Blastoff to Wedded Bliss : ‘Cowgirl’ and Her Beau Launch Their Marriage at a Rocket Test Site

Employees of Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory are unaccustomed to seeing a bower of roses and a five-piece rock band where they test-fire the rocket engines that power the space shuttle.

But they are not accustomed to having weddings there either.

On Friday, quality assurance engineer Deborah (Debbie) Peterson and engineering specialist Joseph (Joe) Koncel exchanged vows just above the flame bucket on the grill of a steel testing tower known familiarly as “Alfa 3.”

The tower’s jumble of pipes, wires and control panels may seem an odd place for a wedding--even though it stands against a dramatic backdrop of oak scrub and black sandstone boulders in a sparsely inhabited canyon of the Santa Susana mountains between Chatsworth and Simi Valley.

But to Peterson and Koncel, who met when they were both assigned to 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 was scheduled to precede the test firing of an Atlas MA-5A rocket engine on Alfa 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 was postponed.

“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 International Corp., Rocketdyne’s parent company, in the 1960s.

As the sun blazed overhead, the couple’s relatives, friends and co-workers lined up beside the test tower in a narrow patch of shade while the band played Van Morrison tunes.

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

The bride, whose love of horses and the outdoors earned her the nickname “the cowgirl,” wore her signature cowboy boots under a white blouse and skirt. The groom sported cowboy boots, chocolate brown denims and a bolero tie. They planned to head to Hawaii this morning for their honeymoon.

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 Alfa 3, Debbie and Joe make their commitment to each other to become partners on life’s road.”

The couple exchanged rings and kissed passionately for a group of cameras before onlookers showered them with birdseed.

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.

“Most of us are only allowed a half-hour lunch,” explained Mike Sena, a quality assurance inspector.