A Marriage Blasts Off at Rocketdyne

Workers at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory don’t usually see a bower of roses and a five-piece rock band at the spot where they test-fire the rocket engines that power the space shuttle.

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But then they don’t usually have weddings there at lunch hour.

On Friday, a Simi Valley couple who met at the test site 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 provided an odd setting for a wedding, even with its dramatic backdrop of oak scrub and black sandstone boulders in the sparsely inhabited canyon of the Santa Susana Mountains between Simi Valley and Chatsworth.

But to quality assurance engineer Debbie Peterson and engineering specialist Joe 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 set 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.

“It would have been neat to send the marriage off with a big blast into the future, so to speak,” said Gary Hickman, 55, the father of the bride and a retired Ventura County fire captain who worked for Rockwell, 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 with 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.