Romance on the Rockets : Couple Exchange Vows at Rocketdyne Site Where Love Bloomed

Quality assurance engineer Debbie Peterson and engineering specialist Joe Koncel exchanged wedding vows Friday just above the flame bucket on the grill of a steel testing tower known familiarly as “Alpha 3” in a sparsely inhabited canyon of the Santa Susana Mountains between Chatsworth and Simi Valley.

The tower’s jumble of pipes, wires and control panels--part of Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory, where workers test-fire the rocket engines that power the Space Shuttle--may seem an odd place for a wedding, even if it stands against a dramatic backdrop of oak scrub and black sandstone boulders.

But to Peterson and Koncel, who met when they were both on the night shift at the test site three years ago, the setting seemed perfectly romantic.

“This is where we got to know each other,” Koncel, 41, explained.

“It was a field lab romance,” Peterson, 33, agreed.

The double-ring ceremony, watched by relatives, friends and co-workers, was scheduled to precede the test-firing of an Atlas MA-5A rocket engine on Alpha 1, a test stand about 500 feet away. But the test was postponed until Tuesday after a control light indicated that an engine valve that was supposed to be closed was partially open.

Although the couple did not intend to include the test-firing in their wedding plans, Peterson’s father, Gary Hickman, said he was disappointed. “It would have been neat to send the marriage off with a big blast into the future, so to speak,” said Hickman, 55, a retired Ventura County fire captain who worked for Rockwell, Rocketdyne’s parent company, in the 1960s.

As the sun blazed overhead, the audience lined up beside the test tower in a narrow patch of shade while the band played Van Morrison tunes.

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The music briefly segued into “Here Comes the Bride” as the wedding party entered on an asphalt driveway where signs read “Hazardous Area: Do Not Enter Without Proper Protection.” A framed bower of roses marked the altar.

The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Lynn McKie of the Universal Life Church, the test site’s operational lead man, who wore a double-breasted jacket over a tie-dyed T-shirt. In a brief sermon that included an Apache wedding blessing, he explained the significance of the wedding’s setting.

“Here among the machinery where we test our commitment to reach out to the stars, Joe and Debbie began to love,” McKie said. “Today at Alpha 3, Debbie and Joe make their commitment to each other to become partners on life’s road.”

And in a nod toward the presence of Rocketdyne President Paul Smith, Peterson reminded her colleagues--most of whom attended the brief ceremony on their lunch break--to properly account for their time when they returned to work.