Thomas Walter Bickett was born in the small town of Monroe, North Carolina on February 28, 1869. His father, Thomas Winchester Bickett (1836–1882), was a physician and druggist who served the Confederacy as an assistant surgeon. Following the war, Dr. Bickett married Mary Ann Covington (1845–1900), and the couple settled in Monroe, where they had five children: Annie L. Ashcraft, Thomas Walter Bickett, Susie E. Bickett, Lillian E. Brewer, and Lawrence Covington Bickett.

Around 1877, Dr. Bickett’s health began to fail, and though the exact nature of his illness is unknown, it was severe enough that he gave up his physicians practice and shifted his full focus to his pharmacy business.¹ Life continued this way for the Bicketts until July 1882, when at the age of forty-two, Dr. Bickett died from “paralysis.”² The younger Thomas—who, as a boy, answered to the name of Walter—was just thirteen. How Dr. Bickett’s early death impacted the future governor remains unknown. Any surviving writings or correspondence that might betray his personal feelings on this chapter in his life have, so far, remained elusive.

Despite the loss of its patriarch and primary provider, the Bickett family seems to have comfortably supported itself via income derived from the ownership of property in Monroe.³ As a teenager, Walter earned extra money by working summers in cotton fields for twenty-five cents a day.⁴ In his free time, young Bickett preferred shooting marbles or swimming, “careing (sic) nothing for baseball or the rough sports of that day.”⁵ He attended and graduated from Monroe High School, where schoolmates were delighted by his clogging skills.⁶ A song and dance act he performed with his older sister Annie Bickett Ashcraft at a Monroe High commencement ceremony “brought down the house” and was remembered by classmates for decades.⁷

At seventeen, Bickett entered Wake Forest College, taking out notes (loans) to cover tuition. As a member of the Euzelian Literary Society, he gained a reputation as a strong and capable orator and could often be found with a stack of books the night before a debate. E. H. Austin, a college classmate and lifelong friend, characterized Bickett during this time as “studious, reserved and very ambitious.” “‘I am going to make something out of my life,’ he told me on one occasion,” recalled Austin, “and knowing of his ambition and determination…I have never been surprised at the progress he made in mounting the ladder of success.”⁸

Bickett's aunt, Elizabeth Andrews Covington, characterized him as “sunshine and good cheer personified.”⁹ Others remembered Bickett’s unparalleled devotion to his friends. Enoch W. Sikes, another Wake Forest classmate, described Bickett as “an appreciative friend who demanded nothing of me, who never embarrassed me, and in whose presence I felt free to express myself without the slightest hesitation.”¹⁰ Upon learning of Bickett’s death in December 1921, G. L. Jones mourned the loss of a dear friendship: “I feel that I have lost more than a friend—almost a brother, or even a father.”¹¹

Graduating from Wake Forest in 1890, Bickett embarked on a brief career as a school teacher to repay his college debts before enrolling in the University of North Carolina to study law.¹² Bickett passed the law exam in February 1893 and by 1895 had moved to Louisburg to open a law practice. By the following December, he had so well established himself there that he won election to serve as attorney for Franklin County.¹³

As Bickett developed his burgeoning law career, he likely caught the eye of a professionally driven, well educated, and ambitious local woman: Fannie Neal Yarborough. In August 1894, at age 24, Yarborough had completed her college studies and returned home to Louisburg to open a private school for girls with her cousin Edith Graham Yarborough.¹⁴ It is presumed Fannie had settled down a bit then, with the exception of small social trips and distant summer courses, and met Bickett while teaching in town, but the exact nature of the couple’s early courtship is currently unknown. Either way, by November of 1898, the two had determined to marry and did so on the 29^th of that month.¹⁵

The Bickett’s marriage, from all available evidence, seems to have been a strong one. In his only surviving will—dated July 4, 1902, just over two years into married life—Bickett left for his children

the infinite riches of their mother’s love, for though they are young now and may not know it I want to tell them in this my last will and testament that their mother is the very noblest and sweetest woman in this world, and if they will walk in her ways they will be happy. I want this clause of my will read to my children once a year.

For Fannie herself, he left all his real and personal wealth and “my blessing for what she has done for me.”¹⁶

Their bond was undoubtedly tested when the couple suffered two devastating losses rather early in their marriage. Though their first born, a son named William Yarborough Bickett, lived to adulthood, their youngest two children did not. Thomas Walter Bickett, Jr. died at only eight months old in June 1902. Mary Covington Bickett, having reached fifteen months, died in September 1904. The immense grief caused by their premature deaths remained with Fannie for the rest of her life. In an interview decades later, William’s wife Sarah Cecile Meetze Bickett, recalled her mother-in-law often saying, “There are two kinds of mothers—the ones who have lost little babies, and the ones who have not.”¹⁷

Around the turn of the century, the Bicketts began to take on the burdens of public service. The future governor became an active member in the Democratic Party while Mrs. Bickett dedicated herself to the work of social groups and clubs, a common pursuit for women of her social standing at that time. The timing of their emergence into the political and social scenes of the day placed them right in the thick of an ascendant political campaign that would have far reaching consequences for American democracy: the white supremacy movements of 1898 and 1900.

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Unable to secure political power within the framework of the American democratic system, white North Carolina Democrats resorted to intimidation, terrorism, and legal chicanery to wrench control of state government from the fusionists—a biracial coalition of Populists and Republicans.¹ A barbaric white terrorist organization known as the Red Shirts embarked on a campaign of unbridled violence to prevent fusionist voters, especially Black men, from participating in the 1898 election cycle.² Anti-fusion bloodlust peaked in Wilmington on November 10 when white supremacists murdered dozens of Black citizens and took control of city government at gunpoint.³

White supremacist forces successfully gained control of the state legislature in 1899 and immediately set about disenfranchising Black men via an amendment to the state constitution—one that would enact new requirements for voting, namely passage of a literacy test and payment of a poll tax.⁴ Prominent Democrats throughout the state rallied around the proposal and worked to solidify public support in favor of it. In May 1900, Thomas W. Bickett joined dozens of prominent North Carolina attorneys in publishing a statement in support of the amendment plan.⁵ That summer, he became more directly involved with the pro-amendment campaign by joining J. Bryan Grimes on a speaking tour of various “white supremacy clubs” and Democratic Party gatherings in the state.

Reflecting the state’s larger views on race at the time, white public opinion of Bickett’s efforts was overwhelmingly positive. At one such address, the future governor “got the best of the argument,” Raleigh’s Morning Post reported, “and the WHITE men of the crowd were delighted with the day’s work for the cause of white supremacy.”⁶ A “White Supremacy Club” in Franklinton welcomed Bickett as its first speaker and was similarly pleased with his skillful presentation on “political issues of the day”—a thinly veiled reference to the suffrage amendment.⁷ At Black Jack, a small community in Pitt County, Bickett “preached to them pure Democracy and White Supremacy” for two hours, turning the crowd—which reportedly included “mounted Red Shirts”—decidedly in favor of “White Supremacy” and the suffrage amendment.⁸

These efforts paid off for white Democrats. Put before the voters on August 2, 1900, the amendment passed with ease.⁹ Black North Carolinians wouldn’t have their suffrage rights restored until the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.¹⁰

After quietly practicing law in Louisburg for several years, Bickett determined to run for public office and, in May 1906, announced his intention to run for Franklin County’s seat in the North Carolina House of Representatives. His lengthy, published appeal to the voters placed special emphasis on his desire to increase funding for both public education and for the care of those who struggled with mental illness, issues that would become part of his campaign platform for governor a decade later.¹¹ Franklin Countians must have liked what they had read—Bickett easily won the seat and travelled to Raleigh in January 1907 to join the General Assembly.

During his single term in the legislature, Bickett served as chair of the Committee on Insane Asylums and as a member of the committees for the judiciary, insurance, education, appropriations, and salaries and fees. Outside of his committee work, Bickett championed a failing effort to pass a bill that required lobbyists to register with the Secretary of State.¹² A host of other bills introduced by Bickett and relating strictly to Franklin County—ranging from prohibition measures to school bonds to river cleanliness—faired far better and secured relatively easy passage by the assembly.¹³

Perhaps his greatest legislative achievement, however, was the creation of and successful campaign for the passage of a half-million-dollar appropriation in support of public health, the largest amount ever authorized for said purpose up to that point.¹⁴ Known informally as “the Bickett bill,” the act established a state hospital commission and entrusted the group with identifying, funding, and overseeing desperately-needed improvements to the state’s hospitals.¹⁵

This is how the Capitol appeared to Bickett when he arrived to take his seat in the state house of representatives in 1907. Courtesy State Archives of North Carolina.

Bickett’s monumental efforts to secure passage of the “Bickett bill” had certainly caught the interest of the press, but it wasn’t until the Democratic convention of 1908 that Bickett grabbed the attention of the electorate. His speech nominating Confederate veteran Ashley Horne for Democratic gubernatorial candidate was characterized as “the hit of the convention.”¹⁶ With only one term of service in the state legislature under his belt, the charismatic lawyer was considered a relative political nobody, a “new man” on the convention floor.¹⁷ Nevertheless, his rousing speech for Horne had “caught the ear of the convention and the ear of the state,” resulting in his stunning—shocking, even—emergence as the Democratic candidate for attorney general.¹⁸ Almost overnight, Bickett’s was a household name.

By early 1913, Democrats were considering Bickett’s potential to serve as the next governor of the state, an office that wasn’t to be filled by election for four more years. His popularity among the people couldn’t be ignored. When Bickett was called to take the oath of office as attorney general for Gov. Locke Craig’s administration on January 15, 1913, an “outburst of applause…broke with great energy” from the crowd of five thousand.¹⁹ A man in the gallery showed his enthusiasm more conspicuously, standing to shout, “There’s the next governor of the state.”²⁰

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In the 1916 Democratic primary—the first legal primary held in the state—Thomas W. Bickett soundly defeated his opponent, lieutenant governor Elijah L. Daughtridge.¹ With his party’s nomination secured, Bickett then set his sights on the general election, in which he would face Republican nominee Frank A. Linney. Linney focused his campaign on Democratic corruption and mismanagement, citing financial irregularities in recent state audits and the deplorable conditions of the Confederate Soldiers’ Home. Democrats took criticisms of the latter right on the chin, the press largely printing the damning reports of overwhelming fly, bed bug, and cockroach infestations then plaguing the home and its residents.²

In return, state Democrats branded Republicans as unpatriotic, corrupt, and eager to destabilize white supremacy, stoking racial fears at every possible turn. At the Democratic state convention in April 1916, United States Senator from North Carolina Furnifold M. Simmons decried the Republican Party as an “alien horde” that “burdened the state with debt, disgraced it with scandal and degraded it with negro rule.”³ Future Democratic governor Cameron Morrison urged voters in Guilford County to remain vigilant and steadfast. Any lapse in their support, he warned, would result in a return to “mongrelism, negro rule and incompetency.”⁴ In a widely circulated letter, state Democratic Party chairman Thomas D. Warren equated a Republican victory with the “restoration of Negro suffrage” and the institution of “Negro rule.”⁵

For the most part, Bickett steered clear of race-baiting politicking, allowing Democratic peers to lead these kinds of craven attacks. In campaign speeches and public addresses, he chose instead to closely align himself with the policies of the Wilson administration, centering his talking points on foreign policy, the war, and domestic peace and prosperity.⁶ At every turn, he refrained from openly criticizing state Republicans and appealed to populist and progressive sympathizers—those who had helped install Republican politicians in 1896 and 1912, specifically—imploring them to return to the Democratic Party: “In the name of the family that has missed you I extend to you an invitation to come back to the old homestead. You are essentially of Democratic lineage.... Our doors swing wide to receive you.”⁷

If the politically centrist tone of his campaign wasn’t enough to convince fallen Democrats and moderate Republicans, Bickett could always rely upon his personable and affable nature to win voters’ hearts. Across the state, Bickett’s audiences could not help but fall in love with his keen wit, charm, and able storytelling, tools that he used to his advantage again and again. At Lexington on October 3^rd, 1916, the many days of travel and long speeches began to catch up with him. With a “crippled voice,” Bickett began his address to the assembled crowd “slowly and deliberately” but eventually picked up speed and “soon had the audience roaring with laughter…or hanging almost breathless to catch [his] every word.”⁸ It was a scene that played out at campaign stops throughout the state. He was nothing if not a great speaker.

Support for the Democrat’s campaign was enthusiastic. Wilson-Bickett Clubs organized across North Carolina, in towns large and small, arranging speeches, rallies, barbecues, and voter registration drives. Club members in New Bern fabricated and displayed campaign signs riffing on Wilson’s reelection campaign slogan, a nod to the nation’s isolationist stance towards the war: “America First, vote for Wilson and Bickett.”⁹ On “Wilson Day”—October 28, 1916, ten days before election day—the clubs made one last push for the Democratic ticket, holding rallies to promote and celebrate Democratic gains made since the turn of the century.

On election day 1916, more than 167,000 eligible voters¹⁰—which included few men of color and no women—cast their ballots for Bickett, handing him the governorship by a margin of more than 46,000 votes.¹¹ Linney humbly conceded, and Bickett accepted with grace:¹²

Members of the 3rd North Carolina Infantry cast ballots in the 1916 election while stationed at Camp Stewart near El Paso, Texas. Courtesy State Archives of North Carolina.

Bickett’s victory ensured the fulfillment of the state’s Democratic Party platform as it stood in 1916: support for the good roads movement, improvements in public health, continued development of public education, recruitment of new businesses and capital investments for job creation, and increased support for agriculture and the rural communities that relied upon it.¹³

Democratic triumph additionally guaranteed—in explicit terms, no less—the continuation of white supremacy. “So long as the Democratic Party is in power,” the platform promised, “the people have assurance that this State shall be conducted by white men….” Strict, racially-motivated voting laws, established by a state constitutional amendment passed in 1900, stripped most Black men of the franchise. Sixteen years after its passage, Democrats doubled down on the measure, reaffirming their “confidence in the wisdom and justice of the suffrage amendment."¹⁴

Over the next four years, Bickett walked a fine line between progressivism and conservatism, championing advancements for the people of North Carolina while also maintaining well-established societal norms governing race, class, and sex. As a result, his decision-making as governor can be, at times, confusing to modern researchers. The same man who mobilized the National Guard against white lynch mobs also upheld and defended what he perceived to be the righteousness of white supremacy and racial segregation. He decried women’s suffrage as a threat to that white supremacy but ultimately called upon the North Carolina General Assembly to ratify the 19^th Amendment to the United States Constitution. He led the charge for more and better mental health facilities but also publicly advocated for the institution of a state-funded eugenics program to sterilize those he viewed to be “incurable mental defective[s].”¹⁵

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North Carolina native William E. Thornton was selected as a scientist-astronaut in August 1967. Courtesy NASA.

In the summer of 1972, Dr. Thornton took part in the Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test (SMEAT). SMEAT sought to test medical equipment and gather data in preparation for Skylab. Here, Dr. Thornton (standing) is preparing Karol J. Bobko for an experiment that tested the effects of negative pressure on the lower body. Courtesy NASA.

Astronaut Dale Gardner assists Dr. Thornton in conducting an audiometry test aboard Challenger during STS-8 in 1983. Courtesy NASA.

Dr. Thornton took his first space flight aboard the shuttle Challenger on mission STS-8 in 1983. Courtesy NARA.

Dr. Thornton's second and final space flight occurred in 1985. This image captures him in the pilot's station of the flight deck of the space shuttle Challenger. Courtesy NARA.

Thornton wore this blue NASA flight suit during the Spacelab 3 mission in 1985. Courtesy North Carolina Museum of History.

Dr. Thornton monitors fellow astronaut Guion Bluford's use of the treadmill he designed for use in space aboard the shuttle Challenger in 1983. Courtesy NARA.

John Kiker's contributions to the American space program were not just limited to the development of the piggyback system. Early in his NASA career, Kiker and his colleagues designed the three-parachute landing system of the Apollo program. This image captures the parachute system in action during the return of the Apollo 16 crew. Courtesy NASA.

With the help of colleagues, Kiker (right) first tested his piggyback design with models. Using a 1/40th scale model of the space shuttle and a model airplane, Kiker evaluated flight control of the mated system and tested the separation of the two during a test flight in December 1975. Courtesy NASA.

Several full-scale tests of the piggyback system were conducted in 1977 at the Dryden Flight Research Center (now Armstrong Flight Research Center). Here, the shuttle Enterprise glides above its 747 carrier just moments after separation on September 13, 1977. Courtesy NASA.

Soon, piggyback flights became one of the most iconic sights of the shuttle era. Here, a 747 shuttles Atlantis back to Kennedy Space Center in 1998. NASA estimates that Kiker's design saved the government about $19 million every time a shuttle had to be transported. Courtesy NASA.

Official NASA portrait of Beaufort native Michael Smith, taken on January 8, 1981. Courtesy NASA.

On April 30, 1961, Mike Smith took his first solo flight, earning his pilot's license. In a letter to his friend Bobby, the sixteen-year-old farm boy from Beaufort could barely contain his excitement: "I went flying alright, I soloed!" Courtesy Smith Family.

Full letter and transcription

Smith entered the United States Naval Academy in 1963. He graduated four years later, ranked 108 in his class of 893. Richard Purnell, an academy classmate of Smith's, later recalled that upon meeting him, one of the first things Smith told him was "I am going to be an astronaut."

In 1972 and 1973, Smith served as an attack pilot assigned to the USS Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War, flying 198 missions before returning home to attend test pilot school at the Naval Air Test Center in Maryland. He is pictured here aboard the Kitty Hawk during his wartime deployment.

NASA selected Smith as an astronaut candidate in May 1980, about the time this portrait was taken. Following a year of training, Smith qualified as a shuttle pilot. The call he long awaited finally came in 1985 when he was tapped to pilot the Challenger on its tenth mission the following year.

Following the accident, letters and cards poured in to Beaufort from across the nation. Sometimes the letters came from strangers, sometimes from friends and acquaintances of days gone by. One local resident wrote Mike's brother Pat to share the wonderful memories she had of knowing Mike when the two were learning to fly. Courtesy Smith Family.

Full letter and transcription

The horror of the Challenger accident played out in real time on televisions in both living rooms and classrooms, shocking not only American adults, but the nation's children as well. In the days following the accident, a high school senior named Sonya, from Hookerton, North Carolina, penned a beautiful letter to the Smith family. "My brother," she wrote, in part, "who is exactly 1 year & 2 days older than me, has wanted to become an astronaut ever since we were real little. Now he's more determined than ever." Courtesy Smith Family.

Full letter and transcription

Since the close of the space shuttle program in 2011, NASA has had to rely upon the Russian space program to ferry American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). North Carolinian Christina Koch (right) made the trip to the ISS alongside NASA colleague Nick Hague (left) aboard Soyuz MS-12. As is required by the Russian government, the spaceflight was commanded by cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin (center). Courtesy NASA.

The second half of the Expedition 59 crew launched for the International Space Station on March 14, 2019. They are pictured here in front of their Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft during pre-launch activities in February 2019. From left to right: Christina Koch, of North Carolina; Alexey Ovchinin, of Russia; and Nick Hague, of Kansas. Courtesy NASA.

Soyuz MS-12, carrying Christina Koch, Nick Hague, and Alexey Ovchinin, launched on March 14, 2019. Courtesy NASA.

Christina Koch (center) helps fellow astronauts Nick Hague (left) and Anne McClain (right) prepare for their first spacewalk on March 22, 2019. Courtesy NASA.

Koch, pictured here outside the ISS, made her first spacewalk on March 29, 2019. Courtesy NASA.

This Apollo 16 mission patch was made by Buncombe County-based A-B Emblem. Courtesy North Carolina Museum of History.

North Carolina-based Burroughs Wellcome provided several key medicines for Apollo missions, including Neosporin (an antibiotic ointment), Marezine (for motion sickness), and Actifed (for sinus/ nasal congestion). Courtesy North Carolina Museum of History.

Monroe-based Allvac Metals Company used turbines like this one to produce Renee 41, a special alloy used in the production of the heatshields for Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. The heatshield protected the astronauts from the intense heat created by the spacecrafts' re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Courtesy North Carolina Museum of History.

Lightweight, compact washcloths made by the School of Textiles at North Carolina State University accompanied astronauts on Gemini and Apollo missions. Courtesy North Carolina Museum of History.

Corning Glass produced several key components for American spacecraft, including the window glass through which astronauts caught their first glimpses of the Moon and the Earth from space. Here in North Carolina, specifically Raleigh, Corning facilities manufactured glass capacitors and memory banks used in Apollo-era spacecraft. Courtesy North Carolina Museum of History.

Batteries made by Exide Missile powered pyrotechnic systems in the command, service, and lunar modules. Parachute deployment, mid-course maneuvers, ascent and descent of the lunar lander—just a few of the processes powered by batteries made in Raleigh. Courtesy North Carolina Museum of History.

From Apollo 13 up to the present, A-B Emblem, a company based in Weaverville (Buncombe County), has been the sole provider of official NASA mission patches. Courtesy North Carolina Museum of History.

As head of the computing unit at Muroc, Person County native Roxanah Yancey supported Chuck Yeager's sound-barrier-breaking 1947 flight by, according to NASA, "identifying traces on film, marking time to coordinate all data recordings and reading film deflections before converting them into engineering units." She went on to become an aerospace engineer and studied the effects of speeds Mach 6 and greater on aircraft. Courtesy NASA.

Mary Hedgepeth (standing, far left), of Cleveland County, and Roxanah Yancey (standing, third from left), of Person County, both worked as computers for NASA’s precursor—the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA—at Muroc Air Force Base in California. They are pictured here with fellow computers in 1949. Courtesy NASA.

North Carolina natives Roxanah Yancey, center, and Mary Hedgepeth, far left, computed data in support of high speed flight studies for the NACA Muroc Flight Test unit. Courtesy NASA.

Monroe (Union County) native Dr. Christine Darden—shown here at Langley Research Center in 1974—began her NASA career as a computer in 1967. Soon after her arrival, she and her colleagues transitioned into computer programming and wrote programs that could perform the necessary calculations. Courtesy Dr. Christine Darden.

In 1972, Dr. Christine Darden transferred to an engineering section that was charged with minimizing sonic booms. For 20 years, she specialized in this research, moving us closer to a more commercially friendly, low-boom aircraft design. Dr. Darden concluded a distinguished forty-year career with NASA in 2007 and is recognized today as one of the world’s foremost experts on supersonic wing design and sonic boom mitigation. Courtesy National Air and Space Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Art Case was on-site when the Apollo 204 (later renamed Apollo 1) fire broke out. Former colleagues remember how he immediately flew into action, running through a series of switches and panels to shut down systems faster than it had ever been done before. Courtesy Steve Case.

Art Case, standing right, assists a colleague at Kennedy Space Center's Complex 34. Courtesy Steve Case.

Case's first major triumph came on February 26, 1966, with the successful launch of Apollo 201, for which he served as chief test conductor. The primary goals of the unmanned, suborbital flight were to test both the Saturn 1B launch vehicle and the heat shield of the spacecraft. Courtesy NASA.

Art Case, far right, was a manager with IBM at Kennedy Space Center during the Apollo program. Courtesy Steve Case.

Following the successful flight of Apollo 7, several IBM team members celebrated at a local bar. The establishment had the strange custom of cutting off the neckties of their patrons. The severed ties were all collected, arranged to spell "Apollo 7," framed, and awarded to Art Case for his leadership during the mission. Courtesy Steve Case.

As the space race wound down following the success of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, IBM began reassigning employees to other stations around the country. Such a reassignment brought Art Case (center) to North Carolina. Courtesy Steve Case.

Charlotte-born Charles Duke became the youngest person to walk on the Moon on April 21, 1972. Courtesy NASA.

Duke served as a member of the astronaut support crew for Apollo 10 and as CAPCOM—the main point of contact between spacecraft crew and mission control—for Apollo 11. Courtesy NASA.

Some training for the Apollo 16 flight occurred on the property of Kennedy Space Center. Here, Duke practices deploying a core tube with a hammer in March 1972. Courtesy NASA.

Duke became the youngest person to walk on the Moon on April 21, 1972. Courtesy NASA.

During their seventy-one hours on the Moon, Duke and fellow astronaut John W. Young collected samples and conducted a series of experiments in the Descartes Highlands, a crater-pocked region on the near side of the Moon. Courtesy NASA.

Dr. Watkins observes astronaut Gordon Cooper's operation of a piece of equipment during the June 1964 geological field school at the Philmont Scout Ranch. Courtesy NASA.

Dr. Watkins, right, discusses gravity meter data with astronauts (from left to right) David Scott, Neil Armstrong, and Roger Chaffee in June 1964. During the course of the field school, Dr. Watkins built up quite a rapport with the astronauts. On the last night of the school, he and fellow USGS colleague Norman "Red" Bailey short-sheeted several of the astronauts' beds before going to sleep. Courtesy NASA.

Astronauts Alan Shepard, right, and Edgar Mitchell, left, practice using a piece of seismographic equipment known as a "thumper" that was designed by Dr. Watkins. Courtesy NASA.

In a photograph taken from the Modularized Equipment Transporter, astronauts Edgar Mitchell (foreground, left) and Alan Shepard can be seen deploying seismographic equipment developed by Dr. Watkins on the lunar surface during the Apollo 14 mission. Courtesy NASA.

Philadelphia-born Richard J. Barrett moved to North Carolina as a toddler, spending his childhood years in Canton (Haywood County) and Asheville (Buncombe County). Following graduation from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he entered active service with the US Navy and completed a tour of the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War. Courtesy Richard J. Barrett.

Aerial view of the tracking station's campus around 1981, when the facility was transferred to the Department of Defense. Courtesy of Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library.

Photograph of the construction of the eighty-five-foot-wide dish, or ear, that "listened" for signals from manned and unmanned spacecraft at Rosman. Courtesy of Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library.

View of construction underway on the tracking station in Rosman, around 1963. Courtesy of Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library.

NASA officials conducted a docking exercise of the cylindrical Agena Target Vehicle, left, and the Gemini 6 space capsule, right, at the Boresite Range Tower in August 1965. Courtesy NASA.

The ATV in orbit is shown here in November 1966. The photograph was taken from the Gemini 12 spacecraft from about fifty feet away. Courtesy NASA.

A view of some of the infrastructure of Launch Complex 14, from which the Agena Target Vehicle was launched. The unidentified man is pointing to a visual representation of all the successful launches from the complex. From Mark C. Cleary, The 6555th: Missile and Space Launches Through 1970, 45th Space Wing History Office.