Delco youth caught rocket fever in the ‘60s
Delaware County youth were also caught up in the space race, following the national trend of forming organized and informal amateur rocket groups.
“This was going on all across the country. It was all triggered by what we saw on television with the rockets. Where would that have come from but a satellite launch at Cape Canaveral?” asked Dave Kavanagh, founder of the Sun Ship Historical Society. “How many people made careers out of that? What a way to start a life from a television screen.”
Kavanagh and friends from St. James High School would hold launchings on the island formerly located in Chester Rural Cemetery. Kavanagh recounted running charcoal and potassium nitrate through home meatgrinders to create a powder, mixing it with powdered sulfur to create fuel. “McCall’s at Sixth and Madison in Chester was a garden supply store. That’s where you would go to buy your (sulfur and potassium nitrate),” he said. “We’d use charcoal briquette. (Parents) would go to have a barbeque and have no briquettes.”
One formal group that frequently made the pages of the Times over its short existence, before merging into a regional organization, was the Eddystone Rocket Society.
“We didn’t go to a hobby shop to buy a kit with a little engine, we did the whole thing – you get a steel tube, you make a nosecone, nozzle, fins, attachments,” said John Vanore by phone Thursday. Vanore, jazz musician and record producer, current Widener University artist-in-residence and retired director of music and recording technology, was a society member during its pre-merger run of 1959 to 1963.
“The variable was always the fuel. We weren’t a chemical company, we couldn’t measure… the purity levels of the chemicals,” said Vanore. “Sometimes they might work not so good and barely get off the ground. The one that made the front page, somehow that had all
the right stuff going for it,” he said, referencing a 1961 incident that garnered public attention.
The society launched a rocket, built by Vanore, from unspecified “secret site” in Ridley Township – to prevent sightseers and reduce risk of accidents – in September 1961. The rocket was intended to carry over Ridley Creek and land in a vacant area near Chester’s Washington Park, 17th Street and Melrose Avenue. It instead landed in a vacant lot near 12th and Potter streets, Chester, where two boys, ages 11 and 13, found it with its nosecone buried in the ground. The boys turned it over to Chester police and touched off a debate among residents and local governments.
Ridley Township officials and police denied the society’s claims it had permission to fire within the township. When township Secretary Harry Modesti – who claimed to receive a number of calls from irate residents – told the Times he felt experimental rocket launches should fall under federal jurisdiction, a call from the Times to the FBI Philadelphia office received a reply of “It’s got me stumped” and recommendation to call Air Force Intelligence from the agent-in-charge.
“My gosh, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea,” an Air Force Intelligence Major told the Times. “I can’t think of any federal violation concerning private experimental rockets.” He then recommended the reporter contact the FBI. The Times reported the major recalled “seeing a film not long ago where a branch of the Armed Forces had a bunch of kids firing rockets at ‘approved sites.’”
“I used to have (“A Guide to Amateur Rocketry”), published by the U.S. Army,” said Vanore. The society would distribute the manual to members upon joining. “(The U.S. Army) sponsored kids and amateurs to go out to White Sands, New Mexico, to shoot their rockets,” he said.
The outcry from Ridley Township and Chester residents prompted society President Bill Rutledge and Vice President Andy Luchansky to defend the society and its 40 members in the pages of the Times, which had regularly provided updates on the group’s work. The officers pointed out it was not made up of a “bunch of irresponsible kids.”
Henry Rosse, director the Eddystone High School vocational department, served as one of the society’s coaches. Two days after the incident, a separate report on the borough school district noted that the group had brought “closely knit academic-vocational relations” at the high school with its members in the academic tract working extensively in the machine shops on rocket components.
Owning in part to its strict safety code and use of adult supervision, Wernher von Braun accepted an invitation to honorary membership in the group, returning a signed membership card, autographed photo and letter commending its responsibility. The group also counted von Braun’s fellow German rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth as an honorary member.
The group’s hundreds of launchings included visits to Virginia, with its 22,000-foot ceiling for launches exceeding’s Pennsylvania, and a demonstration at then-Cheyney State Teachers College 1962 Homecoming and Industrial Arts Show. Of the eight rockets launched at Cheney, two had a mouse occupant recovered by parachute.
Vanore has continued to follow the U.S. space program since his decision to pursue music rather than aeronautics in the 1960s. “When the moon landing took place I was playing at a hotel in New York,” he said. “I told the bandleader we couldn’t start until after they got out and landed on the moon – I made the band watch the moon landing.” Though it did not directly inspire any aspects of his music career, the spirit of the space race and the accomplishment of the moon landing continue to influence Vanore’s worldview.
“What our whole society needs is that kind of focus… focus and dedication and respect for the work it takes to do that,” he said. “It takes an immense amount of work to reach any kind of accomplishment. The time and commitment from all the people involved (in the moon landing) is just unbelievable.”