Apollo: The Race To The Moon

by Catherine Bly Cox

In personal manner, Low was unassuming to the point of diffidence. Back in the late 1950s, Caldwell Johnson reminisced, when they were fabricating the first Mercury capsule in the Langley shops, they roped off the area immediately around the capsule so that visitors wouldn’t get in the way of the engineers and technicians. One day Johnson noticed that a fellow was right up next to the capsule, even running his hand over the metal shingles. Johnson went over and reprimanded him. “You know you’re supposed to stay behind the ropes, don’t you?” Johnson said belligerently. The man apologized and did as he was told. Johnson returned to his work. Another engineer came over and whispered to him. “You know who you were talking to?” Johnson didn’t. “That’s George Low!” Johnson looked over again, and he was still there, peering intently at the spacecraft—a young man with a kindly face, thin, a little stooped. He was NASA’s program manager for Manned Space Flight, and he was standing quietly behind the ropes. He never lost that quietness. Later, in the days when he ran ASPO, subordinates would sometimes call the Low home late in the evening for advice on some new problem, and they would hear a soft voice answer the phone. “May I speak to your father?” they would ask George Low.