NASA’s Jerry Woodfill spoke at Rothko Chapel on April 17 as the last speaker in a long running series, Concept of the Divine, which provides an opportunity for speakers to share how their personal concept of the Divine has shaped their lives. Woodfill has worked at NASA for more than 52 years. Joining in 1965, he was the Apollo Moon Program’s Spacecraft Warning System Engineer. It was this warning system that alerted Mission Control that there was an incident on board the Apollo 13 aircraft, when an oxygen tank exploded, thus leading to the now famous phrase, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Woodfill spoke about his experiences as a child growing up in Indiana, and how he believed that the Divine lead him to his time at NASA. Woodfill noted that in Indiana, basketball was tops. He wanted to be a great basketball player, but there was just one problem, he was not great at the game.

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Now Playing: Apollo 13 Anniversary: How true to real life was the movie? April 13th is the anniversary of the oxygen-tank explosion that almost turned the Apollo 13 mission into a disaster, with NASA nearly losing the mission’s three-man crew in outer space. What could’ve been a catastrophe turned into a triumph of wi Media: FoxM9NJ “Every night I’d practice, practice, practice. But if you don’t go on to the NBA, you’d better get a job so I also studied, studied, studied,” Woodfill said.

The studying worked, because Woodfill became valedictorian of his class. But basketball did not. Woodfill noted that he had a dream one night. He was in a large basketball arena, and every time he got the ball he did not miss the shot. In the fourth game of the Indiana state championship tournament, Woodfill’s high school was playing the number one team in the state. Something happened to Woodfill that night. “I was unstoppable. I scored 20 points,” Woodfill said. “My dream came true.”

A relative of Rice University’s basketball coach Johnny Frankie sent him the newspaper that featured Woodfill’s game. The article mentioned that Woodfill was valedictorian, something that Frankie was looking for in a player. Woodfill continued, “So based on one ball game, if that isn’t the providence of God, I received a full basketball scholarship to Rice University.” He went on to have “the most dismal basketball record, and an even worse academic record.” “And I went on to work for NASA. That, I believe, is the miracle of the Lord’s design for my life.” President John F. Kennedy spoke to Rice University in 1962 about going to the moon. “We do this thing, not because it is easy, but because it is hard,” Woodfill quoted Kennedy. “Kennedy put it in such a way that he made me believe I could graduate. So I gave up my basketball scholarship and I concentrated on my studies,” Woodfill said. Woodfill noted that Kennedy ended the speech by asking for God’s blessing, and while working on the Apollo program, he has seen his prayer answered countless times. NASA went on to hire Woodfill, and did not ask about his grades, or his shooting percentage. They hired him because he had a degree in electrical engineering. They assigned him the alarm system for Apollo 11 that would land Neil Armstrong on the moon. “My system began to ring. Neil Armstrong was about to abort the mission!” I’ll go down in Rice engineering infamy,” Woodfill said. But a flight controller said to ignore the alarm system. A year later, on April 11, 1970, Woodfill hears in his headset, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Woodfill sees the alarm come on again, and his first thoughts were, “This isn’t my problem again!” But then Jim Lovell said, “We see something venting from the rear of the space craft.” “Suddenly I went from thoughts of being a failure, to I designed something that would save the lives of three men. So don’t ever give up on your career,” Woodfill said. The men would have to use their lunar lander as their rescue ship and would have to find a way to extend the amount of oxygen for long enough to get them back home. The filters in the mothership were square, but unfortunately, they would not work in the round filters on the lunar lander. While everyone across the nation was praying for the men aboard Apollo 13, including the Pope, NASA was trying to solve the problem. Knowing that there were filters, plastic bags, and duct tape on board, they helped the astronauts fashion a device that would help them get home safely. Woodfill noted that, during the Apollo 13 mission, there was a man at NASA who hung a paper maché dove over his desk. Woodfill asked what it was all about, and the man told him to come to his church to see. Later on, after the astronauts were back, Woodfill did go to the church. “I went in there and I saw a mural of all people reaching up and praying. All of a sudden, I knew there was a God,” Woodfill said. Afterwards the two men started a prayer group, and by that summer there were 21 men. “This changed my life,” Woodfill said. Woodfill shared a letter with the audience that he received from a teacher after the Apollo 13 mission. The teacher said that one student was afraid because the men, even if they made it back safely, would land in a bad storm, and they would not survive. “I calmed the kids with the beautiful account of Christ. They listened,” the teacher wrote. The teacher and the students prayed that the storm would move away, and it did. Patricia Reiff, a Professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and the Founding Director of the Rice Space Institute, was the moderator for the second half of the program, a discussion with Woodfill. “To be there at Mission Control, and to have your instrument be the warning sign, must give you pleasure now,” Reiff said. “In that respect, it has been wonderful, because I know I am not alone in my faith,” Woodfill said. “ Before, I never could share with another colleague in private my faith in Jesus Christ.” Those meetings with the other men, “changed the heart of the space center,” Woodfill said. Reiff joked around that she knows, and is a good friend, of a professor at Rice University that gave Woodfill an F minus in a math class. “That F minus has been a blessing. I go around to so many schools, and some of these students are struggling academically. And they see me, and they get a spirit of overcoming,” Woodfill said. Reiff and Woodfill spoke about what it is like to be both a scientist and a believer. “With Apollo 13, the can-do spirit was a way that the whole country came together,” Reiff commented. “Do you think as a result of this, and your Bible studies, that NASA is more open to talking about their faith?” Woodfill said, that yes, NASA has always been quite open, stating that Apollo 8, when they orbited the moon on Christmas Eve, did a broadcast and read from Genesis. “People ask me, how can I be a scientist and a believer? It is a sticky question,” Reiff said. “Do you ever feel like people think you are grandstanding after one of your talks?” “When I tell what happened to me, it is the same thing that I read in this,” he said while holding up a Bible. “I say that this is the source.”