By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

Mechanical engineer Dr. Abe Silverstein, the architect of NASA’s space program and the “Father of Apollo,” will be posthumously inducted to the National Aviation Hall of Fame at its annual enshrinement dinner, on Friday, Oct. 2 at 6 p.m. at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.

Also to be inducted this year will be the late Robert N. Hartzell of Hartzell Propeller, NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz, and test pilot Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Robert L. Cardenas.

Born in Terre Haute, Ind. in 1908, Silverstein began his career at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1929 at Langley Research Center in Virginia. He led aerodynamic research there which would improve the high-speed performance of combat planes in World War II.

Silverstein settled in Cleveland in 1943 when he was transferred to the Lewis Laboratory, where he served as chief of the wind tunnel and flight division, and led propulsion aerodynamics research.

From 1958 to 1961, he was transferred to NACA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to help organize NASA, becoming the first director of its office of space flight programs.

He returned to Cleveland’s Lewis Research Center — now John H. Glenn Research Center Lewis Field — as its director until his retirement from NASA in 1969. Silverstein died in 2001 at the age of 92. Among the numerous honors he received during his lifetime was the Guggenheim Medal from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1997.

A leader in Cleveland’s Jewish community, Silverstein was one of the founders of Beth Israel-The West Temple, and served as president of the Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism.

For Silverstein’s oldest son, the induction announcement was a case of good timing. David Silverstein, also an engineer, moved to Fairborn last September from Maumee to work for Peerless Technologies at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, site of the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

A few months after David arrived here, the hall of fame let him know the good news.

“I’m very proud of him,” David, 57, says of his late father. “He was never really one to draw attention to himself. He was very intense about what he did, and he was very focused on what he did. And he always had that picture in his mind of where he wanted to end up.”

He says that intensity came through in his father’s parenting style when David and his younger brother and sister grew up in Cleveland’s Fairview Park neighborhood.

“He got involved in our upbringing. I expressed an interest in golfing and he set it up so that not only me, but anyone else at the lab who had kids could come out, and he got the golf pro from Westwood Country Club to give all the kids lessons.”

David recalls there were only two or three Jewish families in Fairview at that time.

“But because it was close to the lab, Dad liked that. He never really discussed work when he was home. He was out of town quite a bit. Like a lot of families of that generation, the mom was at home to take care of us.”

As David grew up, he gained a better understanding of his father’s role as the lab’s director.

“He was the ultimate administrator. He could organize a group to get it to where other people could enjoy, or where it would do other people some good.”

David himself worked as a NASA contractor for three years, but says he wasn’t one to mention his father in passing.

“They would pick up on the name, but I wasn’t looking to brag about anything.”

David’s sister, Judy, lives in Columbia Va. and his brother, Joe, lives in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Their mother, Marion, died in 1998. Among the siblings are five children.

For more information about the enshrinement dinner, go to nationalaviation.org.

To read the complete September 2015 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.