Memories of hush-hush work on lunar lander

The assignment Vincent Scancarello got in 1968 while working as a foreman at Edo Corp. in College Point was hush-hush.

Scancarello remembered that no one ever told him what was to become of the nearly 5-foot-long sections of aluminum piping, about the diameter of a vacuum cleaner tubing, that he was told to fit with electrical switches.

Once the tubing left his work station in the detail section and went to a company electrician, Scancarello wasn't told what happened to the product.

But a few weeks after Apollo 11 made it to the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, Scancarello recalled that his bosses called him into the executive offices where he came face-to-face with a smiling Gordon Cooper, one of the original Mercury astronauts.

It turned out that the tubing components became the lunar surface sensing probes, the very first parts of the lunar module to hit the surface of the moon and signal that a touchdown had occurred, Scancarello was told. The sensors were attached to the module's legs.

"He [Cooper] said, 'Thank you for doing a good job; they worked fine,' " recalled Scancarello, 89, in a telephone interview from his home in Flushing.

With all of the commemorative reporting about Apollo 11 and those who worked on the lunar landing vehicle, Scancarello, who retired in 1985, said he would like to be recognized for what he did with the sensors.

An official at Edo, now part of ITT Corp., confirmed that Scancarello worked at the company from 1941 to 1985. Documents from NASA's archives, as well as news reports, detailed Edo Corp.'s work on the sensors.

After more than 44 years with Edo, Scancarello said he retired to get away from the rush to computerization.

"The only reason I left is that they were going to put everything on computers and I don't like computers, so I quit," said Scancarello.

A widower whose wife, Eda, died five years ago, Scancarello said he doesn't get around much these days. He still drives, but only on local roads, and doesn't use computers.

"I am still using my head," he said.