Obituary: Joseph Schmitt died on September 25th

WHEN he was growing up in rural southern Illinois, each member of Joseph Schmitt’s large family had their own job to do. Aunt Katie baked for everyone; he remembered the big pie-safe on her porch. His brother did the hog-butchering, while an uncle made all the family’s shoes. And he, as a boy, also had his special jobs. He delivered clean washing to his widowed mother’s customers, pulling it along in his little four-wheel wagon, and he shined shoes and cleaned spittoons in his brother-in-law’s barbershop. At a dime a shine, it took 300 of them to get enough money to buy his mother a new cooking stove. But even his pocket-change contribution kept the family going.

His grown-up career was the same to him: just playing his small part. By a real piece of luck, and because he was good with his hands—especially at mending flightsuits and rigging parachutes—he was taken on by NASA as a spacesuit technician in the most exciting years of America’s space project, and saw the first of...Continue reading