Motivating Factors in My Life

Martha Lemasters spent almost ten years working as a PR writer at Cape Kennedy as a 
member of IBM’s team on NASA’s Apollo Program. Those years saw remarkable success in seven Apollo launches and six moon landings. Lemasters worked her way up the ladder from secretary to a respected writer and managed to find her own happiness along the way.

One of the pivotal moments in my life, one that defined my future, came with a put-down from my husband at the time.

Go back with me to the 60’s…I was essentially raising our three children on my own. He was a missile engineer, working tremendous hours, sometimes through weekends and into the night.

He might be solving the problems of our space program but nothing was getting resolved at home. He lapses into spells and doesn’t speak to me for weeks. I notice perfume smells on his shirts. I suspect he’s having an affair but really don’t care any more. Our sex life is nil. He has killed any love I had for him.

If I go grocery shopping and exceed the amount of his check, I have to take out objects at the counter. I am not allowed to be a co-signer on his checking account. I feel like a prisoner—one who is totally neglected.
Now that my three daughters are all in school I desperately want to get a job. At breakfast one Saturday I express my desire to go back to work.

He explodes, “What can you do? You can’t make enough money to buy your own Tampax!”
That’s all the motivation I needed!

I took those words and wore them like a shield. I wasn’t going to cave in to his evaluation of what I could do. I believed in me!
By the early part of the Apollo Program I was a divorced mother of three daughters. I did get a job. First as a Kelly Girl working as a temp typist for IBM, who was responsible for the Instrument Unit, the brains of the massive Saturn V. I finally was part of the Apollo Launch Support Team at Kennedy Space Center.

IBM was so impressed with my work they bought out my contract and I started in the tech area typing procedures and manuals. Later I was assigned as secretary to the Marketing Communications department, responsible for all in-house publications and news releases to the public.

What were we marketing? We were selling America on the concept of going to the moon and back. Each of the major contractors including, IBM, North American, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, put out detailed press releases on exactly what each contractor would do and how they were doing it.

There were many tests that ran before each launch and we all published articles about the people that were involved and how our segment of the great Apollo program would interact with the other stages and produce the expected results…a successful launch.

After years of working as a secretary I had my break when one of the writers called in sick (actually he had a hangover) and was unable to make his assignment to interview our test conductor. My manager asked me to cover, conduct the interview and write the story. I did so…and I was promoted to a writer shortly after that first story. I was elated, finally I would have my eternal quest to be a writer realized.
As months unfolded I learned more about writing from Ellie Bradley, a former writer for the Washington Post, who took me under her wing and provided my own personal masters degree.

The most important item I had to write was the IBM Launch Countdown Procedure. It’s a fixed format; with all the same sequences beginning seven days before launch until T-0, through liftoff and up until the Instrument Unit ceases operation and is jettisoned either into the ocean or on the moon’s surface.

I provided the new timelines as well as comments by the test conductors. I edit it and make it current. Once printed it will be 100 pages thick. It will be the bible for all IBM launch and executive personnel.

I always made my deadlines. I was dependable, dedicated, driven…something that can be said about everyone who worked at Cape Kennedy on the Apollo Program.

My deadlines included a daily one-page edition of the IBM Cape Kennedy News, an employee information vehicle. On Fridays, I put out the 4-6-page edition. I wrote press releases on every aspect of IBM’s activities. I wrote speeches for management and ghost wrote articles for some of the engineers and executives.

In addition I put together slide shows and represented IBM at the Cape Kennedy Public Relations Association meetings. I also gave tours to the visiting high-level IBMers and their guests. But, as I see it my most important job is to write about the people, the engineers, analysts, programmers and technicians, who were doing things that have never been done before.

I’m one of those people who believe that the Apollo team achieved the most difficult challenge of all mankind to date: six times our astronauts stepped on the moon…a feat that has never been equaled to date.

Over the almost 10 years that I worked on the Apollo Program, I grew as a mother and as a writer. I progressed on the dating scene too. And yes, I made mistakes, but mistakes aren’t life sentences, they’re life lessons. I learned from my mistakes and I didn’t beat myself up about failures either. I went through heartaches, disappointments, challenges, but I was always brought back to that day when my husband said, “What can you do? You can’t make enough money to buy your own Tampax.”

What can I do? I’ll show you what I can do? I can be a great mother, achieve my goal of being a writer…lead a great social life and make my own happiness…and even write a book about it all. That’s what I can do!

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Tags: featured, memoir, the step, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing