Charles Frank Bolden Jr. formerly served as the 12th Administrator of NASA from 2009 to 2017. He was the first African American to head the agency permanently. In addition to being a retired U.S. Marine Corps Major General, Charlie is a former astronaut who has flown on four Space Shuttle missions. He is the Founder and CEO Emeritus of the Charles F. Bolden Group, a consortium of accomplished leaders founded in 2017 to foster international collaboration in making life better for all humanity.

Charlie joins us today to describe what it was like growing up in the segregated South. He shares his experience as one of the first African Americans to attend the Naval Academy. You’ll learn how he became a pilot in the Marine Corps despite hating flying in his youth. He also shares his observations on the leadership culture of NASA and underscores the characteristics astronauts have in common.

“The one characteristic we all had in common in the Astronaut Corps is that we were all visionaries and dreamers—people who thought about what the world could be”

- Charlie Bolden

This week on Kathy Sullivan Explores:

●      What it was like growing up in segregated South Carolina in the ‘60s

●       Charlie’s experiences with the Naval Academy

●       Why Charlie used to avoid flying airplanes

●       What eventually led Charlie to the Marine Corps during his plebe year at the Naval Academy

●       Finding his way to flight school and aviation

●       Charlie’s perceptions of NASA’s culture and leadership when he arrived at the Astronaut Corps

●       Bringing Apollo-era astronauts to the 20th century and making NASA a welcoming place for women and people of color

Our Favorite Quotes:

“The leadership skills in the astronaut office then were lacking, considering the challenge they had with making it a place that was openly welcoming to women and people of color. We were tolerated, rather than welcomed with open arms.”

- Charlie Bolden

“It’s not about the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.”

- Charlie Bolden

Connect with Charlie Bolden:

• Inter Astra

• Inter Astra on LinkedIn

• The Charles F. Bolden Group

• The Charles F. Bolden Group on LinkedIn

• The Charles F. Bolden Group on YouTube

• Charlie Bolden on LinkedIn

Credits:

Executive Producer: Toby Goodman

Audio & Sound Design: Lee Turner

Production by CxS Partners LTD

Spaceship Not Required

I’m Kathy Sullivan, the only person to have walked in space and gone to the deepest point in the ocean.

I’m an explorer, and that doesn’t always have to involve going to some remote or exotic place. It simply requires a commitment to put curiosity into action.

In this podcast, you can explore, reflecting on lessons learned from life so far and from my brilliant and ever-inquisitive guests. We explore together in this very moment from right where you are… spaceship not required.

Welcome to Kathy Sullivan Explores.

This podcast is brought to you by the InterAstra Institute, the global public square for the business of space. Join us at interastra.space.

AI Transcript...

Out a wad into his platoon. I could hear it splash, and I kinda went, oh. He looked at me and he said, Bolden, I think you lost your mind. You've got 100 of classmates who would give their IT to go to flight school, and you wanna be a infantry officer? And I said, yes, sir. Major McElroy, I do. He said, well, I think that's the dumbest thing I ever heard, but if you wanna do it, you can do it. So he said, come on back in and talk to me after the 3 day war. So we went out for the 3 day war, and he was absolutely right.

I went through that, and I've the next day, I beat a path in the major McElroy's office. And I

take it all back, sir.

He looked he looked up at me and smiled. He said, bolder? What you want? I said, well, major McElroy, I'm here to tell you. I wanna keep my aviation option. He said, I'm glad to hear that.

I am the only person to have walked in space and gone to the deepest point in the ocean. Hi. I'm Kathy Sullivan, and I'm an explorer. Exploring doesn't always have to involve going to some remote or exotic place. It simply requires your commitment to put curiosity into action. So join me on this podcast journey as I reflect on lessons learned from life so far and from my brilliant and ever inquisitive guests. We'll explore together in this very moment from right where you are. Spaceship not required.

Welcome to Kathy Sullivan explores. Before we take off, I have a gift for you. I believe that no matter where you are today, an active thirst for knowledge will help unlock your ability to live a life of meaning and happiness. So I'm sharing some lessons I've learned on my road less traveled. Over at Kathy sullivan explores dotcom, you'll find my 7 astronaut tips to improving your life on earth. When you sign up, I'll send them to you and also make sure you're the first to discover future podcast episodes and learn more about exciting adventures ahead. Just head on over to kathysullivanexplorers.com. If you followed any news about the United States space program and NASA in the past 10 years, you'll no doubt recognize the name of my guest today.

Major general Charles f Bolden, or Charlie as he much prefers to be called, was the administrator or head of NASA from 2011 to 2020. With a resume reading marine corps general, 4 time shuttle astronaut, and NASA administrator, you might well say he's had a storied career, but he'd reject that description. Charlie was born in segregated South Carolina and grew up, as he'll tell us, in a middle class black family in a stable community. So join me for the first of 2 episodes where my Hubble flight buddy, Charlie Bolden, shares his experiences as one of the first African Americans to attend the Naval Academy at Annapolis and tells us how he ended up a pilot in the Marine Corps despite hating flying in his youth and how that eventually led to his career at NASA. Charlie Bolden, major general Bolden, my my pilot and commander and good friend. It is so great to see you.

Good to be with you there, doctor Sullivan.

Happy to have you on the show. You have quite an elaborate online biography, so anyone who's Googled you even once will know a lot about you. But in a nutshell, it's a it's a storied career from a very humble background. Naval Academy, Marine Corps combat pilot, 4 shuttle flights

Yep.

Back to the marine corps, up rising to the rank of major general, and then thank heavens for all of us, hopping over to NASA to be administrator through the entire Obama presidency. And I had the great privilege of being a small part of some bits of that career. But if you would, I'd like to start back as I always do at the very beginning. Charlie Baldwin junior was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1946. Yep. Tell us your family a bit and you as a very young child and then, you know, growing up in the segregated south of South Carolina in the sixties.

Well, Kathy, thanks very much, first of all, for the opportunity just to share the time with you and, and really to talk a little bit about about my background. And one of your first comments let me correct it, kind of. I don't I don't come from a humble background. I I am, and some people will misunderstand this, and and so let me try to explain it. I have incredible friends, we both do, who come from what I would consider to be really humble backgrounds. I mean, they were the first to go to school. You know, they they really didn't know where the I came from a middle class black family. My mom and dad were both college educated.

Jackie and I both. Both of us are privileged to have been born into, families that were a part of middle class America, which is something that we seem to have lost touch with, and we don't understand anymore how important it is. But but my parents were middle class working people. Jackie and I both decided we were not gonna teach because we watched them, and we knew how hard they worked and how little money they made. That has not changed, but I still think that's the that's the salt of the earth is those people who don't make a man enough money work way too hard and raise kids like me. So that now that that's out of the way.

Well, so you've mentioned Jackie twice. And just to be clear

The the lady of my life.

The great missus Bolden.

Yes.

From what you've just said, tell us when you met her. It sounds like it was very early on.

Missus Bolden and I, to the best of our knowledge, met when we were 3.

Alright then.

And we actually we actually knew each other, not as as 3 as best as 3 year olds can because my mom and dad and and Jackie's father, Pete Walker, went to high school together at Booker T Washington High School in Columbia, South Carolina. And at the time, Booker Washington was the only black high school in Columbia. Jackie's mother, on the other hand, being the the daughter of a Baptist preacher, Jackie's mother went to Benedict School, which was a private church school in Columbia that carried on into Benedict College. So Jackie's mom, Adel and Pete Walker went to Benedict where he played football, And my mom and dad went to Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina where he played football, and she was the the school queen and all that other kind of stuff. She was the scholar. He was the jock. She went into Alpha Kappa Alpha, a very scholarly black sorority.

My dad, like me, became an omega sci fi q dog that although they're brilliant people, their reputation is not such.

So a little more as a drinking party?

A little bit more. So so my dad and Pete Walker played football together in high school. And when they had kids, the Walkers had 3 girls, and my mom and dad had 2 boys. And we tended to do things together because my mom and Jackie's mom, Adele, were members of an organization called Jack and Jill, Jack and Jill of America. It was a black mother's organization around the country that came together to afford their kids an opportunity at social life that we would not get otherwise in the segregated south and sometimes even in what was called the integrated north. And so Jack and Jill got us to museums and art shows and concerts and the like when we couldn't do it on our own because they could get special permission to go to the museums at certain hours of the week or day or or stuff like that. So that's how we came together at the age of 3.

Say a little bit more about that. I've never heard that part of the early story before. Those places wouldn't let African Americans in in the light of day. You had to go at night or when the white folk wouldn't be bothered kinda thing?

That's kind of the way it was. We Wow. They picked times when either they were closed to the public or, you know, the traffic was gonna be low enough that we wouldn't cause a disturbance. Like, the theaters, blacks didn't have we did not have a theater in Columbia in my early childhood, so we were able to go to the downtown theaters on Saturday mornings for the matinees, but they opened what they did was they closed the balcony to whites and opened the balcony to to black kids.

You mean the movie theaters? The movie theater. Yeah.

So that's where I got to see Lash LaRue and Hop Along Cassidy and the and the lone ranger. But, also, my science fiction favorite was always Buck Rogers, where I would watch walk out to his spacecraft, walk aboard, fly off to Mars, and come back all in the same day.

Time for lunch.

Time for lunch, you know, or whatever it was. So so that that's sort of my early childhood.

So you went to a segregated I mean, it was fully segregated. Right? So you were

Fully segregated. Yeah. And we went to Jackie and I went to Bethlehem Center Community Center. It was a privately run community center in the middle of the black neighborhood, but they had a day care center slash kindergarten. And so Jackie and I were both since our parents were teachers, Jackie and I were both enrolled in Bethlehem Center. And so we got to know each other there, and I can remember she doesn't she doesn't agree with me, but, I fell in love with her very early on. She was just breathtakingly beautiful. And, I remember the Christmas pageant 1 year before we graduated to elementary school.

I was a shepherd, and she was a wise man. And, and I remember just seeing this beautiful little girl with this crown on her head, and I was I was wowed and rude. And I knew that, you know, one of these days, if I can grow some, because I was always undersized, maybe she'll take a look at me.

You know, Charlie, some would say that even today, she's a shepherd and she's the wise man.

That's that's very true. Very, very true.

So I'm I'm curious. It sounds like a delightful childhood with, you know, rich social life and clearly great education. Did you ever bump into the the the cruelty, the oddity of segregation directly?

We did. But even back then, because nothing bad happened to us most of the time, we look on it now as sort of, you know, the the cherished part of growing up. For example, my mom and dad went to a Presbyterian church, Ladsden Presbyterian Church, which was in downtown Columbia. And they had a boy scout troop. So for me to go to boy scout cub scouts and boy scouts, I had to walk through white neighborhoods to get to my downtown church and my scout meetings. And I tell people in fact, I used it as a campaign slogan when I ran for class president when I got to the naval academy. At the beginning of plebe summer, there were 7 blacks in my class of about 1400.

1st the first African Americans at the academy. Right?

Well, we were we were later on, but but there still weren't a lot. Yeah. And so I remember standing in front of my classmates with my campaign speech, and I said, you know, the last time I was in front of this many white guys, they were chasing me as I was trying to get home in my scout meeting. And and that got a laugh, and and I got elected. So that was just sort of a part of life that that we kind of expected. The good thing, if you can say it was good, the good thing about growing up in the south was that you knew where you could go legally and lawfully, and you knew where you were not supposed to go. So you knew that if you went to certain places, you could be in trouble. You might go to jail as as we found out later with the sit ins and the, you know, the lunch counter demonstrations, which gave us targets for places that we wanted to go, places that it was against the law for us to go, and we knew it was wrong that we couldn't go there because we were citizens just like anybody else.

We didn't drink from the white drinking fountain, and you didn't go into the whites only bathroom and stuff like that, but but that was just the way of life. So it it wasn't it wasn't very difficult. And besides, I spent my summers, most of my summers, particularly as I got into high school in New York City in Harlem. My, my father had 2 sisters who lived on a 100 and 30 fifth Street, and I would go there at the end of the school year and stay most of the summer and just have a ball, playing, you know, stickball in the alleys in in Harlem and out in the middle of the street, and and seeing the big city that was a little bit different. Harlem was segregated at the time, but you didn't have to go very far Yeah. City to see people who didn't look like you. So so it was part of a melting pot.

Was there still a vibrant African American social life on the Harlem scene then? Clubs and

Oh, it it was incredible back then. All of the big name jazz artists and everybody, they were playing in in the clubs and things like that. Wilt Chamberlain, who became one of the, you know, the premier NBA basketball players, actually opened a club around the corner from my aunt's called Wilt's Small's Paradise. And it was Wilt Chamberlain's place, and so that's where everybody migrated. Or to Sylvia's for, you know, for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, which was just an incredible restaurant where you got southern cuisine right there in

In the big apple.

In Harlem, in in the big apple. And so that that was kind of the way growing up in the summertime. And, you know, our sports were sep separated and everything, but we never really although we always wanted to play the white schools or swim against the white teams. For many things like track and field, swimming, We didn't need to actually compete against them because every Saturday Sunday morning when the sports results came out in the newspaper, you know, you could look at the South Carolina state championship and the Palmetto state championship, and South Carolina always meant white. Palmetto State meant black. So there was the Palmetto State Honor Society, the South Carolina State Honor Society, the South Carolina State Championships, the Palmetto States championships. So you could look at the results of all the competition, and we always knew that we were much better than the white swim team across town at Maxey Greg Park because our times were better or the track meets. Our times were better.

So we we we knew we could compete given the opportunity, and that's why I never you know, for me, it never really bothered me as to whether or not I would be able to compete when I had an opportunity to go. And then my mom and dad, again, because they were both educators, had really encouraged me to go away in the summertime, my last 2 years in high school, to National Science Foundation Summer Institutes. And one of them I did out on a place called North Manchester, Indiana at a school a church of the brethren school called Manchester College. And I I took chemistry for for 6 weeks out there. And I was the only black in the in the institute, and I loved it because it was, you know, new to me, but it it also gave me an opportunity to see a lot of white kids and to find out that, when we started talking about stuff or going and doing the experiments, I was just as good as they were. And then my final summer before graduation, I went to Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon, in a summer computer program that, the National Science Foundation sponsored. And, again, I was the only black in, in the institute. But, again, it it didn't really matter because I I was very much at home.

I had met some folk who were at the University of Pittsburgh who, who black family not black folk from from Columbia, and they knew my family. And they found out I was in town, so they would come pick me up on the weekends and and Nice. You know, make sure that I had I was taken care of and everything. So, life was good. K.

And your your fellow students at those camps, they were cool with I mean, you were different, but they were

They they were indeed. Most of them very few of them came from the South. So most of them had at least been exposed to black students before, so this was not their first time to the rodeo. Just yours. Yeah. Just mine. But, but they they all of them reached out to me, and and a lot of several of them, you know, we still every once in a while, we'll get in touch if if we can find out where we are, and that's from back in the 19 sixties.

Yeah. Well, you're you're pretty easy to find. When and how did the idea of going to the Naval Academy come into play?

That came into play at the age of 12 and 7th grade. Yeah. I was watching back back in those days, the military was not frowned upon. You know, we were

This is pre Vietnam War.

We were the sons and daughters of baby boomers, pre Vietnam. Everybody still really appreciated the veterans from World War 2, my dad and my uncles and everything. And there were lots of television programs about military life or things that had to do with the military. So there was the long gray line about West Point.

I remember that.

Men of Minneapolis about life at the Naval Academy, navy log about submarines. Though the silent service was about submarines. Right. And I watched all of them. And, but I was blown away by men of Annapolis, and it it showed every week, you know, some segment of life on the Naval Academy yard. And, I fell in love with the uniforms and also being a young man, you know, having reached puberty and having gained some interest in girls. One of the things that really attracted me to the Naval Academy was all the beautiful girls from all over the world.

Flocking to the gate.

From schools like Goucher and, you know, all the ladies colleges that flocked to the Naval Academy on the weekends for you may be aware of this, but but but our the big deal there on Sunday afternoons was the t fight. And the t

fight I didn't know about that.

The t fight, that was the the way that missus Marshall, the social director, introduced us to to the proper life. So, you know, we had classes during the week to learn how to set the table and and to learn the b and d about which side was bread and which side was drink. And and then we had classes to teach us how to waltz and do all these other kinds of stuff. And on Saturdays, they brought all these young ladies in, and we went into a place called Dahlgren Hall. That was the armory at the Naval Academy. And, so this you go into this armory that's lined with m m 14 rifles.

And and pretty girls.

And pretty girls and a big and a big drape, like a curtain down the middle of the floor right out to where the dance floor began. And the curtain was there because the girls came in on one side and the midshipmen came in on the other side. And when the curtain ended, you look to your left or right, respectively, and that was your date or your appointment for the for the dance that so I'm not sure whether that's why they called it the t fight because with only 4 of us in my class, actually, 6 blacks when we started plea beer. But every time we went to a t fight, we always dispatch one person to the balcony who could be our scout. Scout. And he would he would be flashing numbers if there was a black girl in the group, which they're very rarely were. He would give us numbers about how many to move back to have any chance whatsoever to to to be paired with an with a young black woman. Or if not, he would give numbers of of a girl that he thought, you know, you might really like because she's either your height

or Yeah.

This or that or whatever.

You're saying fight, not flight. Right? Fight. Fight. What what were you fighting over?

I have no idea. I have no idea where where where the name came from. But I know in our group, we were kinda fighting to make sure that we got a good person to escort through the next 2 or 3 hours or however long it lasted. Hilarious. But, anyway, I I got interested in the Naval Academy seeing that kind of stuff on men of Annapolis. And from that day forward, I would write my congressman and my senate my 2, US senators and the vice president of the United States, whoever it happened to be. But going into high school, it was Lyndon Johnson who was the vice president with with with president Kennedy, and Strom Thurman, Olin d Johnson were my 2, US senators, and a gentleman by the name of Albert Watson was my congressional representative.

So any of those gentlemen could nominate I mean, you need a nomination to be considered by the academy. Absolutely. Of those could nominate you.

That those were the ones from whom I was eligible for an appointment. I was not eligible for a presidential appointment because my dad was no longer active duty, and he was not a medal of honor winner. So the president actually doesn't have the power that the vice president has when it comes to nominating or or appointing people to the service academy. So this the the vice president can appoint or nominate anybody from across the country. I was really counting on vice president Lyndon Johnson because from Thurman, Olin d Johnson, and Albert Watson had made it very clear, you know, going into my junior year, there was no way in the world they were gonna appoint me to the academy.

Didn't dare risk appointing a black boy?

A black. Exactly.

Right.

So, anyway, my senior year, November 22nd, we were on our way down to Charleston, South Carolina, our football team, to play Burke High School of Charleston for the Palmetto State, the South Carolina State Black Football Championship. And we got word on the bus that president Kennedy had been assassinated. And, and that struck me as the the death knell for my my chances to go to the Naval Academy. And so I was I was devastated not only by the loss of the president, but by what I viewed then as a loss of any opportunity to go to the Naval Academy. My my mom, as she always did, kinda came in and picked me up, and she said, you're gonna just give up. You know? You're gonna quit. And I said, what do you mean? She said, I'm I don't know. Are you just gonna quit? You're gonna give up.

And I thought about it for a while, and I said, you know, I'm gonna write a letter to the president. And I did. And I picked up pen and paper, and I wrote a letter to president Johnson and explained that I had been writing to him for a number of years. And this was me again, the same guy that said, I want you to know who I am, and I really need help. I know I'm not eligible for a presidential appointment, but I need help. Never heard from him, but I got a visit within weeks from a navy recruiter. And then, several more weeks, president Johnson sent a retired federal judge Bennett from Washington DC around the country looking for qualified black and Hispanic young men to come to the to the service academies. And and I ended up getting an appointment from congressman William Dawson in Chicago, Illinois.

And, another classmate, Wilson Roy, whose father was actually a colonel in the army, Wilson ended up getting an appointment to West Point, but he'd you know, his, I think, actually came from president Johnson because his dad was an active duty army.

Yeah. Yeah. So tell me some about your life at the Naval Academy. You you've told me a couple of stories over the years, but, you know, some of the highs and lows. And if you if you look back on it now, besides the academic preparation

Yeah.

What key elements of the the leadership foundation that you've built on since do you think were really forged in those academy years?

I I think second only to my my kitchen table where my mom and dad taught me ethics and leadership and and how to care for people, the naval academy probably comes next. And it's because of the exam the leadership examples I had there. One person in particular, major John Riley Love, was my first company officer. The the commissioned officer who was responsible for a group of us, about a 150 midshipmen from all four classes. And, there were 36 companies in the brigade of midshipmen, the 4,000 member brigade. And major Love was like my dindaddy. He was my he was a Vietnam veteran, very tough. I mean, unbelievably tough, but like my dad, imminently fair.

You know, my dad had been my high school football coach.

And He was white?

He was white. Yep. Major Love was white. There were no black there were no black commissioned officers at the Naval Academy in any category while I was there, and those 4 you.

So I gotta ask you, Charlie, because I hear, and I'm sure you do a lot from other people sort of the power of your example, which is which is immense, and it's both your personal character and your achievements. But it often comes accompanied with the sentence, the thought, basically, that if you can't see it, you can't be it.

Yeah. I did have the example of black midshipman, and and 2 of them well, all 3.

Watching men of Annapolis at age

3 No. No. No. No. No. None whatsoever. And and like I said, I fell in love with an Annapolis for a very trivial actually, ridiculous the girls and the uniforms.

I I get that, but I'm kinda trying to get at it and and tease out of it, you know, for folks listening is Yeah. What it was inside of you that or in your parentage, I suppose.

Yeah. Yeah.

That let that not matter. Because, you know, I never there I never had any female astronauts to

watch. Exactly.

And and it it didn't stop me dreaming and imagining a lot about what it would be like to be a part of that kind of adventure. And Yeah. So tell me about your experience with that.

Yeah. But you have to remember. You and I are dreamers. And I would venture to say that of all the people who serve with us in the astronaut corps, the one characteristic we all had in common was that we were visionaries and dreamers and people who thought of how the world could be, not how it was, but how it could. I'm not even sure we thought very often about how it should be. We just I thought about how it could be. I didn't have any intention or any purpose in being a role model for anybody or setting the example for anybody. I just knew, you know, that I could somehow if I applied myself and this again was because that's what my mom and dad told me, that I could become a midshipman at the Naval Academy.

It it it there was nobody who looked like me there, but my dad, his his mantra as a football coach was it's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. So size never made any difference to me as you know. Yeah. My wife says I suffered the small man's syndrome. So, you know, I I think once I once I got there, then I started looking for for examples of leadership. Since I knew that's what the Naval Academy's mission was, was develop midshipman morally morally, mentally, and physically to lead marines and sailors of the US naval service. And so that's what I sought out to do. And and major I was just fortunate that major Love was my first company officer, and he was only there that year.

That was his 3rd and final year at the academy as a company officer. He was an infantry officer. The 2 the the irony is there were 2 things I was definitely not gonna do when I went to the naval academy. Under no circumstances was I gonna become a marine. I thought marines were absolutely crazy. I lived, you know, we were we were dead in the middle of the state in Columbia, the capital city, but we were not far enough to be safe from marines coming out of re out of recruit you know, basic training down in in Paracel.

Island. Yeah.

Graduation weekend, it didn't take them any time to get up to Colombia and wreak havoc.

And if you think spring break is wild these days Exactly. Exactly. Recruits right after they become marines Exactly. You see nothing.

So so I did not wanna have anything to do with the marine corps. And the second thing was I was not gonna fly airplanes under any circumstances.

I thought it was inherently dangerous. And, I had flown in an airplane, you know, other than a commercial airplane. I'd flown in a in a simp you know, a light civil airplane once when I was 8 years old with a man one of my classmates' father, mister Ernest Henderson, who had been a Tuskegee Airmen. And, I didn't know a lot about the Tuskegee Airmen at the time, so I didn't appreciate it. But I also didn't appreciate the flight because we you know, he took us up, and we flew around, what was called Columbia Municipal Airport at the time. It was the predecessor to Columbia Airport, and I was totally unimpressed at the age of 8. So I, you know, I said thank you, mister Henderson, and I went away, and I thought I'd never ever be in an airplane again.

I've note I've noticed something as you speak that you told me a little bit about once and I when I asked you to comment on it a bit, The consistency, unwavering with which you refer to all the adults that were on you as mister this or missus that.

Oh, yes. Oh,

yes. That was another quirk that struck me of your young life in the south that so inside the black community, I suppose people were mister or missus or first name, polite, but also, you know, friendly.

Yeah.

But, you know, I think I didn't quite appreciate till maybe the recent movie Hidden Figures.

Yeah.

That white folk would never call a black man mister or a black woman missus.

No. They they would they the favorite you know, for a professional person, the favorite term was professor.

So you could be a reverend or a professor?

You could be a reverend or professor What? Your last name? No. Your first name.

Your first name. Wouldn't even grace you with your last name.

Anything but to call you mister. Uh-huh. And, which acknowledged that you were a human being.

You had some standing.

Professor, you know, I don't I don't know why they picked that, but Yeah. But, you know, I can my father was every every once in a while call him called professor, but but frequent is just Charles. And, so I got used to it. But we were we were taught sometimes at great pain. You addressed any adult as mister or miss or missus, and you were very respectful in your conversation with them and and you respected them.

So back to the academy, I think many people, many young men and women perhaps like you fall in love with the uniform and the aura and the mystique. It's actually not it's not only not an easy place to get in. It's an exceedingly tough 1st year deliberately so for lots of reasons. But how hard did you find that 1st year in adjusting?

We have changed quite a bit through the years. We we now do not try to run people out the way we did when I was there. We, you know, it it was the purpose of upperclassmen to get rid of pleads, to get rid of freshmen.

Really? Weed you out?

Weed you out. They they only wanted the the highly desirable. And so

So was that actually the highly desirable, or was it just see if you could crush people and if if they crushed you, they were too weak?

It depended on it depended on who the person was. We you know, I in my company of about a 150 midshipmen, some of the some of the upper classmen were just nasty. They were just they didn't like anybody. And so the people that they tried to weed out were people that they considered to be weak. Sometimes they were not like them. I remember, although I was the only black in my company and my class there, I was not the the person that took the took the most abuse. I had a classmate by the name of Alex Lei, who was Chinese, or Chinese American. And and there were a number of the upperclassmen and even some of my own classmates who were pleads of these upperclassmen, you know, in order to to look good for their upperclassmen, just verbally and physically abused Alec that whole year.

And and even after spring break, when we came back and that was generally, you know, the the the although that was not the formal end of preb year. When you came back from spring break, everything really lightened up, and people stopped coming around, which was the the formal go to to an upperclassman's room before meals and and spout out things verbatim and go do things they wanted you to do. Get a wire brush. It was another form of abuse. Yeah. But almost everybody in the company stopped doing come arounds except Alex. Alex did come around right up until graduation day, and they were they were abusive. They were abusive in every respect, and it was because he was Chinese American.

And, you know, the the name calling and everything else. And so, that that kept some heat off me. I felt really bad about it because there was nothing I could do, at least nothing I thought I could do. But he became a very good friend of mine and went on to graduate, and I've I've actually lost contact with him. But my guess is he became a superb officer in the in the US Navy.

Yeah. So major love was clearly one of the high points of your time with the academy.

He was the high point for me as it turned out because, like I said, we separated at the end of my plebe year. One of the things that made him a high point was my 2nd year company officer was a gentleman by the name of lieutenant Van Meter, who was a guy that looked like a little rat. He was a nuclear power officer, and, and he was short in stature and acted like it. I mean, everything about him was immature. He had no no good leadership qualities that I ever found, and he really enjoyed what was called frying the midshipman. The the when you Yeah. When you violated a rule, you got written up so that it ended up in restriction or worse. And, he, like many of the navy officers there, prided themselves in writing midshipmen up, you know, and and getting them lots of demerits.

That was that was another way to get people out. And, so he exhibited zero leadership characteristics that I wanted to emulate later in life. The good thing was he left after that. Well no. He didn't leave. What happened was at the end of my sophomore year, the Naval Academy switched, my class. So we went to the to the other regiment. The Naval Academy was the brigade was divided into 2 regiments versus second regiment.

I started in 29th company second regiment, and then we got moved over to 11th company, 1st regiment. 11th company had a reputation of its own. It was it was uniquely mean. My class came in. Most of us didn't fit with that image. And so we spent the next 2 years trying to clean up 11th company's attitude and reputation. And so we weren't overly endearing to to pleads, but we tried to give them a pretty tough pleab year, but do it in a civil manner. And so we got rid of a lot of the things around the company area that talked about the 11th company tigers.

We graduated as 11th company tigers, but but the tigers of 11th company in the class of 1968, our predecessors would probably figure out that we had lost a whole bunch of

They were pussycats compared

to the Exactly. Exactly. Anyway, I my last 2 years, my company officer was a was a a lieutenant commander, Lou Timbs or Thames, I guess, t h a m e s. He was a conventional destroyer man. And, he was what I envisioned.

That mean?

Well, it meant he was not a nuclear power guy. You know, everybody in the navy in the 19 sixties was not a nuclear power qualified person like today. Today, every ship in the navy is a nuclear power ship, so you've gotta go to nuclear power school and everything. Luke Thames was a was a conventional destroyer man, but also an incredible leader. And as a matter of fact, I enjoyed being in his company and then becoming a leader for him because I was company commander, one of the sets of my well, 2 sets of my senior year. So I, you know, I work hand in glove with him to try to help develop the rest of the company. And he was somebody I greatly respected. I wanted to emulate, not quite up on the step as John Riley Love, but he was in the navy.

And so I always envisioned that I was probably gonna spend my career for my my 5 year career, you know, on a ship somewhere. And I figured, you know, chefs, I wanna be like like lieutenant commander Tim.

So let's see. Yeah. And it kinda ended up with getting the marine corps part wrong and then the aviation part wrong, and then 5 turned into more like 35 or something. What flipped the switch on going marine? Because you had you had the option if you Yeah. Complete your studies at the academy. You can, frankly, you can opt for navy or marine corps from Annapolis. You could even opt for commission in the army or the air force if you Exactly. What turned you around?

The switch flipper for me was. You know, I was sitting there. We were approaching. Back then, it was called service selection because it really was selection. There was none of what is today at the at the service academies, at least at the naval academy, you really have to qualify to be considered by a service option. So people who wanna go in the marine corps have to go to they go to Leatherneck, which is essentially 6 weeks of basic training in Quantico, one in summer before you become a first class midshipman. If you haven't been to Leatherneck, the chances of the marine corps allowing you to come in are pretty slim. People who wanna be seals go to junior buds or something.

They go to be seen and to be graded, you will.

And pick up some of the skills.

Exactly. And so I had been to down to Little Creek, Virginia and wanna marine core utilities and stuff for

And for those who don't know, Little Creek, Virginia is the home of this Navy Special Forces.

Exactly. But I had been there. So I, again, I got a peep at the marine core. And I while I was I was like a fish out of water because I didn't know how to put on my my equipment. I didn't know anything about the marine corps, but I had a good time crawling around in the mud and doing all that other kind of stuff. And, so service selection night was coming up. And on that night, in order of class standing, you know, you walk down to a place called Smoke Hall that that is one of the community like, a community center on a on a regular college campus. And you walk in and there are all these tables that represented each warfare specialty.

And you walk over to the one you want and you sign on the dotted line. You you know?

Can walk over to submarines or surface ships or special warfare or marines. Right?

The only thing you couldn't walk over to was nuclear power. Admiral Rickover ran nuclear power, and nuclear power, he picked. So everybody in the class who went to nuclear power was prepicked by admiral Rickover, and they already had a so they walked over to the desk just to get their check. Yeah. Because Yeah. You if you were picked by admiral Rick over for nuclear power, you got a signing bonus. Oh. That was the way that nuclear power worked back then because, you know, it was new and they were How

to draw people in?

People in. Yeah. Yeah. So before I even went down, I said, you know, I can sail a ship, and I'd love it because I I love being at sea. I had spent my my summer before senior year on a Korean war destroyer, USS, McCaffrey DD 8 60 out of Saseko, Japan. We were on the gun line in Vietnam, so I got to watch us fire 5 inch guns and all that kind of stuff, and and it it just I said, you know, I could do this for 5 years. But I before I left my room to go down, I said, but, you know, I wanna be like major love. I love people, and so I think I'm gonna go marine corps.

And I walked down. I told my I had told my family. I had given them a heads up, and every everybody cried. My dad cried. My dad cried like a baby. So, I kinda I kinda let him know that I was leaning that way. I hadn't decided, but I was leaning toward the marine corps. So everybody

Over the the hazardous duty of marines, basically?

Everybody had had their opportunity to try to talk me out of it. And so I went down and I walked right to the marine corps desk, and I signed on the dotted line, and and I got assigned to go to basic class 1 dash 69, which was the first class of fiscal year 1969 because fiscal year started in July back then. And so I was in alpha company, and I was happy as I could be. And I went through I loved the basic school. Everything we did was a lot of fun, except the last exercise was a 3 day war in November, and it was typical Washington unexpected freezing.

No. Wait. Washington where? Where where was this

Washington DC because we were at Quantico, Virginia, just south.

Okay.

Snow on the ground, cold, everything was frozen.

Everything you didn't have in South Carolina?

Everything I didn't have and everything I had not experienced even at the Naval Academy. So all my crawling around in the mud at Little Creek, Virginia, you know, that summer that had enticed me to go in the marine corps, that was gone. The ground was now frozen.

They never tell you the whole story whether

it's done the bait. There was there was no mud. This was all ice and snow. And I really I had this I I hated cold, and I had this fear that if I lay down at night, I die of hypothermia. So I volunteered for all the firewatches. And so for 72 hours, for 3 straight days, I did nothing but march and do fire watch because I I knew if I went to sleep, I'd die. I had an aviation option out of the naval academy, but I had gone in just before the 3 day exercise to talk to my my company officer, a major McElroy from Alabama, and he had a real southern draw. And I walked in, and, he knew that I was an aviator.

And so I walked in, and I said, major McElroy, I wanna I wanna give up my aviation option. And he kinda looked up and looked at me, and he pulled open his bottom drawer. And in the bottom drawer, he had one of these what they call a 5 I forget what but it was a big old coffee can, and that was his platoon because he he chewed tobacco. He pulled it open, and he went he spit out a wad into his platoon. I could hear it splash, and I kinda went, oh. He looked at me, and he said, Boulder, I think you lost your mind. He said, you got 100 of classmates who would give their IT to go to flight school, and you wanna be a infantry officer? And I said, yes, sir. Major McElroy, I do.

He said, well, I think that's the dumbest thing I ever heard, but if you wanna do it, you can do it. So he said, come on back in and talk to me after the 3 day war. So we went out for the 3 day war, and he was absolutely right. I went through that, and I've the next day, I beat a path in the major McElroy's office.

I take it all back, sir.

He looked he looked up your man smile. He said, bolder? What you want? I said, well, major McElroy, I'm here to tell you. I wanna keep my aviation option. He said, I'm glad to hear that. That's a very smart move. And he dismissed me, and I went off and and got my my assignment to go to flight school. And I I had done well enough at the basic school. Everything in the Marine Corps is based on performance and everything.

So I was in the top of my class. So I got my first choice of, of flight school or whatever else, and I chose to go to, you know, down to Pensacola and get started. And and that's how I got into aviation. Fell in love. Although I said I I I thought flying was inherently dangerous. My first time I got in an airplane in in Pensacola, I I felt this lift off, and I just I went, holy jeez. I don't know how I missed this before, but this is really cool. And and I was off to the races.

Yeah. You were. And combat missions in Vietnam. I wanna fast forward a little bit and touch somewhat, but kinda briefly on your very long tenure in 4 flights in the astronaut corps. And I'm interested for your in particular, for your some thoughts on having grown up at the Naval Academy of Marine Corps. What were your perceptions of of culture and leadership when you arrived in the astronaut corps?

Yeah. And then

I wanna be sure we move on and talk a bit about your time as the head of NASA because you were you were at the helm of NASA during times of very significant change.

You know, Kathy, you I think you can appreciate this, and, you know, I'm not gonna call any names because I I don't want to. But I in one respect, I was somewhat disappointed with the leadership in the astronaut office.

How so?

There were there were historic figures who were there, but everybody who led the astronaut office was a military person. And so having come from by then, I think I had 12 years in the marine corps. And while I didn't have high expectations for naval officers, I had come to believe that they were all really good leaders and everything, and they took care of their people. And, I found the personnel skills and the the leadership skills of people in the astronaut office and other places were lacking somewhat considering the challenge that they had with integrating you and your classmates, trying to make it a place that was openly welcoming to, you know, to females and and people of color. And I think we were tolerated more than than welcomed with open arms.

You came 2 years after me, so you were still 3 years.

2 years after you. So I can't imagine what it was like when you got there.

Yeah. So my class had the the first six women and the first three African Americans, the first Asian American.

Exactly.

Your class, class of 80. Right? But you arrived in 81? Yeah. And you were the only African American in that class. Right? Yep. And 2 women. So it was still very new for there

to be still very new.

Strange people like us.

Yeah. And, you know, the military leadership had to deal with a lot of civilians in the office. And I think it it was actually trying to figure out how do we how do we get these Apollo era astronauts to come into the 20th century and get away from believing that only men, you know, can do this work. And I and I saw the work that you and Sally and and Ray and others did in working your way in and and earning people's respect, and I was really impressed. You know, we had folk like Rick Hauck and and Dan Brandenstein out of your class who rose to leadership positions pretty quick. And Mike Smith and my class you know? So over time, in the first few years, the leadership transitions that took place, particularly after we started flying shuttle and the old guard really didn't have time to to be the leaders anymore. They were the still the role models and everything. There were a couple of exceptions.

One would be Jack Klausma, who happened to be a marine, who was exceptional in his leadership. And then our den dad was Alan Bean. Alan Bean was a moonwalker, and Alan Bean was assigned to usher traips around the country with our class and

He was our den mother too.

He was our he was our den dad. Alan was exceptional. The guy was so compassionate. He had found that he you know, in his life, he loved art, and he had become a relatively successful artist, not nearly as successful as he was going to be when he finally left the astronaut office. But, you know, he had been through difficult times in the astronaut office and everything, and he always emphasized us the critical importance of family and making sure you take care of your families because that's what's gonna get you through this stuff.

Yeah. Yeah.

And, and and he was always available and everything. So he was he was sorta like a a major love, to be quite honest to me. Alan was not a pushover, and he he wasn't, but but he was so genuine and, again, like my dad. And so my male role models generally tended to be people who were sort of like my dad.

Say a little more about not by individual, but so so what's the contrast? What was lacking? Or or what what was the opposite of the Alan Bean and Jack Osman like? What style of leadership was that?

I think the big difference was some of the legendary leaders were people that really didn't have time to focus on individuals in the office. They, in one way, you know, they said, hey. You're grown men and women, and you don't you don't need a lot of care and feeding. So I'm gonna let you do what you wanna do up to a certain extent as long as you agree with me.

There was that caveat.

Yeah. And, and and that was not something to which I was accustomed, even in the marine corps. I had leaders in the marine corps who would say, you know, you're on your own. You're big men and women, and and you can do whatever you wanna do. And and tell me what what's on your mind, and I'll think about it. But not not just shut you out or shut you down because you disagreed with with, you know, a direction that that people wanted to go or an opinion people had. And and I found that early on. And it, again, it generally tended to be among the more experienced astronauts who had who had flown before and had been through another system and and were really I didn't think attune to where aviation was heading and not, in my mind, again, understanding that, you know, space and aerospace is just an extension of aviation.

And I remember having a debate with one of the leaders in the astronaut office when we were trying to you may remember this because we were trying to transition the shuttle to the glass cockpit.

Mhmm. Which means we had old style, what we call round

Knobs and dial.

Knobs and dials, and we were get switched to looking more like a modern day business jet or airliner.

Exactly. And your your classmate, Joe Creighton, was in charge of going around and looking at all the airlines and looking at all the the new companies and coming in with prototypes and giving us an opportunity to look at it and say how we would like to see it. But we had certain people in the astronaut office and leadership positions that said, we're not changing anything until we can change all the shuttles so that they're all the same.

Simultaneously.

Yes. Simultaneously, which that was a nonstarter.

Every gonna happen.

We we were never it was never gonna happen. And I remember the one time I ever had an argument with a senior leader in the office who happened to be the chief at the time, You know, I went and I said, you know, you and I both came from the same place. We came from Patuxent River. And I know you're sufficiently older than I am. You never knew what the cockpit was gonna look like when you signed for your airplane in maintenance control and went out and jumped in the airplane. But you had been trained to take a look around, figure out what was in a different location and everything else, and we were going out to do critical tests where we really and, ideally, you

wanted straight and level. Yeah.

You wanted to instinctively know where something was, but we couldn't we couldn't afford that luxury. And so if I could do it in test pilot school and test and as a test pilot, I can certainly do it here because I'm gonna fly this configuration in the simulator for 1,000 of hours before I ever get in a spacecraft to go to space. I I think this is really holding us back for no reason, to be quite honest. And and, yeah, I was thanked very much and and told to go to my room. Yeah. I remember some conversations like that. But gradually, people came around and we were able to transition the shuttle to, you know, a glass cockpit and the like. And and when I go back now and look at what's in SpaceX Dragon and other spacecraft, I'm just blown away.

Yeah. With screen and all this kind of stuff, and and and it just came. And we adjusted, and we trained ourselves.

Coming up in the second part of this conversation, you'll get Charlie's perspective on NASA's transition from space shuttle operations to commercial space flight, on the real inside workings of Washington DC, and what the future holds for space commerce and exploration. Thanks so much for joining me on today's mission. For more solo shows and deep dives with incredible guests along with all the ways to get the podcast and much more, head over to Kathy Sullivan explores dot com.

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