NASA's Kapryan led historic launches

In the heat of the Space Race, some NASA managers ruled by fear and intimidation.

Walt Kapryan was not one of them.

As Kennedy Space Center’s launch operations director from the second moon landing mission until the shuttle program's start, “Kappy,” as he was known, treated colleagues so decently that rather than fearing rebuke for a mistake, they simply didn’t want to disappoint him.

“He was a proverbial nice guy, as well as an effective leader,” said Bob Sieck, a retired shuttle launch director who worked with Kapryan. “Calm, cool, quiet, business-like. But he talked to you like he was your dad, as opposed to, ‘I’m the boss, so pay attention.’ ”

Kapryan, of Indialantic, died Aug. 14 after a long illness. He was 95.

The Flint, Michigan, native began his career with NASA’s predecessor organization, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, after serving as a B-29 flight engineer in World War II and earning an aeronautical engineering degree from Wayne State University in 1947.

At NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, he joined the Space Task Group formed to figure out how to put an American in space, work that led him to Cape Canaveral in 1960 as a Project Mercury engineer, according to a NASA remembrance posted on KSC’s Web site.

“He was one of the guys in Brevard County during those early days and during Apollo that was one of the giants,” said Charlie Mars, a retired NASA engineer and president of the U.S. Space Walk of Fame in Titusville. “Even though he was only 5 foot 4.”

In stature and demeanor, Kapryan contrasted sharply with Rocco Petrone, whom he served as deputy launch director through Apollo 11, the first moon landing mission.

When Petrone left for NASA headquarters, Kapryan took over the top launch operations job starting with Apollo 12, which President Nixon attended.

The mission’s dramatic Nov. 14, 1969, liftoff saw lightning strike the Saturn V rocket and threaten to abort its flight, prompting changes in launch rules and lightning protection systems.

“Thereafter (Kapryan) was known as Captain Lightning,” said Ernie Reyes, a retired NASA engineer involved in the early space programs.

In a Christmas party skit weeks later, performers turned lights on and off and made thunder and lightning noises before a spotlight revealed Captain Lightning himself in a cape.

Kapryan took the kidding with a sense of humor, but remained sensitive to stormy weather. Mars remembers a meeting in which attendees saw only the launch director’s back while he looked out a window with concern at a vehicle exposed on the pad.

Five more Apollo moon missions launched, then Skylab and its crews, and in 1975 the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

“He filled in some big galoshes after Rocco (Petrone) left, and he did it quite well," said Reyes. "He did it in a totally different manner, but he got the job done.”

Kapryan got the job done during some tumultuous times at KSC.

The Apollo program’s cancellation meant mass contractor layoffs that halved the space center’s total work force within five years of its 1968 peak of nearly 26,000 people.

“The responsibility for keeping the team together under trying times like that was management’s, and Kappy was the manager,” said Sieck.

At home, Kapryan tried not to let work consume family life, even on the eve of a launch.

The night before one countdown, he took his family on a beach walk to sea hatching sea turtles, a grandson remembered in a story read at a memorial service last month in Melbourne.

A fluke step on some kind of barbed fish resulted in an emergency room visit and surgery, but hours later Kapryan was at his KSC station with the launch team as planned, supported by crutches.

After the Apollo missions, Kapryan became KSC’s first director of shuttle operations. He left NASA in 1979 to become chief technical adviser to shuttle contractor Lockheed Space Operations.

In 1992, the National Space Club Florida Committee made him one of the first recipients of its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Kapryan is survived by two daughters, Vicki Kapryan of Indialantic and Alice Phipps of Texas, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. A son, Bobby, died in 1966 and his wife of 52 years, Eloise, died in 1999.

The family encourages any donations in Kapryan’s memory be made to the scholarship fund at Wayne State University’s College of Engineering.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace.