Space Race pioneer Marvin Grunzke dies at 92

Dr. Marvin Grunzke, who trained Ham, the first chimpanzee launched into orbit by NASA, died Tuesday at his home in the Dalraida section of Montgomery. He was 92.

It was 1957, when the Space Race between the United States and the former Soviet Union was heating up. The Soviets had just launched Sputnik 2, which carried a dog into orbit. The dog did not survive. The United States, which was looking for an upper hand, recruited Grunzke.

In his later years, Grunzke rarely spoke about his time as an Air Force major and aeromedical specialist when he began working with NASA's unusual environments program. He was one of five people working with the program and ancient, room-sized computers.

Susan Mallett of Montgomery heard the story because she attended church with him and his wife, Eunice Grunzke, at Dalraida United Methodist Church. She was instantly fascinated. As the principal of the former Head Elementary School in 1990, she asked Grunzke to talk to her students about his space mission.

“They were a very special couple. Everyone loved them and were always very giving of their time," Mallett said. “Eunice would accompany her husband to our classes and hand each student a peanut M&M, the same treats they fed Ham.”

He preferred living quietly with his wife of 68 years in the quiet Montgomery neighborhood and “never promoted himself,” Mallett said.

Grunzke retired as an officer from Maxwell Air Force Base in 1975 and spent the rest of his adult life instructing at Huntingdon College and 16 years at Faulkner University until his health failed at age 89. He spent his remaining years at home.

Eunice Grunzke described her husband as "an energetic man" with a wonderful sense of humor.

"It has been a total joy living with Marvin," she said. "He was caring, very loving. He maintained those characteristics all throughout the years that we were married. Those years have been a joy and a blessing for me."

Eunice Grunzke knew Marvin Grunzke her entire life. They grew up together as children, attended the same high school, the same church and were confirmed in the same class at their church. It was only natural that they married after he enlisted in the Air Force in the late 1940s and was later commissioned.

He was assigned to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in 1958 where he began researching animals for space travel. NASA asked him to be a key trainer for Ham, the chimpanzee named after the acronym for Holloman Aerospace Medical.

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For the 50th anniversary of Ham and the "Astrochimp's" successful launch into space, Grunzke told the Montgomery Advertiser in 2011 that the event pushed the United States ahead in the space race and paved the way for Alan Shepard's 1961 flight aboard Freedom 7.

"Nobody had been at space in that time, so nobody knew anything," Grunzke said. "At the time, we didn't even have the capability to send a grapefruit-sized object into space and we were going to send animals into space?

"And they were going to be a precursor for man."

Funeral arrangements

Visitation

When: 1-2 p.m. Monday, October 3 

Where: Dalraida United Methodist Church, 3817 Atlanta Hwy. in Montgomery

Funeral service

When: Monday from 2-3 p.m.

Where: Dalraida United Methodist Church, 3817 Atlanta Hwy. in Montgomery