COCOA BEACH, Fla. — Legendary space industry engineer Thomas
J. O'Malley, 94, died Friday evening, shortly after a phone call from Mercury
astronaut and former U.S. Sen. John Glenn, whom O'Malley launched into space in
1962 by pushing a button.
O'Malley had displayed the button in the den of his Cocoa
Beach home.
Daughter Kathleen O'Malley said the conversation between
Glenn and her father on Friday was brief, but she related hearing O'Malley say,
"Hello, John Glenn," to the former astronaut.
He was called to the human spaceflight program in 1961,
while working for the Convair division of General Dynamics, where he was a test
engineer for the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile, according to family
historian Cornelia Dean, O'Malley's niece. The Atlas missile had experienced a
series of launch pad explosions.
He was "Convair's toughest
test conductor," Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton
wrote in "Moon Shot" in 1994.
Astronauts remember O'Malley's contributions to the success
of the U.S. space program.
"He was a hard-driving, honest, straight-up,
go-for-broke guy, and he really made things hum down here," Apollo 15
astronaut Al Worden said Saturday while attending the Astronaut Autograph and
Memorabilia Show at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
"Everybody knew Tommy, and everybody respected him, and
everybody did what Tommy wanted done," Worden said. "I think he was a
big factor in the success of the Apollo
program."
Out of love and respect, O'Malley was nicknamed
"Terrible Tommy," Worden said.
"We would have not gone anywhere as well as we did down
here in the 1960s and 1970s if it hadn't been for Tommy O'Malley," he
added. "I've seen him be really tough, but on the other hand, he was the
most fun guy I ever met."
After working in the Mercury program, O'Malley became chief
project engineer for the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics in Quincy,
Mass. In 1967, after a launch pad fire killed three Apollo I astronauts, he was
brought back to Cape Canaveral to head checkout and launch operations for the
Apollo spacecraft for North American Aviation.
Apollo 13 astronaut Fred
Haise said O'Malley's drive and work ethic kept America's fledgling space
program on track.
"There was a lot of schedule pressure to get spacecraft
through the mill here and to get them ready to go fly," Haise said.
"He was a tough taskmaster, which you had to be in those days.
"It was a hectic time, and I think Tom was a good
leader. He kept everything in order."
In 1970, O'Malley became vice president and general manager
of launch operations for North American Aviation, which later became Rockwell
International. In that position, he led the company's work on Skylab
and Apollo-Soyuz missions, as well as on the shuttle program, in which his work
led to the first launch of Columbia in 1981.
O'Malley was born in Montclair, N.J., and earned a
bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at the Newark College of
Engineering, now the New Jersey Institute of Technology, in 1936. He first
worked in aviation at the Wright Aeronautical Corp. in Paterson, N.J., the
aircraft manufacturing division of the Curtiss-Wright Corp., before joining
General Dynamics in 1958.
Dean recounts this anecdote: "An early riser, O'Malley
frequently arrived at Cape Canaveral launch pads and other facilities before
dawn. Often, he would get lost in the dark, virtually featureless sandy
landscape of the Cape -- until his colleagues installed a streetlight at the
road leading to pad 14, the site of the Glenn launch. A plaque at the base
reads 'O'Malley's Guiding Light.' "
O'Malley is survived by his wife, Anne Arneth O'Malley; his
daughter, Kathleen O'Malley of Merritt Island; his sons, Thomas J. Jr. of Cocoa
Beach and James K. O'Malley of Merritt Island; three grandchildren and two
great-grandchildren.
Contact Peterson at 242-3673 or ppeterson@floridatoday.com.
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