Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons by George Pendle

Author:George Pendle [Pendle, George]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, Religion, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780156031790
Google: sRFkFGsIyjoC
Amazon: 0156031795
Goodreads: 677288
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 2004-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

Amidst the chorus of celebration sounded a few dissonant notes. Ever since the military had stepped in as the Suicide Squad’s main benefactor, levels of security had soared and a restrictive air of secrecy had overtaken the project. When Frank Malina wrote to his parents about the Ercoupe tests, he could only hint obliquely as to the rocketeers’ work: “We have had success this week with our rocket project that exceeded even our highest expectation. Wish I could tell you more. We have had a taste of what we have been striving for the past three years.” The classified nature of their project raised even more pernicious problems. At an aerodynamics department party, Frank Malina was happily talking of the recent success that had transformed him from a graduate student with a harebrained idea to a serious pioneer in the field when he found himself confronted by Clark Millikan, his old bête noire. With undisguised glee, Millikan informed Malina that he had been told that Malina, Sidney Weinbaum, and two or three other members of the squad belonged to the Communist Party. The FBI had apparently provided Caltech with this information following their security checks into the rocketeers. Indeed, Parsons’ name had come up, too, and he had been questioned by the FBI about the Communist group’s activities. Being a member of the Communist Party was not illegal at the time, but considering the sensitive military work that the project had become involved in, it was not comforting news to Malina to hear that the FBI knew of it. If any of the rocketeers lost their security clearance, their ability to stay at the forefront of their field would be jeopardized.

Just as ominous were the possible repercussions from Parsons’ recreational activities. One morning in November 1941, Malina received a phone call telling him that a GALCIT night watchman was in jail. His name was Paul Seckler, and along with his wife Phyllis he was a resident of Winona Boulevard and a member of the OTO (Parsons had gotten him the watchman job). The previous night Seckler had gone to Parsons’ house for one of his twice weekly meetings. Ed Forman had also been there. But something had happened on this night that had deeply affected Seckler. Malina thought a’séance might have taken place. More likely, drink, drugs, and perhaps a magick ritual were involved. All that is certain is that Seckler, who was known in the OTO to suffer from fits of drunken violence, ran out of Parsons’ house, half-crazed, clutching a pistol belonging to Parsons. He found a car parked on a nearby street in which a young couple was engaged in a romantic entanglement and forced the pair out at gunpoint. He then took the car and drove around Hollywood for a few hours. Calmed somewhat by his flight, he drove back to Pasadena in the early hours of the morning and found the police waiting for him at the Colorado Street Bridge.

Malina was shocked. With the tightened security procedures at the rocket project, secrecy was paramount.

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