Credit: NONE
Credit: NONE
The Dayton area’s connection to the space program and aerospace innovation was further underlined in the past week by an obituary in the Dayton Daily News. Longtime National Aviation Hall of Fame volunteer Gerard W. Kaufhold, Sr. died at his Dayton home on Jan. 10 at age 97.
Kaufhold was also an aeronautical engineer for Republic and Grumman who was part of the team that built Lunar Exploration Modules, or LEMs, for the Apollo program, according to his obituary. Those LEMs were the very spacecraft that Cernan commanded during his Apollo 17 mission.
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“He was a volunteer here from the beginning,” said Ron Kaplan, National Aviation Hall of Fame Enshrinement Director.
Aerospace connections run deep in the Dayton area, which was home to many engineers and scientists after World War II at the dawn of the jet age and subsequent space race and also decades of celebrations with the National Aviation Hall of Fame.
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“It’s more common than we realize because with Wright-Patterson (Air Force Base) and the laboratories and the defense contractor base, it just draws technical talent from around the country,” said Tim Gaffney, aviation writer and Communications Director for the National Aviation Heritage Alliance.
“I don’t think it’s surprising to find people living around here who are involved in programs like the Apollo project from different parts of the country. He is part of the workforce of America that got us to the moon in the 1960s, and we owe a debt of appreciation to him and all of those people who worked on project Apollo.
“It’s something to keep in mind as we approach the 50th anniversary in 2019 of the Apollo 11 moon landing.”
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