Cross Plains man's career in rocketry got launched in childhood

ReporterNews: Abiliene: Cross Plains man's career in rocketry got launched in childhood
CROSS PLAINS — Pat Gordzelik was 9 when blew up his grandmother's bathroom.

It was the mid-1960s, and Mary Stewart, who had recognized in her grandson an interest in science, bought him a chemistry set. What captures the imagination of a 9-year-old in possession of a chemistry set?

"Energetic materials," Gordzelik said. "They're things that go 'boom' or 'roar.'"

America was in the midst of the Space Race and Gordzelik was caught in the excitement of the time.

It was like he had his own space program there in Clayton, N. M., Gordzelik recalled, smiling. The principal of his school in Sedan, N.M., even invited him to demonstrate the rocket propellants he had formulated in his "laboratory."

"After we did that, we went outside and launched one of my rockets out in the yard," he recalled. "I mean, the whole school, all 42 of us, three teachers and a janitor, all got out there and chased this rocket down."

Just like at NASA, success in young Gordzelik's own space program balanced failures.

During a propellant test, his twin brother Mike volunteered to light the fuse. He was to simply light it, throw it into a steel barrel and run away.

"Well, he doesn't run," Gordzelik said. "He puts his fingers in his ears and he kneels down beside the barrel. It's got a fuse on it and it's lit, I'm yelling, 'Mike, no!' and boom!"

The rising sun silhouetted the barrel and he could see small holes appearing in the steel. Fear clenched his chest as Gordzelik watched his brother.

"Mike jumped up and ran right by me," he said. "He ran into the house and I'm thinking, A) he's hurt or, B) he's going to go tell Grandma on me. I didn't think about C) — he comes running back out the house with a pump BB gun and he's shooting at me!"

Gordzelik began to laugh, saying his brother escaped physical injury but his pride was another matter.

"He chases me out to the pasture, all the way to the tank and back, he shot me about six times with that BB gun," he said, and pantomimes firing a rifle while making shooting sounds. "Ptow! Ptow! I'm yelling, 'I'm sorry! I'm sorry! You were supposed to run!'"

In 1969, after his family moved back to Amarillo, he and a friend decided they were going to launch a small-scale replica of the Saturn V booster, the rocket that would take the astronauts to the moon.

Loading the device with black-powder rocket motors, the two boys launched it. The Saturn V lifted off, then — arching with the wind — flew directly into a nearby two-story house, the motors cutting out seconds before the rocket hit the wood shingle roof. Made of balsa and cardboard, the ship didn't do any damage, but it certainly made a noise.

"This woman came running out of the house and she was angry. In fact, she was the wife of an attorney there in Amarillo," he said, laughing and shaking his head at the memory. "She was yelling at us, 'Y'all will never amount to anything!'"

Gordzelik drifted away from rocketry as he got older. He started a power tool and fastener company with stores in five cities across Texas and New Mexico. Then one day his sister asked him to help her boys with a Boy Scout rocketry project. It rekindled his old science flame from long ago.

Rocketry had certainly changed in the years since he had experimented with it as a child. Gordzelik joined the Tripoli Rocketry Association and eventually became the group's vice president. A few years ago, he sold his business and moved down to Cross Plains with his wife, Lauretta, turning his attention to rockets full time.

In recent years, he has partnered with Texas Tech University to teach high-powered rocketry classes to educators who will take that knowledge to their own classrooms.

"They, in turn, use what they learn to spike an interest in our youth, using rocketry as a tool, to get involved in the engineering disciplines," he said. "In America today, we are losing people with interest in engineering at a rapid rate."

This weekend, Gordzelik will host the 2011 CanSat Competition at his ranch. About 128 engineering students from the United States and around the world will bring science packages to be lifted into the sky in one of Gordzelik's rockets. Safety will be a primary concern, and Gordzelik already has received burn ban and Federal Aviation Administration waivers.

Each student's project must fit into a soda can, which is ejected when the rocket reaches apogee at around 2,500 feet. The contest prize is money for furthering the winner's education.

"The projects do different things," Gordzelik said. "I've had some students deploy a parachute that was radio-controlled, where they could make spot-landings using a transmitter and then, when it landed, it deploys little legs and walks off somewhere."

Despite the predictions of the outraged woman in Amarillo, Gordzelik probably has amounted to something. He said he knows his friend Rick Husband did. Husband was commander on the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, when the spacecraft broke up over Texas during re-entry.

"Rick decided he was going to get into rockets in a big way," Gordzelik said, his voice turning hoarse with emotion. "In my high school annual, he signed, 'I'll send you some pictures from space.'"

Amarillo renamed its airport after Husband. At the dedication, Gordzelik was greeted by the woman whose home he and Husband had flown a rocket into.

"She said, 'I've been wrong about a lot of things in my life, but I was never more wrong about you two,'" he said with a laugh, wiping at a tear.