Jerry Elliott | |
---|---|
Born | Jerry Chris Elliott 1943 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States |
Nationality | Osage-Cherokee |
Citizenship | American |
Education | University of Oklahoma, Physics |
Jerry Chris Elliott High Eagle (born 1943) is a physicist and was one of the first Native Americans who worked at NASA. Elliott's work awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor awarded by the President of the United States. [1] [2] [3]
High Eagle, from the age of five, had a vision of assisting astronauts to get to the moon. While supported by some members in his family and community, he was faced with opposition due to his race. [4]
After graduating from Northwest Classen High School, he was accepted into the University of Oklahoma at the age of 18. While in university, he faced a degree of culture shock, facing disrespect and misunderstandings towards him as a Native American. [5] He faced racial discrimination from his professors, and was unable to pursue graduate studies due to the death of his stepfather and an overall lack of funding. He received a degree in physics with a minor in mathematics, April, 1966, being the first indigenous native to obtain one from the University of Oklahoma, department of physics. [6] [5]
Starting his space career early in the Gemini Program, Elliott joined NASA in April 1966 as a flight mission operations engineer, serving at the Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas. [7] He was Program Staff Engineer at the NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC during the Apollo–Soyuz Program. [8] [5] He served as a Senior Technical Manager in the Management Integration Office of the Space Station's Program Office. [8] [9] Elliott and his team provided ground support equipment and space hardware for Skylab, the United States' first space station. [5]
While at NASA, Elliott pushed for furthering telecommunications infrastructure between reservations. Implemented the American Indian Telecommunications Satellite Demonstration Project linked the All-Indian Pueblo Council and the Crow Indian Reservation with the federal government at Washington, D.C. His testimony before Congress culminated in the establishment in the First Americans Commission for Telecommunications (FACT). [10] [5]
During the Apollo program he held several important management and leadership positions [11] He was the only indigenous native person on the control team. [12] He served on the mission control team during Apollo 11's successful Moon landing. Elliott played an instrumental role in computing the trajectory and successful recovery back to Earth during the events of Apollo 13. His efforts during the events of the disaster awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Richard Nixon [7] for his role in saving the lives of the three endangered astronauts. [4] [13] [14] [15] [16]
Accomplishing his boyhood vision of landing men on the Moon, Elliott continued work at NASA for a total of four decades. Some of Elliott's personal papers during the Apollo era are held at the Oklahoma History Center. [17] [6]
Elliott is fluent in the English, and proficient in Russian, Spanish, and Osage languages. [8] His name "High Eagle" was given to him when he turned 41, by native elders. [5] Elliott cites his mother and Albert Einstein as his personal heroes. He enjoys playing the guitar and Indian flute. [18] His work in music has led to him performing in the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. [7] He has also played roles on the film Houston, We've Got a Problem , where he played himself, along with an appearance on the television show Walker, Texas Ranger . [7] [17]
In 1977, he was a founder/incorporator of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, Inc., along with two other founders, George Thomas (Cherokee), and Alex Labadie (Osage). The society pursues further Native American involvement in the sciences. [19] [20] He is the founder and CEO of High Eagle Technologies, Inc, a native company dedicated to cancer research and treatment with patented technology he was awarded in 2019. [21]
Mr. Elliott authored the Congressional legislation for Native American Awareness Week, 1976, for the first historic week of observance for the American Indian in the history of the United States. The legislation was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford.
Edward Higgins White II was an American aeronautical engineer, United States Air Force officer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. He was a member of the crews of Gemini 4 and Apollo 1.
Roger Bruce Chaffee was an American naval officer, aviator and aeronautical engineer who was a NASA astronaut in the Apollo program.
Alan LaVern Bean was an American naval officer and aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, NASA astronaut and painter. He was selected to become an astronaut by NASA in 1963 as part of Astronaut Group 3, and was the fourth person to walk on the Moon.
James Arthur Lovell Jr. is an American retired astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot and mechanical engineer. In 1968, as command module pilot of Apollo 8, he became, with Frank Borman and William Anders, one of the first three astronauts to fly to and orbit the Moon. He then commanded the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970 which, after a critical failure en route, looped around the Moon and returned safely to Earth.
Fred Wallace Haise Jr. is an American former NASA astronaut, engineer, fighter pilot with the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Air Force, and a test pilot. He is one of 24 people to have flown to the Moon, having flown as Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 13. He was slated to become the 6th person to walk on the Moon, but the Apollo 13 landing mission was aborted en route.
Robert Laurel Crippen is an American retired naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aerospace engineer, and retired astronaut. He traveled into space four times: as pilot of STS-1 in April 1981, the first Space Shuttle mission; and as commander of STS-7 in June 1983, STS-41-C in April 1984, and STS-41-G in October 1984. He was also a part of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test (SMEAT), ASTP support crew member, and the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT) for the Space Shuttle.
Sequoyah, also known as George Gist or George Guess, was a Native American polymath and neographer of the Cherokee Nation. In 1821, he completed his independent creation of the Cherokee syllabary, enabling reading and writing in Cherokee. His achievement was one of the few times in recorded history that an individual member of a pre-literate group created an original, effective writing system. His creation of the syllabary turned the Cherokee nation into one of the first North American Indigenous groups with a written language. Sequoyah was also an important representative for the Cherokee nation; he went to Washington, D.C., to sign two relocation-and-land-trading treaties.
Gerald Paul "Jerry" Carr was an American mechanical and aeronautical engineer, United States Marine Corps officer, naval aviator, and NASA astronaut. He was commander of Skylab 4, the third and final crewed visit to the Skylab Orbital Workshop, from November 16, 1973, to February 8, 1974.
William Reid "Bill" Pogue was an American astronaut and pilot who served in the United States Air Force (USAF) as a fighter pilot and test pilot, and reached the rank of colonel. He was also a teacher, public speaker and author.
Thomas Patten Stafford was an American Air Force officer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut, and one of 24 astronauts who flew to the Moon. He also served as Chief of the Astronaut Office from 1969 to 1971.
Wilma Pearl Mankiller was a Native American activist, social worker, community developer and the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, she lived on her family's allotment in Adair County, Oklahoma, until the age of 11, when her family relocated to San Francisco as part of a federal government program to urbanize Indigenous Americans. After high school, she married a well-to-do Ecuadorian and raised two daughters. Inspired by the social and political movements of the 1960s, Mankiller became involved in the Occupation of Alcatraz and later participated in the land and compensation struggles with the Pit River Tribe. For five years in the early 1970s, she was employed as a social worker, focusing mainly on children's issues.
George Robert Carruthers was an African American inventor, physicist, engineer and space scientist. Carruthers perfected a compact and very powerful ultraviolet camera/spectrograph for NASA to use when it launched Apollo 16 in 1972. Carruthers was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2003, and in 2011 he was awarded the National Medal for Technology and Invention.
Wesley Studi is a Native American actor and film producer. He has garnered critical acclaim and awards throughout his career, particularly for his portrayal of Native Americans in film. In 2019, he received an Academy Honorary Award, becoming the first Native American as well as the first Indigenous person from North America to be honored by the academy.
Navarre Scotte Momaday was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. His novel House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, and is considered the first major work of the Native American Renaissance.
Gregory Errol Chamitoff is a Canadian-born American engineer and former NASA astronaut. He has been to space twice, spending 6 months aboard the ISS across Expedition 17 and 18 in 2008, and another 15 days as part of STS-134 in 2011. STS-134 was the last of Space Shuttle Endeavour which delivered the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and completed the US Orbital Segment.
Sequoyah High School is a Native American boarding school serving students in grades 7 through 12, who are members of a federally recognized Native American tribe. The school is located in Park Hill, Oklahoma, with a Tahlequah post office address, and is a Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) grant school operated by the Cherokee Nation.
Cecil Dick, or Degadoga (1915–1992) was a well-known Cherokee artist often referred to as "the Father of Cherokee Traditional Art".
Kimberly Teehee is a Cherokee attorney, politician, and activist on Native American issues. She is a Delegate-designate to the U.S. House of Representatives from the Cherokee Nation. She served as senior policy advisor for Native American affairs in the administration of President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2012. In February 2020, she was named by Time as one of 16 activists fighting for a "More Equal America."
The American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit professional association with the goal of substantially increasing American Indian, Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, First Nation and other indigenous peoples of North America representation in the fields of science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) and other related disciplines. Its headquarters is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As of May 1, 2013, Sarah EchoHawk is the Chief Executive Officer.
Mary Golda Ross was the first Native American female engineer. She was also the first female engineer in the history of the Lockheed Corporation. She worked at Lockheed from 1942 until her retirement in 1973, where she was best remembered for her work on aerospace design. She was one of the 40 founding engineers of the renowned and highly secretive Skunk Works project while at Lockheed Corporation. Throughout her life, Ross was dedicated to the advancement of young women and Native Americans in STEM fields. Ten years after her death, in 2018, Ross was chosen to be depicted on the 2019 Native American $1 Coin by the U.S. Mint celebrating Native Americans in the space program.