Ike: The Memoir of Isom “Ike” Rigell
What would you do if you were an 18-year-old Marine operating a small combat telephone switchboard on Midway Island, and you have to put the call through to your Commanding Officer, letting him know that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor . . . this was the situation Ike Rigell found himself in on December 7, 1941. Growing up in the tiny town of Slocomb, AL, Ike never dreamed he would travel halfway around the world to fight for his beloved country in WWII, and then go onto a long and prolific career at NASA and the aerospace industry. Ike’s emotional, poignant, and often humorous firsthand account of his life over the years pays tribute to our nation’s history through the time-honored tradition of storytelling.
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Ike Rigell is a Marine Veteran of World War II. After honorably fighting for his country at the battles of Iwo Jima, Midway, Saipan, and Tinian, Ike went on to earn a degree from one of the top engineering schools in the country, Georgia Tech. After graduation, he went to work for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), which was later transferred to NASA in 1960. At NASA, Ike was an original member of the launch team at Cape Canaveral, FL. He was a member of the launch team for the Free World's first satellite, Explorer I (1958), the Free World's first man in space (1961), Chief Engineer and Deputy Director for all Apollo Space Program launches (12 men walked on the surface of the moon), Skylab, the United States first laboratory in space, and Director of Launch Operations for the Apollo-Soyuz launch in 1975 (a joint U.S. and Russian rendezvous in space). After his time at NASA, he worked for ten more years in the space program for United Technologies and retired as the Vice President of USBI, Florida Operations. Ike and his wife, Kathryn, live in Titusville, FL.