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It was heart-stopping in 1962 Photo from Bob Lacy Bob Lacy's mementoes from his days as a space vehicle test mechanic include photos and a note from John Glenn. John Glenn early days at NASA Photo by Jim Craven Bob Lacy of Lake Creek talks about his days at NASA. He is looking forward to Thursday's space shuttle launch. Lacy will be cheering Glenn By PAUL FATTIG LAKE CREEK -- Bob Lacy figures he'll be among those cheering when former and future astronaut John Glenn rockets into space Thursday aboard the space shuttle. That's a far cry from Lacy's reaction on Feb. 20, 1962, the historic day when Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. "I had never felt such fear, terror," said Lacy, a retired senior space vehicle test mechanic who worked on the Mercury flight. "I'm telling you, my heart just about stopped," he added. But even then, Lacy figured that Glenn had the right stuff. "He took a huge chance on his life back then -- most people don't realize that," he added. "To me, he's an amazingly brave American hero." Lacy, 64, worked in the rocket industry for 20 years before turning a hobby of restoring classic cars into a full-time occupation. This week found him poring over old photographs and documents from the years he spent working on the ground floor of the nation's space program. "Thanks for the boost," reads a card signed by astronaut Scott Carpenter. "We appreciate all the good thrust," says another signed by astronaut Gordon Cooper. "To Bob, with best regards," reads one signed by Glenn. As Lacy thumbed through his space-age mementoes, he talked about the astronauts. "In the movie, `The Right Stuff,' they had Cooper as a wise guy," Lacy said. "He was never really a wise guy. The wise guy was (Alan) Shepard. "And they had Glenn as pretty straight-laced," he added. "Well, he has a good sense of humor. I liked him a lot. He was very easygoing." Another favorite was astronaut Ed White, one of three astronauts killed Jan. 27, 1967, when a fire erupted while the Apollo 1 crew was performing a flight simulation. "He was quite similar to Glenn," he said, noting that Glenn chatted with everyone, from the top brass to the fellow who polished the floors. "Glenn was a good guy who liked to joke around with us," he said, noting that Glenn was razzed by the crew about what flavor of pellets he preferred. Monkeys on previous flights were given banana-flavored pellets, Lacy explained. Lacy was trained to work on aircraft engines in the Air Force, then graduated to rocket engines. As a civilian, he worked for North American Aviation Inc. and General Dynamics Corp., firms that had contracts to help put an American into space. "When I went to Cape Canaveral, nobody had as much experience on those engines as I did because I had worked on developing the prototype," he said. But, unlike the shuttle, the Challenger notwithstanding, the rockets in the early 1960s had a history of exploding on the pad or in midflight, he said. "The day of the launch, I was sitting on a stool right next to Carpenter," Lacy recalled. "He was talking on a secure channel to John Glenn. I could hear what he was saying but I had my own work to do." That work was to monitor the rocket engine, making sure it was performing within safe parameters. "It was terrifying," he said. "Our main liquid oxygen transfer pumps had failed. We had a little topping pump we used. All the instruments were getting really chilled." But the systems status check proceeded. It was at 20 seconds before the launch that an engine indicator Lacy was watching dropped into the red. "I had to make the decision whether we would go ahead," he said. "I just knew as the launch proceeded -- 18 seconds, 17 seconds -- that it wasn't going to go into the green. I knew it would never make it." But at the last second the gauge went into the green. "I just sat there and prayed that everything was going to work," he said. "We were all afraid it would blow up." Despite the movie depiction to the contrary, the launch crew wasn't cheering. "There was dead silence," Lacy said, noting that the launch crew continued to watch for problems. Those problems came when Friendship was returning to Earth. The ship's heat shield had apparently loosened. But Glenn maintained his cool as the retrorockets fired, slowing down the craft. Finally, when Glenn landed safely in the Atlantic Ocean after the four-hour, 56-minute flight that circled the Earth three times, all Lacy wanted was to go home and sleep. "We all had been up so long," he said. "We were all wiped out." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA