Norman "Norm" Lewin, an aeronautical engineer who had a 37-year career at...

Norman "Norm" Lewin, an aeronautical engineer who had a 37-year career at Grumman Corp., has died. He was 90. Credit: Lewin Family Photo

Norman "Norm" Lewin, an aeronautical engineer and executive who helped develop the Lunar Module and avert a calamity on Apollo 13 during his 37-year career at Grumman Corp., has died.

He was 90.

Lewin, a Bronx native, moved to Plainview in 1955 and owned a house there until about five years ago. He died of natural causes on Jan. 14 at Aventura Hospital & Medical Center in Aventura, Florida.

As astronauts from the Apollo 11 mission were making their historic landing on the moon in 1969, Lewin, chief of guidance and control for the Grumman-built Lunar Module, used a scale model of the lander to show the process to his children.

"My father was taking the model apart," recalled Leslie Lewin Jeffery, one of his three daughters. "We had our own visuals of what was happening."

He also was part of the brainstorming team of engineers that advised NASA on actions to take when an oxygen tank exploded during the Apollo 13 mission, forcing the crew to use the Lunar Module as a lifeboat.

When Grumman was developing the F-14 Tomcat fighter, Lewin worked on aerodynamics, thermodynamics and propulsion. His duties took him aboard the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal to ensure the jets were meeting performance goals.

Jeffery said her father had wanted to become a pilot, an ambition quashed by his mother, who had lost her husband and Lewin's only brother to untimely deaths.

"He was all she had left," Jeffery said.

Instead, "he did the next best thing," which was to become an aeronautical engineer.

Lewin earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from New York University and a master's in applied mathematics from Adelphi University.

He joined Grumman in 1953, holding numerous positions, including director of engineering and vice president and chief engineer.

Jeffery, who worked in a summer secretarial job at Bethpage-based Grumman, recalled the attention to security, with sensitive documents going into "burn baskets" that were screwed shut and emptied every day.

That was reflected when Lewin's children asked him about work.

A typical reply: "'What's your need to know?'" Jeffery recounted.

As a teenager with his family's money tight, Lewin, a die-hard New York Yankees fan, used to show up early at the stadium in the hope of being selected to monitor the turnstiles in exchange for a chance to watch the game.

One day, he wasn't selected but lingered outside until a stranger beckoned him. Before he knew it, he was sitting in the press box. "If anyone asks, you're helping me," the journalist said.

Lewin's dogged nature also came into play in romance. When he visited a friend on the roof of an apartment building in the neighborhood, the teenager came across a 16-year-old girl named Barbara Kalen who was studying for a Regents test. "They dated for seven years before they got married," Jeffery said. "He was very persistent. She was dating other people. He just kept asking her out and asking her out and he got the girl."

In addition to Jeffrey, of Chicago and Laguna Niguel, California, and his wife, of Hallandale Beach, Florida, Lewin is survived by daughters Meredith Lewin and Laura Lewin, both of Plainview,  two grandsons   and three great grandchildren.

Lewin was interred at Riversville Cemetery in Glenville, Connecticut.

Memorial donations may be sent to the Cradle of Aviation Museum, attention Carol Nelson, Lindbergh Boulevard, Garden City, NY 11530.

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