To Infinity And Beyond! Chuck Yeager Wasn't the Only One with The Right Stuff

UNK SMULL > Henry SMULL (my 3rd GG's brother) > Thomas Jefferson SMULL > Dr. Thomas Jefferson SMULL,Jr  > Thomas Leland Kemp SMULL married (2) Ruth RHYNE

Herbert H Hoover. Test Pilot

Ruth Rhyne was born to Richard and Edith Rhyne. She was born on 17 Nov 1921 and raised in
Stanley, Gaston County, North Carolina. She met a young man by the name of Herbert Henry Hoover from Tennessee whose father was visiting his sisters and family in Stanley. His father ended up marrying her aunt.  By the time she was a junior in college, Herbert had set his sights on marrying Ruth. Herb was working for Standard Oil as a pilot in South America. He left Standard to go to work as a test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the precursor of NASA. They married after her graduation in 1942 and moved near Langley, Virginia, where aircraft testing was done on the East Coast.

Though NACA was founded in 1915 to spur aeronautical research, the efforts at the time Hoover started working there were put towards World War II and then, after the war, to supersonic flight. The facility at Langley eventually led to the opening of Muroc, an adjunct facility in California (later Edwards AFB).

Herb thrived at Langley and tested hundreds of aircraft. He was the first person to test drive the X-1-2. Chuck Yeager had previously tested the X-1-1 (with a different wing weight) at Muroc. Yeager finally flew at Mach 1.06 and shortly thereafter, Herb became the first civilian and second person to break the speed of sound while flying in the X-1-2.

Bell X-1-2, Champine & Hoover

All this while, his wife had two young children and Ruth focused on the home. On one sad day, the chaplain from the base arrived to tell her that Herb had died flying a B-45 that broke apart mid-air. Declassified documents reveal his body most likely hit the broken plane on his way down. His parachute never deployed. His co-pilot survived with minor injuries. Ruth's oral history, including her thoughts on Chuck Yeager, are here.

A good friend insisted Ruth get out and find a husband and introduced her to Kurt, an Air Force pilot. After two years of marriage, he too died before his time - of a brain aneurysm. Her friend once again stepped up to insist she find a husband and introduced her to her boss, TLK Smull, an engineer and administrative manager at NACA. Recently divorced with a daughter, he married Ruth about 1964. Ruth recalled their meeting:

Then the same gal that introduced Kurt and me, my second husband, said, "You've got to come to Washington [D.C.] and meet Tom, my boss." She worked for Tom Smull, who was in the Office of Grants and Research. He was at Langley for about four years and then sent to Washington. I said, "I'm not ready to go out." They called me one morning—I was working in a church office at that time—and Lee's husband called and said, "Come on up and attend the Christmas party that my group is having." I said, "I'm not ready to go out." I said, "I'll call you tonight when I get back."

So I called him that night and I said, "I'm not ready to go out." He said, "Well, you get off your high horse and get up here," he said, "just consider it an evening out." Well, I made reservations on a flight to fly to Washington, and I got up that morning and there was snow on the ground, and I thought, "Oh, good, I don't have to do." I called the airport, "Yeah, planes are flying."

So I go, and I meet Tom. We just considered it an evening out, that's all it was, but he knew Herbert. They had worked together and they were friends. A couple weeks later, I got a letter from him, and his handwriting was terrible. I couldn't decipher what it was for my life. It took me about two days to read it. Finally, he says, "I'm coming to Langley for a meeting. Would you go have dinner with me?" So I did. He had a sailboat up near Annapolis [Maryland] with West River Sailing Club, and he’d invite me up to go sailing with him, and it just kind of developed. We had so many mutual friends, he knew the Reeders and the Bales, and it was just all ones that Herbert and I knew. So he asked me to marry him, so I did. We were married 35 and a half years.

~ NASA Headquarters NACA Oral History Project; Edited Oral History Transcript; Ruth Hoover Smull; Interviewed by Sandra Johnson; Virginia Beach, Virginia – 1 May 2008

Thomas L K Smull was born in Ada, Ohio in 1916 to Dr. T J Smull, Jr. and Cora Anita Kemp. He attended Ohio Northern University in 1937 and two B.A. degrees from the University of Michigan

Thomas LK Smull

in 1939, one in mechanical engineering and a second in aeronautical engineering. In 1949 he was awarded a Sc.D. in aeronautical engineering from Ohio Northern University.

He went to the Washington DC area where he started working for NACA - the precursor of NASA - in 1939. He started his career as a research engineer, but quickly moved up, putting to use his natural talents as an administrator and manager. He held positions from assistant to the director of NACA; chief, Research Coordination Division, NACA; director, Office of Grants and Research Contracts, NASA; special assistant to the administrator, NASA; program manager in the Office of Advanced Research and Technology, NASA; to special assistant to the director of Research, NASA. He authored articles on aeronautical and space issues and served on administrative and technical committees. He retired in 1974. Their boat and golf filled much of their retirement time.

Ruth, I believe, is still living and would be 94 now. Tom died after a long illness in 1999 and was buried in his hometown in Ada, Ohio. He left a daughter, an artist in California, her son, and two stepchildren.