The Step: One Woman's Journey to Finding Her Own Happiness and Success During the Apollo Space Program

by Martha Lemasters

The names of the astronauts will forever be inscribed in our history books, but the names of the entire Apollo launch support team at the Kennedy Space Center and the thousands who supported Apollo elsewhere will only be known to a few. It is the technical team, the engineers, analysts, programmers, and yes, even the secretaries and typists who kept the administrative side moving, who are portrayed in this book. This combined team, after achieving an unbelievable goal of putting men on the moon within the 10-year limit set by Kennedy, performed in an exemplary manner. Some believe they were the greatest technological team ever assembled, achieving the most difficult challenge of all mankind to date.

The Apollo team faced challenges and temptations like anyone else in the 60 s: divorce, affairs, deaths, three shifts of work schedules, as well as women s issues, but they also knew how to have fun along the way. Choruses were formed, humorous skits brought laughs to facility dinners, and tennis bets of a lifetime played out on an Apollo stage with human lives on the line, etched with historic backdrops.

What was it like to be a part of this history-making event of launching our astronauts to the moon? Fasten your seat belts and journey back to the 60 s for a front-row seat by someone who experienced it all."

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Biography, Biography Memoir, Science, Space

282 pages, Paperback

Published April 5, 2016

About the author

Martha Lemasters is a Floridian, reared in Ft. Lauderdale and currently residing in Vero Beach, Florida. During the late 50’s, she attended the University of Florida majoring in Journalism.

She began work for IBM on the Apollo Program at Cape Kennedy in the late 60’s as a typist, then secretary and finally PR writer after years of proving herself for advancement. Kennedy Space Center during this time was a man’s world, made up of engineers, scientists, analysts, programmers and technicians with men outnumbering women 200 to 1. Women were deemed ‘safety hazards’ if dresses were worn on the launch platforms; catcalls and disrespect welcomed the women who traversed the bays of the VAB.

As a marketing communications writer, Lemasters wrote about the people who made up one of the greatest technical teams ever assembled in American history. Included in those stories are the heartaches, failures, losses, and challenges to the individuals who made up the Apollo launch support team at the Cape.

Following the end of the Apollo program, she continued into the Skylab and Soyuz programs. After these programs ended she joined Harris Corporation in Melbourne, also as a writer.

Following remarriage in the late 70’s to a top executive, she became fully involved as a corporate wife, traveling the world with her husband’s ventures into technology, first for Harris Corporation, then later as president and CEO of CONTEL, which was eventually bought out by Verizon.

Since retiring, she has volunteered for the State Attorney’s Office as a victim advocate for six years. During this time, she hosted several concerts for victims entitled Vero Sings for the Victims.

She is a member of Impact 100, a women’s collective giving group who each donate $1000 a year and award grants to nonprofits in her community, where she served on the Board as vice president of Communications for five years.

She writes a bi-weekly inspirational article for the Newsweekly section of the Vero Beach Press Journal (tcpalm.com) on behalf of the Christian Science church, where she also serves as a substitute Reader. She also facilitates a seminar entitled, Better Thinking for Better Living.

She has been a member of the John’s Island Club for the past 15 years where she currently serves on the Board of Directors.

She spends her summers at her home in Highlands, North Carolina, where her three daughters, Curran, Cathy, and Cindy, love to visit.

Three of her closest friends who are depicted in the book, (but with different names ) Joanne Miller, Marylou Duffy and Sharon Witt continue to keep in touch throughout the year.

Reviews

[Marjorie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This memoir is written by a woman who worked for IBM as a PR writer at Cape Kennedy during 7 moon landings during the 60’s and 70’s. She worked her way up from her starting job as a secretary and was a divorced mom raising three daughters. She was a working mom when all the mothers of her daughters’ friends were stay-at-home moms. There were few women working at Cape Kennedy, with a ratio of 400 men to 1 woman. The divorce rate was high and adultery was common.

I really did expect to like this book a lot more than I did. I well remember the excitement and thrill of the space launchings and found it all to be so fascinating. Since the blurb of the book said that reading this book would give you a front row seat by someone who lived through it all, I was disappointed in the scientific information contained. The space station work was mostly told in a tour-guide fashion and was mostly facts, such as the complete Apollo team consisted of over 400,000 people. I didn’t feel any of the excitement that I felt back in the 60’s. The book ends before the most exciting flight of them all – Apollo 11.

In all fairness to the author, I do admire her determination to become a writer and I’m sure the PR work she did at Cape Kennedy was important. Unfortunately, I soon tired of reading about her legs and her miniskirts and her makeup and her flirting with astronauts and her affairs. There’s one scene in the book where she flaunts the rules about not wearing a miniskirt on the catwalks, which rule was due to the fear that the distraction would cause men to either fall off of the not-very-secure catwalks or drop a tool that would kill someone, all done in the name of getting some photos of astronauts. I didn’t see this as a silly rule and I thought it was a very foolish thing for her to do and her action only lessened my admiration of her.

I won this book in a contest given by the author with the understanding that I would give an honest review.

[Lizabeth Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martha LeMasters went from married to divorced to working mom, a rarity even in the late 1960s. She found a place as secretary at IBM, later moving up to writer, her goal. During the Apollo years, she also found her identity as a woman: strong, independent, and sexually fulfilled.

This rang true for me even though LeMasters changed some names to protect the guilty and the indiscreet. Adultery was rampant, divorce even higher. Not surprising when you consider that during the pre-launch time, it wasn't unusual to work 10-16 hour shifts. Employees for the various companies and agencies lived all the way south to Palm Bay, adding to the amount of time away. It also wasn't unusual to see astronauts around town during visits to the Cape, picking up groupies who wanted an astronaut notch on their beds. My parents weren't shy about telling me who they spotted at the various nightclubs in the Cocoa Beach area. I was a child, but never sheltered.

My interest in the space program and the people involved in it stems from my childhood. My dad worked in the program from 1956 to 1970, taking a short break to get his degree in Physics in just two years on the advice of Rocco Petrone and Kurt Debus. He worked for the various companies that held contracts with NASA, only leaving because he could see the writing on the wall, the space program was essentially over, layoffs were coming. He loved every minute of it and used to talk to me from the time I was in first grade until adulthood about his job and the people he worked with.

Reading LeMasters' book threw me right back into those days. It was a nice visit, brought back a lot of memories. I would definitely recommend this story to anyone interested in the space program. 4.5 out of 5.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I heard this author in person a couple of weeks ago. Her in-person presentation of her book was dry and unimaginative. However...her book is much more engaging. (Editors help?) The book's premise -- women in the "space race to the moon" is so intriguing and topical, that I would recommend it, but only if you are not otherwise engaged for the evening.

[SOS · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars

They synopsis for his book says:

The names of the astronauts will forever be inscribed in our history books, but the names of the entire Apollo launch support team at the Kennedy Space Center and the thousands who supported Apollo elsewhere will only be known to a few. It is the technical team, the engineers, analysts, programmers, and yes, even the secretaries and typists who kept the administrative side moving, who are portrayed in this book. (Emphasis mine)

That's not exactly the truth. Many of those behind-the-scenes people are mentioned in this book, but few are paid much attention, except as background to the life and accomplishments of the author, Martha Lemasters. Reading that synopsis, you would think that Ms. Lemasters was a key employee of NASA, but she wasn't; she worked for IBM. She did have access to NASA, and some of the astronauts and other team members, but she was not attached to the daily workings of the space program. Ms. Lemasters started working for IBM as a typist, moved on to secretary, and finished up as a low level, in-house publicity writer.

If you're wondering about the title, it has nothing to do with man landing on the moon and Neil Armstrong's words as he set foot on the lunar surface. Nope, not at all. From the book: It's an old southern saying for someone who is confident, intelligent, someone on top of things; a doer, not a taker. Someone you can count on to get things done. One who will take an opportunity and make the most of it. Want to guess who that person is? The author, of course!

The quality of her writing in this book is okay, nothing special or outstanding. She rambles from topic to topic. In the first chapter, in no particular order, she covered: her parents, illegal abortion, rheumatoid arthritis, her high school years, driving lessons, the Civil War, Christmas, Florida beaches/summers, hurricanes, her father's awning and boat sail business, Clark Gable and other famous acquaintances, Cuba, college, and her first job. Whew! Reading all this was kind of like being in the middle of a ping pong game. This bounding around continues, to a lesser degree, within and between chapters. Odd wordings appear such as mix`matched furniture, instead of miss matched furniture.

Later in the book, she includes a speech ( several actually) that she wrote for her boss to justify space exploration; it goes on for pages and pages. This speech touches on how you can't give all your money to starving, dying people. It moves on to covering better agricultural practices for food production. The author is obviously very proud of this speech, but I'm not sure why she thinks it justifies space exploration or why it belongs in this book.

I also don't understand how she can recite conversations she had in the 1960s word for word. The dialog used for those conversations is stilted and always shows the author to be the best friend, most competent employee, most caring parent -- even though she's away from her children from before dawn to late night.

One of the most important things that this book could use, outside of cohesion of thought, is a glossary. The author talks about technical things without bothering to give any explanation of what they are or why they're important.

Ms. Lemasters takes every opportunity to praise her abilities. Everything she does is perfection. When she says that it takes her an hour to drive to work, it's precisely one hour, not a moment longer. The same is true with any appointment or start to her workday. She's always precise, or so she says.

The author gets off the subject matter of the book to go off on rants about birth control, abortion rights, and how it's okay to sleep around in order to learn about her own body. And sleep around she does. She makes a big deal over how she comes to sleep with one of the astronauts. It comes about as payoff of a bet over a tennis game, but she's not an unwilling partner. Did I mention that several of those men, including the astronaut, were married at the time?

Expect lots of repetition while reading the book. Something mentioned in an early chapter is likely to be repeated in one or more later chapters, including Apollo hatch design, mini-skirts as safety hazards in the vehicle assembly building, abortion, sexual freedom, and, of course, just how great and competent the author is in almost everything she did.

There are bits of interesting information drowning in this puddle of self-aggrandizement and stream of conscious babble, but it's dribbled here and there in small doses. Mostly, this book is an advertisement for IBM of the 1960s, and the very small part the author played working on the outside of the space program. It's folksy and offers either too much detail or not enough. If you want to know about NASA and the space program, particularly the Apollo missions, I suggest looking for another book. You won't learn much about any of those things here.

I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway.

[Meagen Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing in every way! Martha Lemasters takes us back to the 60's to share her experiences as a women working on the Apollo program! She is strong independent women who wrote a truly inspiring book for all women. It's smart, impactful and full of feminism!

Her experience and the experiences of her coworkers combine to create a story that needs to be heard around the world!

I would recommend this book 1000x over, it contains so many stories that even today, in 2016, are extremely relevant to world around us. I don't want to give away spoilers but its a must read!

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martha Lemasters tells us what it was like to work for IBM during the Apollo space program. She was a single mom who worked her way up in the company and got to see our mission to the moon up close and personal. We learn of her personal struggles with love and her struggles at work. Her energy and enthusiasm for her job jumps off the pages and she shares some interesting stories. I learned what it was really like to work for a company in the 60's as a woman.

[Sarah - All The Book Blog Names Are Taken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just won this in a Goodreads Giveaway! Woohoo!

+++++++++

This was a quick read, and one I thought I would enjoy because I am obsessed with the Apollo space program. I was a lot more interested in the workings and operations of her with the company, and less about the miniskirts and the make up and the affairs. Full review to come.

++++++++

See my full review on my blog:

http://allthebookblognamesaretaken.bl...

and

www.facebook.com/AllTheBookBlogNamesA...

[Lori Byrd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel in love with this book from the moment I started it. I was born in the early 60's and grew up with the Apollo space program being a very big deal in my home. I loved the inside scoop on what it was like working for IBM/Nasa. Incredible! To have met the legends we have only read about, must have been amazing. I was in total awe.

[Autumn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a memoir that shows the life of working women in the 60s and in the fascinating arena of the NASA space program. The author is sassy and candid, yet discreet and reverent of the endeavors and ideals of the time.

[NeVi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to think this one over a little bit. My best thoughts can be summarized as being incredibly conflicted. Here's why.

I met the author doing an Audio Visual job in Vero. We had gotten into conversation, as I usually liked to with customers to keep it light and more personable, and it had come up that I had aspirations to be an electrical engineer, or involved in the astro-sciences in general. She was impressed, as I'm still quite young, and even younger then when I met her. As a token of gratitude for the conversation, and the work, she gave me her book and signed it. I promised I would read it, and it has taken me about 14 months to fulfill that promise.

(Reading can be hard in the middle of academic and emotional burnout)

From this conversation, the book was sold to me as more of a first hand account of the Apollo mission(s) and I figured there would likely be a good amount to learn in this memoir from her point of view. I was only kind of right to think that. I did learn a few things though, which were more on social issues of that era when it came to women. It was interesting (albeit kind of frustrating) to hear her accounts of the catcalling and what not when on the job, and how woman's clothing policy was strict for all the wrong reasons.

So here's what the book is really about, and what I probably should've assumed in the beginning: her.

Autobiographies and memoirs are tough. I either like them, or don't care for them. This is sort of in the middle. I don't feel I wasted my time but I had a hard time emotionally resonating with her. There's a lot of things I haven't gone through and likely never will both because if the time period, and my gender, that makes me feel like I'm really missing the weight of what she's saying.

My rating of 3.5 is based more on my enjoyment. It may have been higher had my expectations been adjusted accordingly in terms of what I should be getting out of it.

I will add an additional note of recommendation. If you are a woman, especially a woman in STEM, I would highly recommend this book.

[Whitney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story

I liked that this story features a strong woman involved in the space program. She doesn't gloss over the sexism of the era, and gives an honest account of how life was like during the time.

The one thing I think it lacked was heart.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

This title popped up as a recommendation because of other books on space exploration and lunar missions, etc. that I have already read, or want to read. I remember clearly our landing on the moon as a teenager, my family gathered around the television. This is a memoir by the author, who, I learned at the end of this book, now lives in Vero Beach! It was interesting to read about the Apollo Space Program from a woman's point of view, and the role IBM played, not always a company name that is immediately associated with the development of space programs, at least for me. It was fun to read about an area I live in now, and a place I used to live (Gaithersburg, Maryland) referenced in the telling. So very few women were involved with all the space exploration programs from the beginning. The time period was also one of great upheaval - the Vietnam War protests, and other movements for social change and equality, not at least was the women's movement which had begun in full force. I had a hard time with the flow of the story, which went back and forth between the author's career and her personal life. I thought some of the details were not placed in a good context to the rest of the story or were excessive in their descriptions. It was an easy read, and triggered memories for me of a period of time growing up and seeing so much history happen.

[Katt Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

We don't often think of all the people it takes to do something large. In movies we pay attention to the actors and directors, but little care who was a makeup artist, a grip, a sound engineer, or one of a thousand other jobs.

In this particular book we meet a woman who was there at NASA during the moon landing - not as some fancy engineer or astronaut (though we meet many of those), but as a secretary initially who became a writer and PR person, who because of her work got to meet all the key players before they were famous.

Interesting as this story could have been, it got bogged down by so much detail. I have no doubt that Martha took copious notes during meetings, that became useful in writing this book, but with so much time spent on long chemical equation worthy description, the story almost got lost in the details.

Almost. Thankfully the personal moments DO shine through and we get to see Martha in some interesting adventures, some of a more personal level.

So while I wish the story hadn't gotten so dry and slow at times, there was still enough here to give an interesting snapshot of this unique moment in history. I'm glad I got to know Martha through these pages.

*** This book was obtained through a Goodreads Giveaway, though that in no way affected this review***

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story of Martha Lemasters is an important one: a first-hand account of what it was like as a working mom during a time when mothers simply didn't work, and landing an extraordinary job in the Apollo Space Program...and the exhaustive amount of sexism that women faced, reflective of the times. Definitely more of a memoir than a full account of the Space Program, Lemasters' story is inspiring and her positive outlook in the face of incredible heartaches is awe-inducing. With this nod, and on to critiquing (with a caveat: I won a copy in the Goodreads Giveaways last fall, and it was an advance copy, so there may be some changes to the final print): there's some copyediting errors, Lemasters' transitions are a little choppy, the technical writing (while interesting) took me out of my league and out of the story, and it's a little hard to know what to focus on--feminism?, the space program?--but overall a worthwhile and digestible read of a unique voice from a special time in history.
UPDATE: I donated my free copy to basically a little free library, where folks can donate books as well as take one with them, and this book quickly was claimed! I haven't seen it resurface at my location, so I'm thinking it's still out there finding readers!

[Debra Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book through a Goodreads Giveaway and the following is my honest opinion of The Step by Martha Lemasters. The Step is a very interesting Memoir of Martha's career as a writer in IBM at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "The Step" means that a person or group has that inner drive to achieve a goal, and as they get closer, that step becomes a stride to success. A teacher told Martha once that she had "The Step". The IBM engineers, analysts, programmers, secretaries, and writers of the IBM Apollo Space Program Team of the 1960's proved that they had "The Step", too. They sent spacecraft after spacecraft into space making final adjustments for that moon landing. President Kennedy had promised that America would make it to the moon before the end of 1969. And by golly, America would do it! What a time of American unity and Nationalism when Apollo 11 landed on the moon! You'll get to know some of the astronauts and other people involved in this wondrous American adventure. Martha's life is also significant as she grows as a woman and feminist during her years working as a single mother. This is a good book and anyone interested in the space program of the 1960's will really enjoy this Memoir.

[Gayle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the kind of book I usually read. I won this in a contest. I entered the contest because the review I read on the book sounded interesting. I was not disappointed. I've never been overly interested in the space program, but found this book very fascinating. I never knew how involved IBM was in the space program and how many thousands of people it takes to get these rockets launched.

Martha shared a lot of her personal life and the sexist attitudes of the 60's. I was a young woman back then just entering the working environment. I remember one time walking past a construction site and listening to the guys whisting and their cat calls. It scared the heck out of me, but I never knew there was any other way. She certainly didn't take any flack from any one.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway win. I have a few disparate thoughts about this book. I loved reading about someone who was directly involved on the Apollo contract for IBM and found the perspective interesting. That said, the writing jumps around a lot and there are some rather abrupt transitions that I had to reread to understand what was going on. I eventually got used to this but it was still jarring every time. I think the book would have benefitted from several more drafts to tighten up the narrative and message. I did enjoy the overall work and learned a few things I was not previously aware of regarding the Apollo program.

[Pamela Canepa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the details and the writer's thoughts as she went through these experiences in the space program. From the beginning, to the touching end, she has reflected the tense atmosphere of sexism that had existed as women were just starting to break through barriers that long existed. The ending makes a valid point.

[Donna Barney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very Interesting.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book through Goodreads. I really enjoyed this book. Loved all the inside information and her journey & hardships.

[Eryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an interesting book and a quick read. It shows a side of the Apollo program that doesn't get much attention. However, it does read like a PR writer wrote it. I don't want to knock her experiences, but she feels very cheerful throughout the whole thing. The format of the paragraphs was odd and sometimes took me out of the book for some reason. I'm surprised at what she admits to, and surprised that other things weren't mentioned. Her kids don't feature too prominently in the book, and I forgot for a while that she was a single mom.

All in all, an interesting perspective of the day and age, and a good addition to the literature about our space program.