To Infinity and Beyond: Be the Aggie in the Room

Can I get an AGGIE PRIDE?

(pause) I will first acknowledge Chancellor Harold Martin for this privilege,

and the Ronald McNair Celebration Committee: Chantal Fleming, Chair, and

her Co-Chairs Dana Herbin, La’Tanya Ruff and Vera Heard for this

opportunity and honor to share my memories of Dr. Ronald McNair.

I’d also like to acknowledge the love of my life: my wife of 30 years, Cassandra

Goodwin (pause); she is the mother of our children: our sons Robbin and

Jonathan (pause); our daughter-in-law LaTavya and our granddaughter, 9-

months-old tomorrow, Ryan Avery! (pause) Future Aggie! Her parents don’t

know it yet.

I will conclude my initial acknowledgments and gratitude to Dr. Sherine

Obare, Dean of the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering,

(pause); our founding dean, Dr. James Ryan (pause); Dr. Ajit Kelkar, Dean

of Nanoengineering (pause) and Dr. Jeffrey Alston – my advisor (pause) as

well as friends and colleagues in attendance. I thank you humbly.

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(Pause briefly)

To Infinity and Beyond: Be the Aggie in the Room

At first, this topic was, to say the least, “a bit out there.” It reminded me of

the many versions of Toy Story and Buzz Lightyear I enjoyed with both sons.

I want to relate it to something Dr. McNair said to me. But first: a letter:

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Dear Reginald,

Do you prefer that better than Reggie? We found your letter and poem were

very moving. Here are some of what was done with them:

1. They were posted in the lobby of Marteena.

2. They were delivered to the Greensboro News and Record.

3. They were delivered to the Carolina Peacemaker.

4. They were delivered to the A&T Register.

5. They were delivered to the campus radio station, WNAA (now 10,000

watts) for a memorial program.

6. The poem will be typeset and framed at the order of the chancellor for

a permanent Ron McNair memorial; the letter will be included in the

archives.

7. The original was given to Cheryl McNair, Ron’s widow.

8. A copy was given to his mother, Pearl McNair.

9. Your poem was read by Dr. Ahrens at Ron’s family funeral service in

Lake City, SC, on February 2, 1986, as part of the University response.

I have tried several times to call you to let you know what has been done, but

no one ever answers. Thus, the lateness of this letter. I hope that you have

come to some conclusion about what you think that Ron would want you to

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do and what changes this will make in your life. Then when your goals are

clearly formulated, I hope you will continue to press forward, risking to gain

them, “hanging over the edge,” as Ron said.

It is still all so sad and so hard to believe.

Yours truly,

Tom Sandin

(Pause)

I read this because Dr. Sandin arrived at A&T in 1968 and taught his first

physics class with two special young men in attendance: Dr. Ronald McNair

and Dr. Gilbert Casterlow. Dr. Sandin taught me, my first physics class. He

taught a lot of Aggies their first physics classes from 1968 to his retirement

50 years later in 2018. (pause) Both Dr. McNair and Dr. Casterlow would be

the head instructors of the tournament-winning North Carolina A&T Karate

Dojo. Dr. Casterlow was also my Calculus instructor. (pause)…No pressure!

(pause) After my graduation, commission, and eight months of training, I

was at the 12th Tactical Intelligence Squadron at what was then Bergstrom

Air Force Base in Austin, Texas, assigned as a Communications-Computer

Systems Officer. Even with televisions on, our Special Compartmented

Information Facility shielded our electronics from outside eyes. We had the
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launch on the television screens as the countdown went: 5-4-3-2-1. One

minute and 13 seconds later in a FLASH… it was over.

The officers and NCOs leaped out of their seats and called Fort Detrick,

Maryland, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, and the Pentagon. As

an Intelligence Squadron, they were ascertaining if this was the first salvo in

an attack on U.S. soil. It sadly was not. Along with Dr. McNair, we lost Mr.

Richard Scobee; the pilot, (pause) Commander Michael Smith (USN), fellow

mission specialists Lieutenant Colonel Ellison Onizuka (USAF), and Dr. Judy

Resnik, as well as two civilian payload specialists, Mr. Gregory Jarvis (pause)

and Mrs. Christa McAuliffe, a high school science teacher.

I asked my commanding officer, Captain Julia Cook if I could be relieved of

duty for the day. She granted my request and understood. I stayed home for

a week; it turned out, composing my letter and poem to process my grief.

Drs. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler list the five stages of grief:

denial, anger, bargaining, depression, but it was the LAST part all of Aggie

Land was having a time with…acceptance. (pause)

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As an undergraduate, I was a part of the festivities of his first voyage STS-41-

B by being in the Physics Department and Air Force ROTC. I was in the

parade and attended the joint Dining Out Banquet with Army and Air Force

ROTC, where Dr. McNair was our keynote speaker.

I had several occasions to speak to Dr. McNair directly, and he said: “if you’re

ever in Texas, Aggie, look me up!”

Since I was in Austin (pause): I got his number from directory assistance –

as you did “back in the day” and took a chance. His wife Cheryl answered the

phone and said, “Oh, you’re one of those Aggies? Let me get Ron.”

I last spoke with Dr. McNair a month to the day before his second and last

mission. I called him after Christmas, December 28th. It was a Saturday.

I could hear him playing with his son, daughter, and some kids from the

neighborhood. It was the sounds I would expect from any family.

I found out Dr. McNair liked to talk! Subjects varied from NASA, jazz, martial

arts to education. We spoke for three hours.

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He had an encyclopedic knowledge of various Martial Arts other than Goju

Ryu, the same as his karateka classmate, Dr. Casterlow. He invited me to

work out at his studio in Houston, to which I said I would. I also knew after

Sensei Gilbert, Sensei Pat, Sensei Sam Casterlow, and Sensei McSwain what

his concept of “workout” meant to him. (pause) A related story:

At the 2019 February 1st commemoration of the Greensboro Four with Dr.

William Barber as the keynote, I saw my old friend, Raymond Smith – now

State Representative for the city of Goldsboro. When we were both

undergrads, we were participants in the A&T karate dojo. We hugged and

dapped as Aggies do. Unsolicited, Raymond remarked: “Reg, these kids don’t

know. Dr. Casterlow would have you running around campus barefoot in the

snow!” It was FEBRUARY! Someone asked me at the time what I was

thinking, running around campus without shoes, coat, or hat. The only thing

I could say was, “there’s HEAT at the end!” (pause) I was anticipating, among

other creative physical things from Dr. McNair, running barefoot in the heart

of Houston, Texas. We scheduled it after his upcoming mission in January.

Dr. McNair attributed the discipline he and Dr. Casterlow learned in the

martial arts with a dilemma he encountered at MIT: someone sabotaged his

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research, and he was weeks from giving his final dissertation defense.

Instead of quitting, he re-accomplished five years of research and

successfully defended. He did not give up on his dreams; whoever sabotaged

him would not deny him.

Dr. McNair also revealed he accepted a position as a professor of physics at

South Carolina State University, so literally, this was to be his last mission.

In working with the physics students in Marteena Hall with Dr. Ahrens and

the engineering departments, he found another love: education. He was

instrumental in an experiment that was part of the payload for an Endeavor

mission that launched in 1994, designed here, on this campus. It orbited the

Earth 11 days, circled 182 times for 4.7 million miles with a biology and

crystal growth experiment, and a photo of Ronald McNair. I think if there

had been no disaster, we could have likely coaxed him back home.

Then, Dr. McNair focused on me: “what are your goals with an Engineering

Physics degree?” I told him I did want to go to the Air Force Institute of

Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. He said, “well, I

think we can get you a little closer than that. After the workout, you can crash

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in the spare bedroom. After breakfast, we can visit the University of Houston

and Rice and speak to some professors I know there.”

I was a little taken aback and asked him why he was doing all this? After all,

I’m pretty much a stranger.

“Reggie: you’re an Aggie. Once you decided to become one, you became a

part of a larger family whose roots are deep and broad. I’m willing to be ‘the

Aggie in the room’ to advocate for you. That’s what families DO!”

(Pause)

A few years later, I was at Motorola in the Semiconductor Products Sector,

still in Austin, Texas.

I was in a room in the mid-1990s discussing diversity and how we could

increase it in Central Texas. I had helped with a display for Black History

Month that featured our nine African American Corporate Vice Presidents,
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one of them, Dr. Barry Johnson, a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon, led the team

that took the semiconductor industry from manufacturing on 8 inches, or

200 mm wafers to 12 inch, 300 mm wafers, now the industry standard.

The HR director went through what I thought were the “usual suspects.”

They would outreach to universities like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Rice, the

University of Texas Austin, NC State, Stanford, Duke. For HBCUs, they had

listed in their PowerPoint, a total of TWO: Prairie View A&M and Texas

Southern, both in Houston and BOTH in Texas!

I raised my hand to be recognized by the HR director. “Yes, Reggie?”

“Did you know that North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State

University graduates the most African American engineers and STEM

graduates of any institution in the U.S.?”

The HR director smiled and said, “well, that’s an extraordinary claim, Reggie.

I’d be happy to see data to corroborate it.”

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[bring out prop here] I gave her my copy of U.S. News and World Report on

Best Colleges and Universities. I had it already dog-eared and highlighted.

(pause) It was also a lot thinner back then!

Now, it didn’t just “happen.” I followed up with a few emails, lunches, and

calls. Eventually, HR made their way to a job fair in Greensboro and hired

two Electrical Engineering graduates with Masters Degrees. (pause) I asked

that both Aggies rotate through my device engineering group.

The first Aggie to do so was DeShawn Chapman; he was about 26. We had a

meeting with product engineering, and DeShawn told me he had a dentist

appointment. I said, no problem. We’ll see you when you get there. When he

got to the room, I saw his eyes bulge out. He sat without speaking with a

rather shocked look on his face as I was at the dry erase board with product

engineering, working out circuits for coding later.

DeShawn pulled me to the side after we left the meeting: “Reg!”

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I said, “what?”

“We were the only black engineers in that room!”

(pause) I looked at him, smiled, and said, “and we were the BEST engineers

in that room. (pause) Do you…have a problem with that, Aggie?”

He smiled back and said, “Aggie Pride!” I replied, “all day!”

Everybody remembers “The Lion King?”

Sometimes, Mufasa has to tell Simba to remember who YOU are: (pointing)

you are being prepared, right here to be the BEST in EVERY room you

enter. NEVER forget that!

But when you GET in that room: remember, Aggie Pride isn’t just something

you shout at GHOE! It marks you a member of a family whose roots are deep

and broad. You have a responsibility to extend a hand to an Aggie that’s

coming right behind you. Don’t get mad at the bucket load of homework your

professors are giving you – I know they are: Do it! Form study groups.

MASTER it! They are qualifying you to BE the Aggie in that future room so

you can PULL your family in with you!

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I hope you like the person you’re sitting beside because I want you to grab

the hand of an Aggie next to you! Come on; I’ll give you time.

Now: (pause) repeat this pledge after me: “Aggie: When I get in that room,

I’m pulling you in with me! We are FAMILY – that’s what families do!” High

5 each other: (pause) this is your charge and your challenge.

I will close with the piece: Epitaph for Our Hero, © 1986, 2020

He would come from humble beginnings,

A young brother with great dreams,

And a strong will determining

His own tomorrow; It seems

A & T has produced leaders, some

Giants in their fields,

With humble knowledge of whence, they’d come,

Always befriending others in need,

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McNair took up the ‘Aggie Struggle.’

In pursuit of his degree,

Then onward to dare, challenge and trouble

MIT for his Ph.D.

He was our hero, this Aggie gladiator

Yet: on this note, we all must think,

Each person has a pre-scored

Date with destiny we must keep.

As phoenix met its fiery end,

So too will he rise again,

And on that day of happiness, we will then

Meet and greet a long-lost friend.

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Think not of our great loss,

But of history’s gain.

Let us remember him by paying the costs

He did to rise to fame.

An Aggie is best remembered

Not just in the tears we shed,

But in emulation and earnest meditation

Of the inspiring life he led.

We can only pray our loss

Is to God’s saving grace,

And know that Ron still thinks of us

(As we him), out there… exploring space.

“From Dare to Cherokee” (pause)

To Infinity and Beyond, “Hanging over the edge”: BE the Aggie in the
Room!
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