program, which was childcare. There weren’t any commercial childcare places. There weren’t any. You either shared with your friends or your church.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: It’s a complication, if you need to go somewhere and really need help.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. If you had a doctor’s appointment, or somebody gets sick or something.

Richard D. Burghduff: There weren’t too many doctors around either.

Betty K. Burghduff: No.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: How did you find out who to go to? If you were all new, how did you figure out who was the best person? Did you have any options in the area?

Betty K. Burghduff: Not too many options.

Richard D. Burghduff: One.

Betty K. Burghduff: Clear Creek Clinic in League City had three or four doctors. We stayed with them till this past year. Things changed in the practice.

Richard D. Burghduff: We didn’t have any hospitals in the area.

Betty K. Burghduff: No hospitals, no. You had to go into Houston if you were seriously ill. You had to go to Houston.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Did you ever go down to Galveston for medical care? Or primarily you just went up into Houston?

Richard D. Burghduff: I don’t think we ever went down there.

Betty K. Burghduff: I don’t think we did.

Richard D. Burghduff: NASA had their own set of doctors, so the employees got yearly physicals.

Betty K. Burghduff: But not the families.

Richard D. Burghduff: Not the families. But the doctors used you as guinea pigs. We were on treadmills just like a chipmunk or something with masks on and all that stuff.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Oh, that’s fascinating.

Richard D. Burghduff: I guess we were the base[line] for astronauts later on.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: The baseline, oh, that’s funny. That’s a nice perk for being a civil servant, that you have that access to that medical care.

Richard D. Burghduff: Matter of fact, Joan was helping. She was doing that at NASA. I’m sure she told you. She took blood from me many times.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: They’ve got your data? I wanted to ask you about neighborhood traditions. I’ve heard in Timber Cove for Apollo 8 they started putting out the luminaries, and they do a few other things. Were there any traditions in Oakbrook around the space program, or maybe just holidays like Fourth of July or Christmas, Thanksgiving? I think Joan mentioned some parades that you guys would have.

Betty K. Burghduff: Oh yes, I think that was around—I don’t know what the occasion was. Yes, they had some small neighborhood parades, and our granddaughter was on the float, stuff like that.

Richard D. Burghduff: We used to have block parties that the police would let us.

Betty K. Burghduff: There’s one neighborhood over where Hal [Harold A.] Loden lives. They had a lot of traditions on Bowline, I remember. You might want to talk to him too. Hal Loden. He is a member here, a charter member of this church.

Richard D. Burghduff: He was a flight controller. Different viewpoint than engineers.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Oh, absolutely, yes, I like talking to different people, because people have different memories of what things were like and different experiences as well. Did you guys ever see any tour buses in your area? I know that there were some that came down. They were looking for astronaut homes. My understanding, there were a few astronauts who lived in Clear Lake.

Richard D. Burghduff: I don’t remember any tour buses.

Betty K. Burghduff: No.

Richard D. Burghduff: We were on a one-block street, so that wouldn’t be a major traffic route at all.

Betty K. Burghduff: I’m not sure if we had any neighbors that were astronauts in Oakbrook. I don’t think so. The early astronauts came at a time when they’d move into Timber Cove or some of those neighborhoods over there, so I don’t think we had any in our neighborhood.

Richard D. Burghduff: I don’t remember.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I think I had seen in a few of the newsletters. Unfortunately didn’t keep a complete set. It’s just a few in there. They mentioned a few of the astronauts were—can’t remember the names. They probably came like in ’66 or somewhere back there. They probably weren’t flying much in Apollo. I wanted to ask you, Dick, if you had a chance to be active in the community much at all in the ’60s. Did you join any groups? Or did you help your kids with sport leagues or Scouts, anything like that?

Richard D. Burghduff: No. I had an awful lot of travel, so travel and church here. I didn’t do anything.

Betty K. Burghduff: John was an Indian Guide for a while, and he did that for a while.

Richard D. Burghduff: Yes, we did Indian Guides.

Betty K. Burghduff: I did Girl Scouts.

Richard D. Burghduff: We camped a couple times.

Betty K. Burghduff: Indian Guides was for sons and fathers only. I don’t think they exist anymore.

Richard D. Burghduff: Probably not.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I’ve never heard of it.

Betty K. Burghduff: They were like a Scout kind of thing, but the emphasis was father-son. I did Brownies and Girl Scouts with my daughter.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Were you a troop leader?

Betty K. Burghduff: I was a Brownie leader.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: That’s nice that you were able to do that. Were you active in the Clear Lake Women’s Society of Christian Service? I’ve read about that in your history as well.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. It’s now United Methodist Women. Yes, I was real active.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Would you talk about the work that you did? I know you joined a little later. Would you talk about some of the volunteer work that you did during the ’60s?

Betty K. Burghduff: When we moved to this church I started the library. The Brownie troop met here, and I was room mother for many years at school. Then when both of the granddaughters started school, I was a room mother for both of them as well. They don’t do much of that anymore, I don’t think, where they have parties in a classroom and that sort of thing.

Richard D. Burghduff: What about the library? Did you get in the school library? I did later on.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, we both volunteered in the Clear Lake Elementary School library. Did story time and that sort of thing.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I was curious about the teachers at Clear Lake City Elementary. Were they primarily wives of people who worked at NASA? Do you recall? It seems like so many people have those ties.

Richard D. Burghduff: I don’t remember wives. Clear Creek School District is pretty big.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, it was well established in League City and that area. I don’t remember.

Richard D. Burghduff: Can’t think of any.

Betty K. Burghduff: They had some really good teachers.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: What did you guys think of the educational system when you got here? Were you happy with it? Was it comparable to what you had in Virginia?

Betty K. Burghduff: It was better. John just went to one year of school in Virginia, but the school system here was more advanced. I think coming from educated parents, it was a different level of what they expected from schools.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You mentioned you went to the House of Prayer, because Dick, you’re Lutheran, or you were Lutheran, now you’re Methodist. What attracted you to the church besides the fact that you were Lutheran?

Richard D. Burghduff: It was only one block away from the house.

Betty K. Burghduff: At that time the ministers would come to your home and visit with you. It was different than now.

Richard D. Burghduff: The minister lived one block away.

Betty K. Burghduff: One block over, yes. They were a pretty close community.

Richard D. Burghduff: Of course a large percentage of the people in the church were—

Betty K. Burghduff: From somewhere else.

Richard D. Burghduff: Came from somewhere else and were with the same program we were with. That helped.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: What attracted you to the Clear Lake United Methodist Church?

Betty K. Burghduff: The Lutheran church was having some serious problems with leadership, and we kept hearing our neighbors behind us and next door, that there was a good youth program here. We thought this was where we wanted to bring our family, because of the children’s programs and youth program.

Richard D. Burghduff: The Lutheran church, that particular church, was struggling at that point. Its minister had walked off, so they had some problems.

Betty K. Burghduff: We don’t need to get into that.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: It’s fine.

Richard D. Burghduff: The new church gave us a new start, and gave her a library to start.

Betty K. Burghduff: We got really involved. He ran the sound system and [became] head usher and that sort of thing.

Richard D. Burghduff: Head usher and all that. That’s gone on for a long time.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I wonder if you can talk about how the space program, Apollo, NASA, what have you impacted the churches, in what ways.

Betty K. Burghduff: Churches wouldn’t be here without it. The whole foundation is NASA people I think. We’ve gotten, of course, diversified over the years. I think the soul if you will of the church was NASA.

Richard D. Burghduff: That brought a whole flock of pretty highly educated folks in. It’s not a country church. It’s a fairly highly educated church.

Betty K. Burghduff: [Higher] expectations too.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Can you expand on what you mean by that, Dick? Having these highly educated folks come in. What impact does that have on the church compared to more of a rural [church].

Richard D. Burghduff: I think they probably question the church, make the church explain things better. Like the group that was meeting over here, they get together. There’s a lot of ex-NASA people there. They had a common core. They travel periodically to different places together, more fellowship. That was something that a lot of people had in common.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: There were a lot of joyous times in the ’60s, a lot of firsts for the space program: first rendezvous, docking, first lunar landing. I wonder if you would talk about the role the churches played in some of those events, if anything really stands out to you in terms of how things might have been celebrated or just captured within the church.

Richard D. Burghduff: I think we showed you the memorabilia we had out here the last time. I think the church is so different now because it’s so broad. Way back then almost everyone was part of NASA or a contractor. It was like a college fellowship type thing.

Betty K. Burghduff: When things went bad we also pulled together. When the accidents happened. We had one of the services here for one of the astronauts that died.

Richard D. Burghduff: That was an interesting one. I was head usher at the time and sound guy. We were planning how we were going to do this. NASA security came and they said that it’s going to be very difficult to control things, who’s coming and all that.

Betty K. Burghduff: Securitywise.

Richard D. Burghduff: We never thought of that.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Do you recall which event that was for?

Betty K. Burghduff: Mike. Gosh. Can’t think of his name now.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Was it from STS-107? Or was it Challenger? Mike [Michael J.] Smith?

Betty K. Burghduff: The first one.

Richard D. Burghduff: Challenger.

Betty K. Burghduff: Challenger, was it? Or was it the second one?

Richard D. Burghduff: I’m not too sure whether the astronaut that was being—

Betty K. Burghduff: Mike.

Richard D. Burghduff: —buried was actually from our church or we were just the biggest church in the area that had space.

Betty K. Burghduff: But his son was in MYF [Methodist Youth Fellowship] though. That’s what their connection was.

Richard D. Burghduff: That’s true. But they ended up canceling it anyway, didn’t they?

Betty K. Burghduff: We had a service for this guy, because I have a recording of it.

Richard D. Burghduff: Somehow they downplayed it so we wouldn’t have a flock of people.

Betty K. Burghduff: And the press, I can remember.

Richard D. Burghduff: Press was obnoxious sometimes.

Betty K. Burghduff: They’d find out that somebody in your church is—something’s happened. They just descend and they just really destroy privacy. We had a string of teen suicides in Clear Lake. A number of the funerals were here, and the press was awful.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: That was one of my questions for you, because you did have a couple of astronauts that were on pretty important missions. The first was Al [Alan L.] Bean, who was a charter member here. By then you both were members, I believe. I was wondering what was the media attention like. Do you remember the media coming to service or talking to members about Al Bean?

Betty K. Burghduff: Fred [W.] Haise. I don’t think we were that involved in the church yet. We were kind of not quite involved right away. Fred Haise was one of the early ones.

Richard D. Burghduff: I do not remember ever having a mob of photographer press in the church service. That might be one, if you talk to Hal Loden, he might know a little bit about that.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I was just curious. The church and the press, it doesn’t seem like it meshes very well.

Richard D. Burghduff: It does not.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: The sanctuary and things like that.

Betty K. Burghduff: Because when you’re having a funeral it should be a personal worship time and not flashbulbs.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Right, but I can almost see the media showing up. The Webster Presbyterian Church talked about how when they were having Lunar Communion, for instance, the media just showed up and they were there. I can’t imagine how distracting that must have been for the congregation, for that special moment, to have media there.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. Private moment.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I wanted to ask you about your memories of the Apollo 1 fire and the impact that it had on the community here.

Richard D. Burghduff: That was emotional.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. I think the engineers took it very personal, because they feel like what could we have done better. The same thing for the other two accidents too. It really hit hard. I remember we were in a staff meeting when the last accident happened. Benita Bridges called me and she said, “Something terrible has happened,” Roy Bridges’s wife. He was one of the astronauts. She worked with me in the library. It was very personal.

Richard D. Burghduff: The Cape [Kennedy, Florida], for the fire, we had a closed-door meeting, and they played the tapes of the sound of what was going on. It was horrible.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: That must have been. Did you help with the investigation?

Richard D. Burghduff: No. I think they knew what it was rather quickly, so it wasn’t anything that I had worked on, so no.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: What impact do you think it had on the community here in Clear Lake, this community that was so focused on Apollo and getting to the Moon?

Richard D. Burghduff: I think it was a wakeup call in a way because everything had been working along smoothly, and suddenly this happens, and I think it awakened people that that’s not particularly a safe job.

Betty K. Burghduff: On a human level, you get so involved in engineering, this kind of mindset, but then when you see it, it’s a human level, that someone has died. You realize the responsibility you have.

Richard D. Burghduff: Even like the other accidents that were caused by ice coming off of parts, causing damage, even though they weren’t anything you worked on or were responsible for, it was still devastating.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I can imagine. Like Betty said, being an engineer especially.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. “What if I’d done this? What if I’d done that?”

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Did you know the crew at all? Had you worked with [Roger B.] Chaffee or Gus [Virgil I. Grissom]?

Richard D. Burghduff: Yes. For a while there a group of the astronauts were surveying different places and different technologies, and I was involved with that. I would travel on a little company puddle jumper, and they would fly their jets in. We would visit whatever company it was. San Diego and LA and stuff like that.\n\n The astronauts would fly in their planes, and they’d come in with their jumpsuits on. They were like rock stars walking through the place, and we’d just sort of follow along. It was neat. When we decided to go to the glass cockpit where you put a CRT in front of them.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Those are beautiful.

Richard D. Burghduff: That wasn’t an easy thing to do because there was the people who didn’t like the term, were afraid that the press would be crazy enough to push where people would think it’s just glass, it’s going to break. I had a lot to do with getting that involved. I went to a congressional committee to get the money to change the cockpit. We eventually could not call it glass cockpit, and we came up with another name for it: multifunction electronic display subsystem.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Because that rolls off the tongue so much easier.

Richard D. Burghduff: That made the congressional committee happy, they didn’t like the other terms. The astronauts by then were flying jets that had them in there.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Right, they were used to them.

Richard D. Burghduff: They were used to them, and it sure did help.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: We have this interview from the ’60s with a guy from procurement, and he talks about how really there was space fever going on here in the city of Houston. How people wanted autographs from even him. He was a procurement guy. He showed up to some Halloween party, and somebody wanted an autograph from him. He was really embarrassed, because he’s not an astronaut. I wondered, did you ever encounter that, Dick? Were people enamored of you because you worked at NASA either here in Houston or wherever you were traveling?

Betty K. Burghduff: It’s interesting. When we travel, you talk around the dinner table. People are still impressed that you were with NASA and want to know all about it. I don’t think you ever had anybody—

Richard D. Burghduff: I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me for an autograph.

Betty K. Burghduff: But there’s a certain—

Richard D. Burghduff: There’s a lot of difference between an astronaut and an engineer, and astronauts, rightly so, they get all the publicity. I could see where you’d want to get something from them. But an engineer?

Betty K. Burghduff: I noticed the last couple trips we’ve taken, everybody shares what they do for a living, and they talk about NASA, then everybody’s very interested still. It’s good that people still believe in the mission.

Richard D. Burghduff: Even when I spent that three months in Germany, the hotel people were interested. There were five or seven of us, and there was a lot of talking about things. They’d ask questions. We took trolleys from there to the plant we were at. They fed us lunch every day. Never had a lunch before where the employees were drinking beer out of kegs.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Not something you’d see here.

Richard D. Burghduff: I think there’s still some interest in that.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I think NASA evokes great memories, and people are amazed by what NASA accomplished.

Richard D. Burghduff: NASA seems to be heading into having private companies do stuff. They got many people launching things. I think it’s going to lose some of its allure.

Betty K. Burghduff: Glamour or whatever you want to call it.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Things are changing, that’s for sure.

Richard D. Burghduff: You can also probably make more money going to work for one of them.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, you’re not at the mercy of government.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Congress.

Richard D. Burghduff: One thing that I do remember very vividly was when I was ready to retire we went back down to KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida], and the people I’d worked with all this time arranged for us and our daughter and our granddaughter to go out to the launchpad and to drive up to it and walk underneath an [Orbiter] that was on the pad and look up.

Betty K. Burghduff: They won’t let you do that anymore.

Richard D. Burghduff: That probably wasn’t something they should have done back then. I always tell my older granddaughter that you’re one of the very few people who ever had a chance to see that.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: That’s very unique. I did want to ask about a couple more missions, one being Apollo 11. It’s one of those events. You remember where you were and what you were doing at the time. I wonder where you were and what your emotions were like at that point. You’d been working so hard on the Program.

Richard D. Burghduff: Emotions were high. Was I at Langley?

Betty K. Burghduff: No, we were here, because I remember sitting on the bed with the kids watching the Moon landing.

Richard D. Burghduff: I was probably at work then.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Oh, you were at work.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: What you don’t see often in the press, in Mission Evaluation [Room], the MER, where everyone sees, it’s on television, there’s another room in that building with all the equipment that the engineering people sit at consoles and look at data coming in. It’s a fairly good size room. I was back in there, and you were getting all the data which was then being fed to mission control. That was an exciting time period.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: But you didn’t have any visuals at that point. Betty at least was watching.

Richard D. Burghduff: Yes, she had television. We were looking at dials.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You think it was a little different experience, since you were just hearing what was happening?

Richard D. Burghduff: I think we were all pretty much the same excitement. We just couldn’t see much.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You see the images from the MOCR [Mission Operations Control Room] and you see the flag waving and the cigars. Was that happening in the back rooms as well?

Richard D. Burghduff: We did have a TV set in there. Most of the guys, and like I said I was engineering, and my job was I was in the Project Office, and make sure that they were all doing their jobs. Most people were looking at meters and dials and their equipment, make sure it was all working. But I’m sure that they all took sneak peeks at the television at the end of the room. I know I did.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: What did you think, Betty? What were your feelings?

Betty K. Burghduff: Awestruck, really, to think that they’d accomplished what they set out to do. Of course we all knew how hard it was to pull that off.

Richard D. Burghduff: I don’t think there’ll ever be another one like that. Even when we go back to the Moon, it’ll be exciting, but it won’t be the first.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Things have changed.

Betty K. Burghduff: We kind of take things more for granted. “Oh, go to the Moon, so what.”

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Exactly. We’ve been there.

Richard D. Burghduff: How much does it cost? That’s what they worry about. We could be putting that money to doing something else.

Betty K. Burghduff: Social things, yes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You mentioned you didn’t go to splashdown parties. Was there any sort of celebration? You mentioned the Astrodome that you guys went to for that event. Was that a NASA-sponsored event, or was that more city of Houston?

Betty K. Burghduff: I don’t know, it was kind of spontaneous.

Richard D. Burghduff: I think it was a Houston-sponsored event.

Betty K. Burghduff: I think it was Houston, yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: Spur-of-the-moment.

Betty K. Burghduff: Then they had a ticker-tape parade when they came home. I remember we took the kids, and we were in some store’s parking garage looking down on the ticker-tape parade. It was really something. I’ve got pictures of that somewhere.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: That’d be interesting.

Betty K. Burghduff: Our kids were—

Richard D. Burghduff: Pretty young.

Betty K. Burghduff: Pretty young, but they were very involved.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: What did your kids think about the landing? I was young when the Space Shuttle first launched, but I didn’t have all the context. I’m wondering since your kids had some context, Dad was working on it, what was their reaction? What was their feeling? Do you recall it being anything notable?

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, they were always very interested. Of course Joan works for NASA now. Our son, he’s a math professor at Lone Star College. He’s dean of math. Very scientifically minded kids, both of them.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You think working in Apollo and working for NASA had that sort of impact?

Richard D. Burghduff: They’ve been around technical stuff their whole lives.

Betty K. Burghduff: A STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math] student that they call them today. They didn’t have a name for it then. But they were very interested in math and physics and chemistry and that sort of thing.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Did the ministers ever have any sermons or anything focused on missions when you were going to church?

Betty K. Burghduff: Oh yes. Our current minister is enamored with the space program.

Richard D. Burghduff: He is. He’s a space nut. He keeps giving me big books on space that he buys and leaves.

Betty K. Burghduff: He’s been to launches as well. I think all the ministers have had an admiration for the program and a spiritual support, because we went to a couple of launches at the Cape. I don’t know if they still do or not, but they used to have a prayer breakfast day before launch. Of course the astronaut was not there, but their families were. There was a spiritual need I think, because of the possible danger. The whole family [was] involved, [because] they might not come home.

Richard D. Burghduff: Our present minister has gone down to several launches.

Betty K. Burghduff: Buddy Miller, we went, he did the prayer service for that. Almost every minister has appreciated what the program is about on a human level.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: It’s not just rockets; it’s human beings flying up there.

Betty K. Burghduff: Right, and their families. If something happens, their families need spiritual support.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I wondered about that. Do you know if the church was providing some sort of support to Al Bean’s family or Fred Haise’s family? I know you said you weren’t as involved then. But is that something that you recall? The church calling for [help]?

Richard D. Burghduff: I would be surprised if it wasn’t.

Betty K. Burghduff: Right. I think I have in some of the newsletters prayers during a flight for different astronauts. Not necessarily if they were members here either, but for everyone that’s involved.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I find that interesting. It’s almost like how NASA has made its mark on the churches. Even though you’re not a member, you’re still vitally important to us.

Betty K. Burghduff: Right.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You showed me last time I was here the banner that’s in your sanctuary, which by the way I shared with Amy [Sue Bean] and Sue [Bean] because I wanted to make sure when I have a chance to talk with Sue that we could talk about it, because I thought that’s so interesting, and obviously share the information with you.\n\n Were you here when they brought that to the church? Do you have any memories of that moment? Was that a big deal?

Betty K. Burghduff: I don’t remember that.

Richard D. Burghduff: I don’t remember whether there was a service that did anything.

Betty K. Burghduff: Ceremony or anything like that.

Richard D. Burghduff: I remember they were installing the case so people couldn’t easily get in and steal it.

Betty K. Burghduff: Maybe Hal Loden would remember that. I don’t know.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I also sent them the photo because I really want to ask them about that, because it’s so unique, such a unique part of your history, and the relationship and ties between the astronauts and church and NASA.

Richard D. Burghduff: I don’t know that we do a very good job of letting new members that are joining even know that it’s there, which is probably something we may want to discuss with the ministers someday.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: It’s a beautiful piece. It’s very unusual. We don’t have any astronauts that go to my church. Did you guys ever enjoy the lake when you were here initially? Clear Lake. I’ve heard a lot of people say they went boating or did waterskiing.

Richard D. Burghduff: We did not do that.

Betty K. Burghduff: We didn’t. Our next-door neighbor had a boat. They took us fishing.

Richard D. Burghduff: He took us fishing a few times.

Betty K. Burghduff: He was a NASA guy too.

Richard D. Burghduff: I forgot about that. Otherwise no.

Betty K. Burghduff: Not really.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You mentioned going to launches. Did you ever see any Apollo, or were those Shuttle launches that you went to down at the Cape?

Betty K. Burghduff: Gosh, we went several times. I don’t remember which ones.

Richard D. Burghduff: They’re probably all Shuttle. I don’t remember if we—we went a lot of times, because one time our kids were only—well, that’s when we were stationed at Langley.

Betty K. Burghduff: That was prior to the fire. That was before Apollo.

Richard D. Burghduff: We went down. That was before Apollo. That was before Gemini.

Betty K. Burghduff: We went to several Shuttle launches.

Richard D. Burghduff: A couple of them I was working. I thought we went once or twice just for fun too.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, that’s when we took our granddaughter with us.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: When she got to walk underneath the Orbiter—that’s a unique treat. You mentioned coming down here in your Rambler. Did you only have one car initially?

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You ended up buying a second.

Betty K. Burghduff: It was a long time. I really didn’t drive much till we lived here.

Richard D. Burghduff: Everything was right here.

Betty K. Burghduff: That Rambler was fun.

Richard D. Burghduff: They’d be in trouble with the law now because the kids used to sleep in the back. There’s no straps to hold them in back there.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Would you take Dick to work then so you would have the car during the day?

Betty K. Burghduff: I didn’t need a car then. We were just home most of the time. It wasn’t till the kids started junior high and high school that I would need a car much.

Richard D. Burghduff: I used to bike to work once in a while and that gave you a car, but we never had too many things that weren’t right in the neighborhood.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You would just walk over to the grocery store you mentioned and Woolworth’s?

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. Rec center.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I guess things weren’t that far from your house. I actually went and drove down. After I talked with Joan I went and drove down the street. I wanted to see exactly where Redway was. You were very close. You were almost behind the elementary school. It’s pretty close.

Richard D. Burghduff: Across the golf course.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. They walked to school.

Richard D. Burghduff: Nowadays it’s hardly safe to walk to school.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You had air-conditioning in your car, right? I’ve heard stories from people saying they didn’t have air-conditioning.

Betty K. Burghduff: No. That Rambler didn’t have it. No. We traveled to California a couple times when he went there for work. Across the desert in that, no air-conditioning was tough.

Richard D. Burghduff: It was tough. She would leave at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning to try to beat the heat.

Betty K. Burghduff: Drive at night. Yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: It wouldn’t even work, it was too hot.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Doesn’t cool off.

Richard D. Burghduff: Wind was the only—

Betty K. Burghduff: Our next car had air-conditioning.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: That was at the top of the list, right?

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I wanted to ask you, because NASA is such a mission-focused Agency, what sort of impact you think Apollo had on the families itself, the mission to go to the Moon.

Richard D. Burghduff: Did it train us to be mission-oriented? Maybe that’s what we were before.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Maybe it didn’t.

Betty K. Burghduff: Engineers and their families are very goal-oriented, I think. I think it was just taken for granted that it was going to happen. We can do it.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Did you ever feel like you had to make any sacrifice for the Apollo Program?

Betty K. Burghduff: No, I was proud to be part of it in a secondary way.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Do you think your kids had to make any sacrifices for the Program?

Betty K. Burghduff: No, I don’t think so.

Richard D. Burghduff: It left you with the kids when I was traveling.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, but that was okay. That’s when I started to drive, when he started to travel.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You kind of need a car at some point.

Betty K. Burghduff: We’d take him to the airport and pick him up. It was a big deal. The kids got to see the airplanes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Were you going up to what is [William P.] Hobby [Airport] now? Or were you going up to the new airport?

Betty K. Burghduff: We used to go just up here to Ellington [Field, Houston, Texas] and catch the shuttle.

Richard D. Burghduff: Shuttle from Ellington up to the new airport, so that wasn’t much of a trip from us. That was pretty convenient.

Betty K. Burghduff: Once in a while we went to the big [airport].

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Did you ever go out to Ellington—I don’t know if they did this for Apollo, but for Shuttle they used to have the sort of meet the crew when they came back. Did you go out to Ellington at all for any of those type of events?

Betty K. Burghduff: I think so.

Richard D. Burghduff: We went up there once when they had the Shuttle on top of the airplane that was going cross-country. They let the employees go up and walk through it.

Betty K. Burghduff: That was later, yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: That was later on.

Betty K. Burghduff: That’s Shuttle.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I just had a couple more questions. One of the things that I think, but I want to get your opinion on, is that I think this was a community that was unique. It wasn’t like any other, in the fact that you were all united behind one common goal. You don’t really see that today. We’re very fractured, very diverse, but you were all united behind this Apollo Program. I wonder if you agree with that, and if you would talk about that a little bit.

Richard D. Burghduff: I think that’s probably very true.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, I think so.

Richard D. Burghduff: It wasn’t something like working at Kmart, where you’d go to work and come back. It was something that was in your heart. I think it was like your child raising up or something.

Betty K. Burghduff: You were at the frontier of something no one else has done before, and it was of national importance I think. I can remember when Sputnik went overhead and people were panicking. The Russians, are they going to make that a military thing. Tell them your Sputnik story.

Richard D. Burghduff: Okay. I got drafted, and we ended up in—

Betty K. Burghduff: Fort Gordon.

Richard D. Burghduff: Yes. I was on the way to Korea. Korea finished. They sent me to signal school, and then ended up at Fort Gordon, Georgia. I don’t think it was a classified, but in the middle of the woods at Fort Gordon was a big transmitter/receiver station. They sent me to school, and my job was to maintain it.\n\n First night someone talked about the Russians got Sputnik up there. I turned it on and played around till I found a beep that was going over and called the company commander, the captain, and said, “I’m listening to Sputnik, do you want to hear them?” He was there just like that. He was all just really, “The Russians are coming.”

Betty K. Burghduff: They were worried. They were worried yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: I don’t know if I stayed overnight or not but he wanted to keep it going. The next day, I was in there, and suddenly this caravan of cars and trucks shows up, and there had to be more generals than I had ever seen in my life and high-ranking officers. There must have been 10 or 20 of them. They came wandering in there to listen to this horrible noise go over. It was sort of amazing. I never saw generals be panicky but they were panicky.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes. They were worried about what the Russians [were doing]—it was the middle of the Cold War.

Richard D. Burghduff: They were worried. Turned out to be just one step.

Betty K. Burghduff: I think that challenged this country to step up into the space program.

Richard D. Burghduff: For a specialist first class, that was sort of a shocking event.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I bet. You did a lot of saluting that day.

Richard D. Burghduff: It was sort of exciting.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Did both of you, at the time, have a sense of how unique the Clear Lake area was, having lived in Virginia and Wisconsin and other places before? Did it seem like a special place?

Betty K. Burghduff: It was, yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: It was like a college campus almost because everyone—not everyone, but the majority of the people were all doing the same thing. Driving a quarter of a mile over here to NASA.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, because other places we’d lived, you didn’t have that sense.

Richard D. Burghduff: We were at Langley, Virginia, and they’d been there a long time.

Betty K. Burghduff: But we were kind of thought of as transient in Virginia. It was not that sense of purpose.

Richard D. Burghduff: No, we were living in neighborhoods with very few people that had anything to do with Langley.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes, you didn’t assimilate; we were like Army brats. Here everyone was involved in the dream of the thing.

Richard D. Burghduff: Had a common goal, everyone.

Betty K. Burghduff: Nobody was of the old school.

Richard D. Burghduff: Yes, there was no history like Virginia has.

Betty K. Burghduff: Virginia had a lot of the feeling of the historical background. We lived close to Williamsburg. We were treated like Army transients.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Did you feel welcomed here when you got here?

Betty K. Burghduff: Oh yes, we were starting something new. The city of Houston was enthusiastic about it. They named the Astrodome and the Astros and the Rockets.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: How has the area changed since you guys moved here?

Betty K. Burghduff: Traffic.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I can imagine.

Richard D. Burghduff: They keep widening highways. Highway 3 was two lanes, one each direction. Traffic is worse. We didn’t have a shopping center across the street. Matter of fact, we had to go into town to do a lot of stuff. We had one store to go shopping.

Betty K. Burghduff: The Piggly Wiggly.

Richard D. Burghduff: Piggly Wiggly.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Always fun to say.

Richard D. Burghduff: Of course it’s so diverse now. I doubt that half the people in our building have ever worked for NASA.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I see that both of you have some notes. I don’t know if you want to review some of those. Dick, I think I might want to do a separate interview with you about your NASA career. It sounds like you did some really interesting things and reporting to Congress about the glass cockpit. I think that’d be interesting to capture some of that history.

Richard D. Burghduff: I got to be careful I don’t say names.

Betty K. Burghduff: Could be in trouble.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I don’t know if there’s some other things that you wanted to address or talk about.

Betty K. Burghduff: No, we just had written down some dates so we wouldn’t forget about it.

Richard D. Burghduff: I’d written down went to Langley in 1962, February.

Betty K. Burghduff: When he graduated from Marquette University [Milwaukee, Wisconsin], he was recruited to come to NASA, and we thought, “Wow, that’s really something!” We were very excited about that.

Richard D. Burghduff: We had a strange way to get there.

Betty K. Burghduff: But that’s okay.

Richard D. Burghduff: I took off a semester before.

Betty K. Burghduff: We got married in September and he—

Richard D. Burghduff: I took a semester off.

Betty K. Burghduff: I had graduated from college, he had not yet.

Richard D. Burghduff: As soon as the government found out I wasn’t—

Betty K. Burghduff: In school.

Richard D. Burghduff: —in school I got drafted.

Betty K. Burghduff: So he spent two years in the Army in between.

Richard D. Burghduff: They were going to send me to Korea. That stopped. We got married and I guess I got my little draft notice within a month.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: They must have tracked me.

After a couple years in the service we had two kids.

Betty K. Burghduff: One.

Richard D. Burghduff: We had one at the time. I couldn’t afford to go to school, so I went to work. I worked days and went to school nights at Marquette. To finish that last semester I needed to finish took me—

Betty K. Burghduff: Three years.

Richard D. Burghduff: —three years. Because I could only take a couple courses at a time at night. The Jesuits teach at Marquette, and I had to take certain courses to have their viewpoint. I spent a lot of time there. When the Langley guy came to interview me, it was one of those typical Wisconsin winters where it never got above zero, and he was dying in the cold. He offered a job at NASA, and I grabbed it.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I did see one other question that I don’t think we asked about. You mentioned in your piece about the women’s service committee. The men used to come home for lunch. Did you come home for lunch? Or did you eat there?

Richard D. Burghduff: I think I carried a brown bag most of my career, huh? I don’t remember coming home for lunch.

Betty K. Burghduff: No.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: There was a statement about how the women decided in ’67, because the guys would come to the lunch.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: There were too many of them.

Betty K. Burghduff: That’s true.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I was curious if Dick had been told, “No, you can’t come.” I thought that was an interesting little story, little anecdote.

Betty K. Burghduff: We used to have—remember we had luncheons? Then they said, “No more husbands. This is a women’s group.”

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I guess we didn’t talk about Apollo 8. I don’t know if there’s anything else that you would like to say about another mission, but that was a really important mission.

Betty K. Burghduff: I don’t know. We followed all of them.

Richard D. Burghduff: Usually once one mission is flying, engineering is following that very carefully. The other part of engineering is working on the next mission that’s coming. Adding the glass cockpit took a couple years of activity, that was pretty intense, and a lot of travel. Going to Germany was sort of fun.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I’ll let you guys look at your notes, but I think I asked all my questions.

Richard D. Burghduff: I think this has the Marquette part in it. Seems like life moves you along rapidly.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: The older I get, the quicker time seems to pass. I just remember being young, and it didn’t pass that way.

Richard D. Burghduff: One interesting about being at Langley, where we lived, Langley has huge wind tunnels that did airplane type stuff earlier. When those things went off, the whole neighborhood rumbled. The first time we heard that I guess we thought we were having an earthquake.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Probably woke everybody up.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: I don’t have anything else.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. This gives me some more information.

Betty K. Burghduff: I hope it was helpful.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Yes.

Richard D. Burghduff: It triggered a lot of memories we had put off aside.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I bet.

Betty K. Burghduff: It’s a good thing to stop and think about it for a while before we get any older.

Richard D. Burghduff: When we can’t remember anything.

Betty K. Burghduff: When you think about our kids are now 58 and 60, oh my goodness, how did that happen?

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: I understand. Thank you so much.

Betty K. Burghduff: Our granddaughters have a lot of respect for the space program. It’s going into a third generation.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: It’s great that Houston became your home and you made it your own, your place.

Richard D. Burghduff: No more Wisconsin winters.

Betty K. Burghduff: No. We don’t have any family left.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: You’re officially Texans now.

Betty K. Burghduff: Yes.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal: Thank you so much.

Betty K. Burghduff: You’re welcome.