Interviewer(s): Rebecca Wright, Sandra Johnson
Interviewee(s): Cecil G. Dome, Mary Dome

Rebecca Wright: Today is February 19, 2015. This oral history session is being conducted with Cecil Dome at his home in Bakersfield, California, as part of the NACA [National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics] Oral History Project sponsored by the NASA Headquarters History Office. Interviewers are Rebecca Wright and Sandra Johnson. We thank you again for allowing us to come in your home and have this opportunity to visit with you. I’d like to start if you’d share with us how you first became involved with NACA, and what you knew about it when you joined.

Cecil G. Dome: When I was going to Northrop Aeronautical Institute, they came recruiting. They hired me and I stayed there for 32 years I guess.

Rebecca Wright: Where was the Northrop Institute? Where was that located?

Cecil G. Dome: Hawthorne.

Rebecca Wright: California?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: How old were you when you were there?

Cecil G. Dome: Probably 24.

Rebecca Wright: You spent some time in the—what branch of the service were you in?

Cecil G. Dome: Army.

Rebecca Wright: You went to the institute, and what were your plans at the institute? What were you there for? What kind of training?

Cecil G. Dome: I got an FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] A&E [aircraft maintenance technician] certificate to maintain aircraft and release them for flight.

Rebecca Wright: Did you complete your training at the Institute before you came out here?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: Are you originally from California?

Cecil G. Dome: Kansas.

Rebecca Wright: Well, yes, that’s a little ways away. Well, it was nice that you were able to be at the right place at the right time.

Cecil G. Dome: Well, I came out here to go to school.

Rebecca Wright: What year was it that you were part of that?

Cecil G. Dome: 1951.

Mary Dome: The Army, the veterans training after he got out of the service helped many many men his age go to school.

Cecil G. Dome: The GI Bill [Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944].

Rebecca Wright: That’s wonderful.

Mary Dome: We went on the GI Bill.

Rebecca Wright: You were married at the time?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: So NACA sent a recruiter down to the Northrop Institute?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: Then you moved where? Did you come out to Lancaster or Palmdale [California]?

Cecil G. Dome: Mojave [California].

Mary Dome: Mojave, it was the only place we had to live. The deactivated Marine barracks is what we lived in.

Rebecca Wright: That was cozy, I’m sure.

Mary Dome: You had to sweep the sand out of the tub. And we had a barrel of oil in front of the kitchen window; that was how we heated and cooked.

Cecil G. Dome: Heating oil.

Rebecca Wright: Yes, you were camping before you knew that. You were pioneers. Tell us about the first days of working out at the base. What did they have you do?

Cecil G. Dome: The first day probably mostly orientation, to show you what kind of work they did and what they expected you to do, which helped get started.

Rebecca Wright: What kind of planes were in the hangars when you arrived?

Cecil G. Dome: X models, [Bell] X-1, X-2, X-3, X-4, X-5. And the [North American] X-15.

Mary Dome: Well, that [the X-15] would have been some years later, honey.

Rebecca Wright: It must have been quite a sight to see planes that you had never seen before.

Cecil G. Dome: It was, yes. That’s probably why I stayed. It looked very interesting.

Mary Dome: He was flying before he came out here, but he wasn’t a pilot out here.

Rebecca Wright: Flying your own plane?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Mary Dome: In Kansas.

Cecil G. Dome: That was before I was married. After that I couldn’t afford to do that anymore.

Rebecca Wright: Yes, those planes, it’s an expensive hobby, isn’t it? Those days that you went up, what did you have to bring when you went to work there? Did you have to bring your own tools as part of your job? Or did they supply tools and training for those planes?

Cecil G. Dome: We had to furnish our own hand-tools, but lots of test equipment was furnished, and had to learn how to use that.

Rebecca Wright: Who taught you how to do that? The people who had been working on it for a while, the team that was already there? Did they train you how to work on the test equipment?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes. It would have been very hard to go to work with not knowing anything about it, but all the people that were there were very helpful and showed you everything.

Rebecca Wright: Were some of the men that were there, were they from Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia]?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes. That was original, actually, when I hired in, the papers and everything I hired in were from Langley.

Rebecca Wright: Do you remember the title? What was your first assignment or your first title when you walked into NACA?

Cecil G. Dome: I guess I was a mechanic originally.

Rebecca Wright: Tell us about maybe the first plane and the first flight that you worked on or even witnessed out there, or one that’s memorable to you.

Cecil G. Dome: Probably the first plane I worked on was the X-4. If we were at [my home in] Tehachapi [California] I could show you pictures of all of them, but I don’t have them here.

Rebecca Wright: Were they all different?

Cecil G. Dome: Oh yes. They built three of each X model usually and usually one of them crashed.

Rebecca Wright: Did you witness that as well? Did you see some of the crashes?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: How did that impact the workforce, the people who worked on those planes? How were you able to start again the next day and keep working?

Cecil G. Dome: Well, you had to, even though the pilot got killed, you had to keep going and do it again.

Rebecca Wright: As a mechanic did you have a lot of input if you saw something wrong with the plane?

Cecil G. Dome: Oh yes. As a mechanic inspection was part of your job too. You checked each other’s work to make sure your fellow hadn’t messed something up.

Mary Dome: Because he went from a mechanic to an inspector, and then to Chief of Inspection. He was in the office then after a while. He went to school, and they sent him to school. He was quality control, but he had retired.

Rebecca Wright: What were some of the changes? You worked on the X planes and then the X-15. Tell us about changing your role from a mechanic then to one that was in charge of the inspections. That was a lot of responsibility to make sure that those planes were ready to fly.

Cecil G. Dome: As you gained experience you were more qualified to do those things.

Rebecca Wright: Did you know a lot about when they would make the changes like from the early X planes to the X-15, and then they went to the Lifting Bodies? Were you involved in those discussions about the designs of the planes?

Cecil G. Dome: Oh yes. We were involved in the design of a lot of new—had to put new input in the designs, see if we could approve of what they were doing, and not make mistakes, and try to keep them from making mistakes.

Rebecca Wright: I guess sometimes ideas look good on paper but they don’t fly very well, do they?

Cecil G. Dome: Right.

Mary Dome: He had to keep them straightened out from the Engineering Department. They didn’t like that sometimes.

Rebecca Wright: I’m sure there were some planes that never got off the ground? Were there some of those too?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: You went from the X planes, and you went to those Lifting Bodies. What were your thoughts when you first saw some of the designs for that type of a structure?

Cecil G. Dome: A Lifting Body didn’t have any wings, the lift came from the bottom of the fuselage. They flew pretty good, it was a good reentry vehicle for reentering the atmosphere from flying in space.

Mary Dome: I think one of the really interesting things is when they started, the way they checked the motors, the only way was to put their ear right against the motor. That’s the reason why he is deaf almost. That’s how they checked to make sure that it was going to fly.

Rebecca Wright: Can you tell me a little more about that? What were you listening for when you would put your ear down by the motor?

Cecil G. Dome: Any bearings and things that were making noise. Some of the pictures they have of us checking airplanes, everybody was around, and the only ear protection we had was this.

Rebecca Wright: Put your fingers in your ears? That didn’t help much, did it?

Cecil G. Dome: Not much. So all of us ended up deaf.

Rebecca Wright: I find that so interesting, because the only way that you knew that it sounded correctly was constantly being around the correct sound.

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: When you identified that there was something not correct, how did you tell someone?

Cecil G. Dome: We’d wave at the coordinator up in front, and he’d shut it down. Then we’d go look and see if we could find out what the problem was. Usually we could.

Rebecca Wright: That’s a lot of teamwork that they trusted you to—and hopefully that you knew what you were talking about or hearing. Are there any other tricks that you had that you knew, like when you heard the bearings not being right, or the engine not sounding right? Is there anything else that you taught the next group of people to listen for?

Cecil G. Dome: Sometimes when we had an engine problem, we’d get the factory people back down there to work on it, and tell them what was going wrong. They’d work on it, and finally figure out a fix.

Rebecca Wright: You worked closely with North American or McDonnell Douglas?

Cecil G. Dome: Northrop, North American, Rockwell.

Rebecca Wright: Did you ever have an opportunity to go work for any of those companies?

Cecil G. Dome: I could have but I didn’t go.

Rebecca Wright: Why did you decide to stay with NASA?

Cecil G. Dome: I liked working there, and the variety of projects we had. If you went for a company you were just working on one item usually.

Rebecca Wright: Did you have a lot of projects like three or four? Or were there different projects in different stages all the time when you were there?

Cecil G. Dome: There were three or four projects going on at the same time, three or four different airplanes at different stages of testing.

Rebecca Wright: In ’57, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik [satellite], it started a change in America’s culture, and NASA was then formed. Do you remember much about the transition, or was there a big transition there when all of that began to happen?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes, I remember I was working night shift, and we’d go outside and watch it fly over.

Rebecca Wright: You had a good view out there, didn’t you? Were there any changes after NACA transitioned into NASA that affected your job? Or was it just a badge and a patch change?

Cecil G. Dome: We had developed a Moon landing system for the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle [LLRV], which was developed to test a landing vehicle for the Moon.

Rebecca Wright: What kind of work did you do with that research vehicle? Did you help with the design or inspecting for the safety?

Cecil G. Dome: Mostly safety work.

Rebecca Wright: It’s a very treacherous vehicle, isn’t it?

Cecil G. Dome: Things could happen.

Rebecca Wright: At any time. But the accidents were minimum, if I remember, is that correct?

Cecil G. Dome: Not many accidents.

Mary Dome: There’s one other little thing. This is just an aside, but during the Russian thing he came home with a book, what I was supposed to do should we get hit. He told me, “You take the children and go straight to the Borax Mine, because at the Borax Mine out next to Edwards [Air Force Base] they had underground place for all the employees’ families to go in case of a Russian attack. And I think in Tehachapi we still have the little booklet of what we should do, and what we should have on hand, the wives, to go quickly. Heck, we were an hour away, and I had five little kids. It would have been something for me to get them all out there.

Rebecca Wright: Yes, just getting them in the car. I’m sure you had them trained by then, but that’s that hidden fear at that time of knowing what to do.

Mary Dome: Oh, it was, it was very real.

Rebecca Wright: Then years later, with the race to the Moon, you were part of that, by helping with that LLRV.

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: Were you part of watching when the pilots would take it out and try it and experiment with it?

Cecil G. Dome: Oh yes. Buckled them up in the seats.

Rebecca Wright: How long did the test take, was it different than the other airplanes?

Cecil G. Dome: Different. One of the airplanes we had would only fly about 15 minutes and come back and refuel and go again and go full speed and it wouldn’t take long for them to burn up all their fuel, so they had to come right back.

Rebecca Wright: Did you inspect it each time it was back on the ground?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: Did you make modifications or take notes? Or what were you doing when it came back down?

Cecil G. Dome: Check it for any leaks, or see if it had been damaged from heat. They get hot from flying fast through the atmosphere. Makes them very hot. In fact one of our X-15s they added fuel tanks and got it going too fast and burned part of the controls off. It was made out of Inconel X [alloy], not aluminum. It got hot.

Rebecca Wright: I guess that was an experiment in itself, wasn’t it?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: The pilots had suits, did you have any protective gear or any special equipment you put on when you were inspecting those?

Cecil G. Dome: It depended on the type of fuel they were using. Some of the fuel was very toxic, so we had to use pressurized suits with breathing apparatus. That wasn’t very comfortable.

Rebecca Wright: No, but I guess it was better than breathing in dangerous fumes. Did you have a large team that you worked with when you would be working with these planes on the ground? How many people did you work with that were the ground crew?

Cecil G. Dome: Oh, probably 15.

Rebecca Wright: All men? They were all men?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes. At that time. There’s some women now.

Rebecca Wright: After the Apollo Program closed down, the [Space] Shuttle Program was moving its way through its development. What role did you play, or how were you involved with that at all?

Cecil G. Dome: We did some testing on the Shuttle, mostly reentering into the atmosphere.

Rebecca Wright: Those Lifting Bodies worked again, didn’t they?

Mary Dome: Were you quality control then, honey?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: We just mentioned about more women being involved now out at the base and at the Station. Once NASA started moving toward finding a way to the Moon, were there more people that were joining out there?

Cecil G. Dome: Oh yes. It was an interesting program. A lot of people wanted to come to work there, so they had a good pick of experience there to hire from.

Rebecca Wright: What types of training programs did you go through after you got there? Did they send you to learn more about anything in specific, as you were moving your way up through your career?

Cecil G. Dome: Usually when we got some new equipment, new projects, they usually had people right on base that took us through the training for it, and operating it.

Mary Dome: You went back to the University of Kansas, they sent you back east for several things. Do you remember that, honey? They sent you back east to train, and you went to KU to train.

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Mary Dome: There were a number of things that you went back east for.

Rebecca Wright: Were those for management type classes?

Mary Dome: Well, at KU, it was to teach. At different universities, they were teaching people to come to work out here or interest them. I think that’s what he did at KU. He’ll know if he thinks about it for a minute.

Sandra Johnson: What time period was that?

Mary Dome: It was when you were in quality control, wasn’t it? It was when the Space Shuttle was starting? Because he was there through the second Space Shuttle landing. I’m sorry dear, did I confuse you?

Rebecca Wright: That’s okay. We’ve got time to sort it out. There was a lot going on all the time, wasn’t it?

Cecil G. Dome: Oh yes.

Rebecca Wright: I think sometimes we forget that just because a plane is flying, there’s two or three more that are being designed and looked at.

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: Do you have a favorite memory or a favorite time that you were working out there that you’d like to share with us?

Cecil G. Dome: Probably my favorite project was the X-15 Project. It was new and it was faster and lots of new things.

Rebecca Wright: Did it ever scare you being around that plane? It was a powerful piece of equipment.

Cecil G. Dome: Yes, it was noisy.

Mary Dome: I don’t think he was ever scared. He loved that job.

Rebecca Wright: Did you get to fly in any of the planes?

Cecil G. Dome: In the early days, when we had [Boeing] B-29s [Superfortress] launching our rockets, X-1s and X-2s, I flew in the backseat of the B-29 sometimes watched them launch.

Rebecca Wright: That is a very unique perspective, wasn’t it? Were you able to learn anything to apply to the next time? Or was it just for observation to watch it?

Cecil G. Dome: Mostly for observation, make sure the engine was performing before they launched and there weren’t any big leaks or anything like that.

Rebecca Wright: Were you back in time for the landing to see it land?

Cecil G. Dome: Oh yes.

Rebecca Wright: Did you travel much for your job?

Cecil G. Dome: Not very much.

Rebecca Wright: Was that a good thing? With five kids, I’m sure it was helpful not to be on the road.

Mary Dome: In later years he traveled more. He was gone so much because they went in early. There were some times when they had a project going they worked 21 hours a day and they slept at Edwards in the hangar.

Rebecca Wright: Had to keep them going, didn’t you? I was going to ask Sandra if she had some other questions. I know she’s been taking some notes.

Sandra Johnson: Yes, I have a couple of questions. When they came and recruited you, when you were in school, for the NACA, how much did you know about what was being done with the NACA at that time?

Cecil G. Dome: I had barely heard about it. But it sounded very interesting from the recruiters.

Sandra Johnson: Did they explain some of the work?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Sandra Johnson: I know a lot of it was classified, so did you have to have secret clearance to work on the X planes and the X-15?

Cecil G. Dome: I had a secret clearance. I don’t remember when I got it.

Mary Dome: You got it right after you went to work, because back in Kansas, they were going around in the neighborhood—they thought he was in trouble—and checking on everything he had done and the service that he had been in, everything.

Sandra Johnson: Yes, I would imagine, since he was working on those early X planes.

Mary Dome: And they couldn’t imagine why he was getting [investigated].

Sandra Johnson: Yes, it made people wonder, didn’t it?

Mary Dome: Small town Kansas was very curious.

Sandra Johnson: What were the working conditions? Because when you started they were still at the South Base in the old section.

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Sandra Johnson: Then in 1954 is when they moved to the new buildings.

Cecil G. Dome: Right.

Sandra Johnson: How did those working conditions compare for what you were doing?

Cecil G. Dome: It happened so quickly that you couldn’t tell much difference really.

Sandra Johnson: You were in a hangar?

Cecil G. Dome: New hangar.

Sandra Johnson: Was it more convenient for you on that side of that base?

Cecil G. Dome: After things got arranged right, yes. Took a while to get everything set up, but it was a lot nicer. Had more room and could work inside the hangar in the hot summer days.

Sandra Johnson: Was it air-conditioned?

Cecil G. Dome: No.

Sandra Johnson: From what we’ve heard, the new building was air-conditioned, the main building.

Cecil G. Dome: The new one, yes. I think even some of the hangars are air-conditioned now.

Sandra Johnson: A lot different than when you were there, right?

Mary Dome: Freezing cold in the winter too.

Sandra Johnson: Especially in the early years there weren’t very many people on the base, and the numbers started growing. But one of the things that we’ve heard other people talk about is the social groups and the athletic groups that would get together and do things. Did either of you or both of you participate in any of the social events or any of those type of things?

Cecil G. Dome: We went to parties, didn’t we?

Mary Dome: Yes, but it was NACA, and we went even to NACA reunions afterwards. We went to nearly everything, but we didn’t belong to the baseball team. He was on the bowling team. WONASA was the Women of NASA. I was the historian for that. And then I passed it on to somebody else. I don’t have any of that material, it was passed on through. There were I don’t know how many of us. Not a whole lot when we started. But I was busy with five little ones.

Sandra Johnson: I could imagine you were. Do you remember when that was formed?

Mary Dome: Let’s see, well, it was right after it was NASA. Maybe a year afterwards. And then that included the mechanics’ wives then, and the engineering wives. That included all of them. As time went on, that sort of divided up. Then I wasn’t in it anymore.

Sandra Johnson: The NACA was more of a family and it was a different way of doing things. Then as the years went on in NASA, it changed things as far as the way people related.

Mary Dome: We went to the Halloween parties, the Christmas parties. We got a babysitter, and we went to all those things, and it was fun, and we dressed up. It was more family. Then also when it was first NASA, in the summertime they would have family picnics, and we would go someplace and the little ones all came. But it was family.

Sandra Johnson: Yes, that’s nice that it was.\n\n I was wondering about technology changes. You said you had to supply your own hand-tools when you first started. Then of course technology between ’51 and ’85 when you left, there were a lot of changes that happened and took place. Can you talk about that? Or was there anything specific that you can remember that really was different from the time you started to when you retired?

Cecil G. Dome: It happened so you really didn’t pay much attention to it. You just went with the flow.

Sandra Johnson: So whatever was available, that’s what you learned to use and work with?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: Would computers make a big difference, when the airplanes became more computerized?

Cecil G. Dome: Computers, yes. Everything is tested by computer now. We couldn’t fly airplanes without computers.

Sandra Johnson: And you worked through the second landing of the Shuttle? You worked through that?

Cecil G. Dome: I think I retired after that.

Mary Dome: After the second landing.

Sandra Johnson: Those first programs you worked on were somewhat secret, and people didn’t know that the X-15 was flying. Then when the Shuttle came along, all of a sudden you have a lot of people showing up, and people from the media, and people that just wanted to watch. How was that? That was quite a change for the people that were working out there, I would imagine.

Cecil G. Dome: Oh yes. Out at the base whenever a Shuttle landed there’d be cars up on the hill parked watching the landing.

Sandra Johnson: Did you go out and watch any of the landings too?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes. I watched them from the runway.

Sandra Johnson: Did your kids get to see them?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Sandra Johnson: I bet that was impressive for them.

Rebecca Wright: You could actually take them out and show them some of the work that you did.

Mary Dome: And grandchildren later. Prince Charles [Prince of Wales] from England came.

Sandra Johnson: That’s what I was going to ask, if there were any dignitaries that you remember coming out.

Mary Dome: Oh, many.

Cecil G. Dome: LBJ [President Lyndon B. Johnson] was there one time.

Sandra Johnson: Did you meet him?

Cecil G. Dome: He talked to us. I guess he shook everybody’s hand, he was a friendly guy.

Rebecca Wright: He was a hand shaker.

Sandra Johnson: You said Prince Charles came.

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Sandra Johnson: A lot of people showed up when things got exciting I guess.

Cecil G. Dome: Oh yes.

Rebecca Wright: You became I’m sure very close friends with your coworkers, but also were you close friends with the pilots of those planes that you maintained?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes.

Rebecca Wright: Did they talk to you sometimes about when they heard something with the plane?

Cecil G. Dome: Oh yes. After each flight landing we’d sit down by the airplane and they’d tell us what they experienced and what they thought we should look at.

Rebecca Wright: Did you teach them how to listen to different parts of the plane? Did pilots think that they were mechanics?

Cecil G. Dome: Well, most of them were really.

Rebecca Wright: Sometimes they have that personality where they know, but that’s good that you could talk in the same language, that you knew what they were looking for.

Sandra Johnson: You mentioned that the X-15, you enjoyed that program. Of all the planes that you worked on, which one would you say was your favorite? Would it be the X-15?

Cecil G. Dome: Yes. It was the most interesting.

Rebecca Wright: I guess the most ugly would be the LLRV. Was that the most ugly?

Cecil G. Dome: Like a bedframe.

Rebecca Wright: Yes, it has no personality, does it?

Cecil G. Dome: Made a lot of noise, and a lot of dirt.

Rebecca Wright: I understand the astronauts who used it said it was what helped them so much when they were landing, knowing that they had used that research vehicle.\n\n Were there some other thoughts that you might have that you can remember during his career that you’d like to share with us?

Mary Dome: Well, he went to college. Even after that he took evening classes and promoted himself on up, able to go on.

Rebecca Wright: Was that here? Was it close to the base?

Mary Dome: Lancaster Junior College. Back then I think they gave more, because there wasn’t a four year college there. He took a lot of math, and he took more electronics, because the classes were what he needed. And I think they were giving classes then that they knew they needed. He took advantage of everything he could.

Rebecca Wright: That’s great. And did you all stay in Mojave, or did you all move?

Mary Dome: The first—what do you call it?

Cecil G. Dome: Housing development.

Mary Dome: Housing development. We bought. We had to move out.

Cecil G. Dome: In Lancaster.

Mary Dome: It was a two-bedroom, one bath, and the air conditioning was a water cooler, and our house payments were $49 a month. We only paid $9,000 for that house. Later on we almost doubled the size. When he was on the night shift, he built the house. He’s very handy. He was very very handy with carpentry and everything. He built, adding on a huge family room, two more bedrooms, service porch and another bath. Believe me, with five children that was important. But when he’d be on the night shift, that’s what he would work on, and finally we got it. Then we moved to Tehachapi in 1972.\n\n We had a home built in Tehachapi. We have a really nice home in Tehachapi. But it’s so big, and this is so much easier to take care of. And we moved to Tehachapi actually because Antelope Valley, AV High [School], was getting so huge, and we wanted the two younger ones in a smaller high school. So we moved to Tehachapi, it was one of the best moves we ever made, because then we have here in Bakersfield a four-year college, and so they nearly all went through. The two older ones went to UC [University of California] Santa Barbara on scholarships.\n\n I worked for the state, for the Department of Motor Vehicles. Then when we moved to Tehachapi, after a while it was just too much, driving back and forth to Lancaster. Then I had the travel run to Mojave for a while. Then after that I went to work for the school district. I was the assistant librarian. We liked Tehachapi. We loved Tehachapi. But our doctors are all here.

Rebecca Wright: Yes, and that’s important.

Mary Dome: That’s why we’re here. We can go back and forth, which is really nice.

Rebecca Wright: It is nice, especially when you think about starting out where you did, sweeping dirt out of a bathtub. A lot of sand. Is there some other thoughts that you have about when you were working that you’d like to share with us?

Cecil G. Dome: I think that’s about all the important things I can think about.

Mary Dome: When he retired they wanted him to come back to work on a helicopter project. It was really a big thing at the time.

Cecil G. Dome: I had other things to do.

Mary Dome: He had other things to do. We started building houses and selling one a year. But he had had a bleeding ulcer, and he had a heart problem. That’s why he didn’t go back. But they even called me and asked me to try to talk him into coming back to work. Now, see, Charlie [Charles N.] Baker went back to work after he retired, and a lot of them did, like Terry [J.] Larson was an engineer. But Cecil didn’t. Probably why he’s 88 going on almost 89 now, is he retired when he did, because it was a very stressful job.

Sandra Johnson: I can imagine, and dangerous.

Mary Dome: And his heart problem has gone away, and he hasn’t had another ulcer surgery. He’s going on to 89 now.

Rebecca Wright: Enjoy some life.

Mary Dome: Oh, we did. We had a motor home, we traveled to Alaska, Canada, we traveled. After we got our kids educated.

Rebecca Wright: Couldn’t go as fast as that X-15, but you got there, didn’t you?

Mary Dome: We had a good life. Of course the people in Kansas, we were the only ones in California. They kept thinking we’d move home, we wouldn’t last three months. We’ve lasted 65 years. We’ve been married that long.

Rebecca Wright: Were you married when you came to California?

Mary Dome: Yes, we were.

Sandra Johnson: Did you have any kids at that time?

Mary Dome: No, no, we were newlyweds, we lived in student housing in San Pedro, California, and Torrance wasn’t very far. And I went to work for Pittsburgh Paint. I had been a legal secretary before we got married, and so I went to work for Pittsburgh Paint. And then in those days when you got pregnant you didn’t work anymore. They didn’t allow that. It wasn’t long until we had our first one and I had to quit.

Rebecca Wright: It’s interesting you started out in Hawthorne because that’s the home of SpaceX. I find that very interesting that you were there at the Northrop Institute in Hawthorne, and I believe it’s one of Northrop’s old buildings where SpaceX has its home.

Mary Dome: There were a number of people that went to school there that went to work for NACA or NASA.

Cecil G. Dome: It’s a big school now.

Mary Dome: Yes, Joe [Joseph D.] Huxman, he’s passed away now. They lived in Kansas, but they were our neighbors for 30 some years. There were a number of them that went to Northrop that went to work out there. They were all good people. My gosh, they were mostly Second World War [veterans].

Rebecca Wright: Looking for an opportunity, weren’t they?

Mary Dome: We were so glad to have a job. It was just some of the wives that came when we were living on the deactivated Marine base—and at that time, the wild burros just roamed between the barracks—and they cried. They didn’t like it. I was just so glad we had a job. I was so glad we had a job that he really liked. That’s very important for your husband to like his job. NACA and NASA was a good thing for us. Very very good thing.

Rebecca Wright: Well, we thank you for sharing those thoughts and memories with us this morning.

Cecil G. Dome: Yes, I hope it helped.

Rebecca Wright: It does. It’s always nice to get another perspective. Thank you.