REALM News—December 2015—Page 1 Retired Employees Association of Lockheed Martin of Central Florida REALM ews Volume 32, Number 12, December 2015N Orlando, Florida Abridged Interview with Donald Hickman, Director of the Pershing Missile Project By Jane Tracy, December 2014, published by “Orlando Memory”, Orlando Public Library “The trade that President Reagan made was he’d take Pershing II’s out of Europe if Russia would decom- mission all the SS-20’s. And that happened. So that was a big deal. I never realized at the time, I don’t think, how important Pershing II was to the nation. But I did have a lot of pressure because of getting the program done and getting it fielded on time.” My name is Donald Hickman and I was born in Montgom- testing pieces of the hardware before they ery, Alabama. I attended public school and graduated from were actually flown at the Cape. I stayed in Sidney Lanier High School. I joined the Navy in 1948 and that job for a while and was finally given a served four years on the USS De Haven. I was discharged in job of heading up the Advanced Product 1952 and attended Alabama Polytechnic Institute, now known Improvement Program for Pershing and the as Auburn University - Go Tigers! I got a BS in electrical en- outgrowth of that was Pershing IA and Per- gineering and a Master’s Degree in applied mathematics. I shing II. And finally I got the job of running met my wife there and we got married while we were in college Pershing II which I did for about 6 or 7 and she worked while I finished my schooling. After gradua- years. tion I went to work at Convair, Fort Worth on the B-58 pro- After that I decided I had enough and I gram which was our first supersonic bomber. After two years I retired. It was a wonderful career and I en- accepted a position at Martin Marietta as senior engineer on joyed every minute of it, but I tell you the the La Crosse Program. I worked on that program a little truth, I never looked back after I left. over a year, when I got a call from my boss. He wanted me to go on the Pershing Program and head up the reliability pre- flight certification testing group which had responsibility for Inside December News from Bill President’s Message .................... 3 The Games we Play Bridge, Golf, Bowling ................. 9 Community Service Day of Caring .............................. 14 Happy Holidays REALM Christmas Party ............. 15 It’s that time Again Installation of Officers ................. 16 Travel Donald Hickman, left, presents a Pershing model to Briga- Titusville, Singin’ in the Rain ...... 17 dier General William E. Sweet, Pershing Commander in Europe. Hickman: Continued on Page 4. REALM News—December 2015—Page 2 REALM News is copy- REALM Board of Directors righted. Do not use, reproduce, or copy any Executive Committee (through January 2016) content without permis- Chairman ...................... 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REALM News distribution Travel and special events REALM Communications direc- Joe Boler Alan Courney tor, mailing list, REALM roster [email protected] [email protected] Ed Jones 407-293-6549 407-876-4574 [email protected] Schedule James Clontz 407-859-3766 Linda Schaidt REALM News [email protected] 407-293-4666 [email protected] Evelyne Mitchell 407-880-3121 [email protected] REALM Treasurer Memorabilia 407-855-8364 Dave Hayworth Gerry Shoaf Membership, Care and Concern [email protected] [email protected] Ann Hartle 407-886-6828 407-876-4090 [email protected] 3208 E. Colonial Drive, Box #302, Blood Donations 407-862-8282 Orlando, FL 32803 Sylvia Williamson Abney [email protected] Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy New Year! Coming Events REALM Website December 8 ....... REALM Christmas Party at Errol Es- http://realm-fl.org/ tates, Apopka The website has archives of REALM News, January 13 ......... Installation Of Officers, Elks Lodge minutes of the REALM Executive Board meet- January 30 ......... Lockheed Martin MC Dinner Dance, ings, pictures of REALM events, our schedule, Hyatt Grand Cypress, Masquerade the REALM Constitution, and helpful links to Ball discounts, other retirement clubs, and the Lock- heed Martin Website, and much more! March 5 ............. Titusville, Dixie Crossroads, Singin’ in the Rain We also have a Facebook page. Just search for REALM - Retired Employee Association of April 1 - 2.......... Ft. Myers Getaway Lockheed Martin. REALM News—December 2015—Page 3 President’s Message By Bill Rivera As we close out the year, I leave you with this It’s December al- thought: May the good times and treasures of the ready and hard to present become the golden memories of tomorrow. I believe 2015 has wish everyone a peaceful and prosperous Christmas flown by. This is an season and a safe and healthy New Year. excellent opportunity to reflect on REALM’s accom- plishments through- out the year. Alt- hough we experi- enced some organiza- tional challenges, REALM continued its track record of notable achievements and this year was no excep- tion. Attendance at our Lunch Bunch events were very well attended and continues to be a popular social gathering venue. Every member owes a debt of thanks to those who volunteered, took the initia- tive to sponsor and coordinate the venue, and to- gether made this activity a great success in 2015. Throughout the year, REALM again made its pres- ence visible in the community through its support of the “Honor Flight of Central Florida” program, the “Welcome Home Troops” program, the judging of science competitions at the Orlando Science Center, and supporting this year’s Lockheed Martin’s “Day A Very Merry Christmas and of Caring” at the Edgewood Children’s Ranch. Ad- ditionally, despite the major alterations and expan- A Happy, Healthy New Year! sion of the Orlando Science Center, work continues on the permanent REALM-Lockheed Martin avia- tion and aerospace OSC exhibit. Christmas is just around the corner and in to- day’s cultural environment we need to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas. This phrase, which first appeared in the mid-19th century, suggested that the "true meaning of Christmas" is the celebration of the Nativity of Christ. But over the years it has been overshadowed by the commercialization of the Christmas season. In 1822, the poem A Visit From St. Nicholas helped popularize the tradition of ex- changing gifts, and seasonal Christmas shopping began to assume economic importance. In 1889, The American magazine criticized the commerciali- zation of Christmas when it published the follow- ing: “to give up one's very self, to think only of oth- ers and how to bring the greatest happiness to others — that is the true meaning of Christmas.” REALM News—December 2015—Page 4 Hickman: Continued from Page 1. provements and another test program, and then pro- duction. With the Pershing Program, the week after the last R&D missile came off the line at Martin, the first production missile came off exactly like the last R&D missile. That saved about four or five years of development and millions of dollars. No telling how much money was saved by doing it that way. It was very successful. It was quite a career. I’ll say this about the people at Martin, later Martin Marietta; they were some of the brightest people in the uni- verse. I had one guy who worked for me, he was in the engineering division, and we were having a ter- rible time with the radar system and the radar cor- relator. You had to correlate a synthetic map with what the live radar saw and that would tell you how far you were going to miss a target. It almost looked like something on a television station. We had a tac- tical system. This guy, Dr. Weber, went home and invented a new form of mathematics that let us put the correlation system on a single printed circuit card. Whereas before, we knew how to do it, but it was going to take a cabinet full of equipment and you couldn’t get it in the missile. So that was just typical of the kind of guys we had. Photo Montage from The Donald Hickman Per- shing Missile Project Archives featuring an illus- tration of General John J. Pershing in the center. What were the years that you were involved in Pershing? From the very start it was probably about from 1975 to the Advanced Development Program where we were trying to prove the accuracy of the missile that we advertised.