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This is the 28th volume of Memorial Tributes compiled by the National Academy of Engineering as a personal remembrance of the lives and outstanding achievements of its members and international members. These volumes are intended to stand as an enduring record of the many contributions of engineers and engineering to the benefit of humankind. In most cases, the authors of the tributes are contemporaries or colleagues who had personal knowledge of the interests and the engineering accomplishments of the deceased. Through its members and international members, the Academy...
This is the 28th volume of Memorial Tributes compiled by the National Academy of Engineering as a personal remembrance of the lives and outstanding achievements of its members and international members. These volumes are intended to stand as an enduring record of the many contributions of engineers and engineering to the benefit of humankind. In most cases, the authors of the tributes are contemporaries or colleagues who had personal knowledge of the interests and the engineering accomplishments of the deceased. Through its members and international members, the Academy carries out the responsibilities for which it was established in 1964.
Under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering was formed as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. Members are elected on the basis of significant contributions to engineering theory and practice and to the literature of engineering or on the basis of demonstrated unusual accomplishments in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology. The National Academies share a responsibility to advise the federal government on matters of science and technology. The expertise and credibility that the National Academy of Engineering brings to that task stem directly from the abilities, interests, and achievements of our members and international members, our colleagues and friends, whose special gifts we remember in this book.
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BY EUGENE KRANZ
LT. GEN. THOMAS PATTEN STAFFORD was laid to rest on April 5, 2024, across the street from Stafford Elementary School. Family and friends say this is his most significant honor.
Tom was born Sept. 17, 1930, in Weatherford, Oklahoma. His father, Thomas S. Stafford, was a dentist trained at Vanderbilt University who came to Oklahoma to open his practice. His mother, Mary Ellen Patten, was a schoolteacher who arrived in Oklahoma in a covered wagon and lived in a sod dugout.
Weatherford was incorporated in 1898 and opened for homesteading in 1892 by German and Russian immigrants. In 1930, the year of Stafford’s birth, the town’s population reached about 2,417. Farming and ranching provided the major economic base, and a severe drought in 1934 led to Dust Bowl conditions that made survival a challenge for many families. In later years, the main street in town would become part of one of the first numbered highways - Route 66, also called the Will Rogers Highway – which stretched from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Tom graduated from Weatherford High School, earned an appointment to the United States Naval Academy, and graduated with honors in 1952 with a Bachelor of Science degree in the same class as Jim Lovell. Lovell chose a career in the Navy, while Stafford – wanting to fly the newest and fastest jets – was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force.
He obtained his pilot’s wings in September 1953, and continued his training with the 54th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron in South Dakota. In 1955, flying F-86D Sabres, he served as a flight leader and flight test maintenance officer at Hahn Air Base in West Germany.
Tom and his wife, Linda Ann (Dishman) Stafford, adopted two boys, Michael and Stanislav, from a Russian orphanage in 2004, with help from Maj. Gen. Aleksei A. Leonov (ret.), who served as a character witness for the couple.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by Michael and Stas; his daughters, Dionne and Karin Stafford, from his first marriage to Faye Shoemaker, which ended in divorce; a stepdaughter, Kassie Pierce; a stepson, Mark Hill; two grandsons; four step-grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
As the late senator and astronaut John Glenn once said of his good friend: “Few people have ever matched Tom Stafford’s endearing impact on this nation, and we are a safer and better nation for it.”
The Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma, a Smithsonian-affiliated institution, houses thousands of artifacts from the earliest days of flight to the manned spaceflight programs of the U.S.-Soviet “space race” era. The General Thomas P. Stafford Archives are housed at the Southwestern Oklahoma State University library.
In writing this memorial tribute, I find it representative of several individuals I have encountered in my life as a fighter pilot, flight test engineer, and director of NASA Mission Operations, leaders I would describe as “Renaissance men.” These are individuals of boundless potential, equally at ease learning new things and applying that knowledge to serve others.