Mark Bennett: Hautean who guided quest for moon fought persecution, too

Jul. 1—It's a legitimate question.

Abe Silverstein answered it like an engineer, which he was.

He'd been a central figure in planning NASA's first three manned space flight programs — Gemini, Mercury and Apollo — culminating in astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon July 20, 1969. As director of NASA's space flight programs, Silverstein drew the roadmap to make a reality of President John F. Kennedy's 1961 declaration that the United States of America should commit to "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the decade. And then Silverstein made sure it happened.

Afterward, people wanted to know how Silverstein knew how to accomplish something that had never been done. "You make the future," he said in a 1984 oral history interview.

"People who say, 'How did you figure out what to do?' Well, you are making the future because the only thing that you have to go on when the future arrives is what you have stored up from the past," Silverstein explained in that interview, preserved in the archives of the NASA Glenn Research Center.

Silverstein stored up plenty of achievements in his 92 years of living.

Thus, the Indiana Jewish Historical Society is posthumously honoring Silverstein, a Terre Haute native who died in 2001. Silverstein is among seven people chosen for induction into the Society's Hoosier Jewish Legends — a Hall of Fame celebrating both Jewish and non-Jewish Hoosiers who left a significant impact on their professions. The induction ceremony is scheduled for Aug. 21 in Indianapolis. Joining Silverstein as inductees are Marilyn and Gene Glick, Marcia Goldstone, Mark and Hart Hasten, and Ted Green. Two Terre Hauteans were earlier inducted, businessman Max Einstandig in 2016 and Holocaust survivor Eva Kor in 2017. The Society began the Legends honors in 2016 to raise awareness of such accomplished folks.

"That's our goal — to promote the good that people do," Sheila Greenwald, a member of the nonprofit IJHS's board, said Tuesday.

Silverstein certainly meets the Hall's criteria. "We're very, very pleased, because of all the things he did for our government and for us, coming from a little place in Terre Haute, Indiana."

Indeed, Silverstein grew up poor at 1106 S. Fourth St. with five sisters and his parents, Joseph and Eva Silverstein, Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and Latvia, respectively. Joseph ran a men's clothing shop on Wabash Avenue. After the business folded, Joseph worked as a nightwatchman at Rea Park. Joseph was struck and killed by a automobile in 1929. That same year, Abe graduated from Rose Polytechnic Institute and accepted a job offer with an organization he'd never heard of — the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in Virginia, NASA's forerunner.

Clearly, that decision worked out.

Silverstein not only supervised the progress of the manned space flight missions, he also named them. Perhaps his greatest feat was convincing NASA to use liquid nitrogen as the primary propellant of the Saturn V rockets that thrust the Apollo crews into space, over the objections of noted rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun. "That's number one, by far and away, because that's had such a lasting impact on aerospace development," NASA Glenn Research Center history officer Anne E. Mills told the Tribune-Star in 2019.

Others pioneers such as Armstrong, Aldrin, Von Braun, John Glenn, Alan Shepard and Jim Lovell hold more high-profile spots in the American public's understanding of space exploration. But it was Silverstein whom the National Aviation Hall of Fame labeled the "Father of Apollo" when it inducted him in 2014. Mills called him "the most underrated person in NASA history, overall."

His nephew, Norm Winski, aims to change Silverstein's anonymity. A 71-year-old Naples, Fla., financial advisor, Winski is crafting a movie about his uncle's life. A script has been written, and a director enlisted. "We're just on the precipice for raising money — the development stage," Winski said by phone Tuesday. Its working title is "Abe: The Man Who Got Us to the Moon."

"If you made it up, nobody would believe it," Winski said of his uncle's life story.

One lesser-known but remarkable element of Silverstein's legacy is his work on behalf of his Jewish heritage.

Silverstein's career with NACA, the pre-NASA agency, included a transfer in 1943 from Langley Research Center in Virginia to the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland. While leading that project, Silverstein noticed several of his Jewish employees often had to leave work early to make an hour-long drive across Cleveland to a temple on the city's east side. So, Silverstein organized an effort to build a temple near the research center. Beth Israel — The West Temple opened May 11, 1958.

Its outreach went beyond Cleveland. Silverstein and a handful of other temple members formed a study group that sought freedom for persecuted Jews in the communist Soviet Union, who were prohibited from practices such as Passover celebrations and circumcision. Silverstein's group became the Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism. It spawned other local councils across the U.S. and a global Soviet Jewry effort to further the cause of liberation.

"It sort of mutated into an international movement," Winski said.

The architect of manned space flight also led a worldwide project to end religious persecution. That's a Hall of Fame life. I can't wait to see the movie.

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.