HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - Dieter Grau, an original member of Wernher von Braun's German rocket team, was remembered at a memorial service here Saturday as an architect of both the Apollo space program and America's missile defense in the Cold War.
He was also remembered as a grateful naturalized American citizen, a humble man, and a faithful member of First Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, where the memorial was held. Grau died Wednesday at 101.
"He was very appreciative of the opportunity to come to the United States," son Peter Grau said of his father, who arrived in America in 1946 as one of the original von Braun rocket team. Because of that gratitude, Grau said, his father "tried to do his best in every task assigned by the Army and later the National Aeronautics and Space Administration."
Grau is well-known as the director of one of nine Marshall Space Flight Center "laboratories," the name the Germans gave to the sections that ran each part of their rocket programs. Brooks Moore, who also headed one of those labs, said Grau's was quality control and oversight, "the key, the most critical of all the laboratories."
Grau not only helped build the Saturn rockets, Moore said, but he was in charge of the electrical systems of America's earliest intercontinental ballistic missiles. Those missiles were key to the nation's defense in the post-World War II years, Moore said, and their successors helped end the Cold War.
Saturday's memorial traced Grau's American journey from Ft. Bliss, Texas, to the early days on Redstone Arsenal's "Squirrel Hill," where he was a mentor to young American engineers like Moore and Ted Paludan, who was also at the service. Peter Grau said his father "could understand a situation and what needed to be done to fix it" and "he always told the truth." Those were the traits that made him a trusted adviser to von Braun.
A crowd of about 100 people attended the service, including U.S. Space & Rocket Center trainers in their flight suits, at least one other German member of von Braun's now-dwindling rocket team, and current and former NASA employees. Celebrating Grau's life was a chance for them to get together again and remember.
Several speakers and guests talked about how much Huntsville has changed in the six decades since the Germans came. Huntsville was a cotton town then, and it is a Space Age city now in large part because they succeeded at the missions they were given.
"He's made a huge difference in all of our lives," former NASA public affairs officer Ed Buckbee said. "He was loved and supported in Huntsville," Moore agreed. "He loved Huntsville, and we loved him."