Apollo: The Race To The Moon

by Catherine Bly Cox

“Boy, you can think you’re the smartest sonofabitch anybody ever saw, but there’s so many events that occur that can affect one’s performance or one’s role in life. You still can’t stop people from stuffing rags in pipes and things like that, all of which make somebody look dumb in retrospect. The obvious question is ‘Jesus, why didn’t you guys see that?’” That is the question Shea refused to quit asking of himself. For years after, as he neared the top of one of the nation’s largest high-tech corporations, he kept the photograph that the crew of Apollo 1 had given him displayed prominently near the front entrance of his house. Shea would not let himself so much as enter or leave his own home without passing by the inscription: “It isn’t that we don’t trust you, Joe, but this time we’ve decided to go over your head.”