Location: In front of the C. G. Credle Elementary School, at 223 College Street, Oxford
County: Granville
Original Date Cast: 2018
James Webb was born in Tally Ho, Granville County, in 1906. He grew up in Oxford where his father was superintendent of schools. By the time he was asked to run the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), he had gained a reputation as a more than capable administrator. His career to that point included serving as vice-president of the Sperry Gyroscope Company in New York, commander of the First Marine Air Warning Group at Cherry Point during World War II, and director of the Bureau of Budget and undersecretary of state for the Truman administration, in addition to early stints in the offices of North Carolina congressman Edward Pou and former governor O. Max Gardner.
Webb knew Washington, D.C. well, and thanks to decades of public service on various boards and committees (including advisory committees to Harvard, MIT, and Oklahoma State; the U.S. Committee for the United Nations; the National Advisory Cancer Council; National Municipal League; and the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, to name a few), he had the drive and dedication needed to take NASA to the next level. And so, on the recommendation of his vice-president Lyndon Johnson, President John Kennedy asked Webb to take the helm of the fledgling space agency in early 1961. Four months later, he publicly charged Webb and NASA with the goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth” before the end of the decade.
To meet the president’s goal, Webb restructured the agency’s staff, boosting it to 35,000 staff members supported by 400,000 contractors, and established two of the agency’s most pivotal centers—the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center and the Florida Launch Operations Center, known today as the Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers, respectively. He additionally consolidated the scattered collection of isolated offices that comprised NASA upon his arrival under one management system called Large Scale Systems Management. The changes transformed NASA and put the agency on a course for success. According to one science writer in 1968, Webb had successfully shouldered a “scientific-technical-managerial undertaking unparalleled in peacetime.”
During a time of great social and political upheaval, Webb advocated relentlessly for his agency, making himself personally available to answer questions regarding mistakes, setbacks, or failures in order to deflect the heat away from his staff. Following the tragic loss of Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom in the Apollo 1 fire on January 20, 1967, Webb spent the next several months on Capitol Hill subjecting himself to the questions, harangues, and criticisms of multiple congressional committees. It was a crucial moment for the agency—there were questions as to whether the Apollo program, or even NASA, could survive it—but Webb took the heat, thereby allowing his agency escape relatively unscathed.
Webb likewise lobbied for greater financial support and leveraged the increased budget to support his personal mission of using “science and technology…to strengthen the United States educationally and economically.” The results of his management in this regard are undeniable. Through the Sustaining University Program, which he established shortly after his arrival, NASA dollars were used to institute or expand science and technology programs throughout the nation, creating a whole new generation of talent and expertise that NASA could draw upon. By 1970, over four thousand SUP students had received doctorates.
The dividends from NASA’s research and development under Webb’s direction were likewise impressive. By 1971, the agency’s R&D had reached a return on investment ratio of seven to one—meaning that for every dollar spent on R&D through NASA, the country’s gross domestic product received seven.
Webb’s most significant achievement, however, was the successful mission to the lunar surface in July 1969. Though he had retired from the agency just nine months before (to allow the incoming president the ability to choose his own administrator), historians credit Webb with laying the groundwork—through Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo—necessary for American victory in the so-called Space Race. Writer and public administration professor W. Henry Lambright summed up Webb’s contributions thusly: “when the Apollo 11 spacecraft splashed down safely in the Pacific and the screens in NASA’s Mission Control at Houston flashed the words ‘Task Accomplished,’ it was Webb who deserved much of the credit.”
References:
Roger D. Launius, “Managing the Unmanageable: Apollo, Space Age Management and American Social Problems,” in Space Policy 24 (2008), 158-165
John Walsh, “James E. Webb: NASA’s Chief Organization Man Departs,” in American Association for the Advancement of Science 161 (1968), 1331-1332
Piers Bizony, The Man Who Ran the Moon: James E. Webb, NASA, and the SecretHistory of Project Apollo (2007)
W. Henry Lambright, Powering Apollo: James E. Webb and NASA (1998)