Parallel Lives United in Fiery Death
Until the explosion united them in death, Larry A. Pugh and Otto K. Heiney had led almost parallel lives.
Born of working-class parents in Rust Belt towns, the two Rocketdyne physicists grew up on nearly identical paths.
They pursued bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees, hungering for knowledge long past the point when most students quit: Pugh published 25 books in his field, while Heiney was a member of Mensa.
Their passion for high-end, hands-on science landed them in side-by-side offices at Rocketdyne’s Canoga Park headquarters in the San Fernando Valley, and on a test stand at the firm’s rugged outdoor laboratory in Ventura County.
And there on July 26, 1994, Pugh and Heiney died at virtually the same instant in an explosion of volatile rocket fuel chemicals.
That bright, fierce blast ripped gaping holes in the lives of two families.
“I wake up sometimes and I say, ‘I want my old life back, I don’t like this one,’ ” said Heiney’s widow, Judith Heiney, from her home near Pensacola, Fla.
Antoinette Pugh remembers her husband, Larry, as her “best friend.” He met her in sixth grade in Yorkville, Ohio, married her at the age of 21 and ultimately left her behind in their Thousand Oaks home with their now-grown daughter.
“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him and wish he were here,” she said.
Pugh was born Jan. 16, 1943, in Martins Ferry, Ohio.
He studied physics at Ohio State, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1963, a master’s degree in 1966 and a doctorate in 1972. He went on to postdoctoral study in molecular spectroscopy--the study of chemical compounds by their reaction with light--at the State University of New York and the University of Paris.
In 1976, he came to Rocketdyne. With a high government security clearance, he began working on secret projects involving lasers, she said.
Meanwhile, Heiney had been plowing through his own studies of engineering and physics.
Born Nov. 11, 1940, in Bethlehem, Pa., Heiney was 17 when his bookkeeper father died.
He graduated in 1962 as a merit scholar from Lehigh University and joined the Air Force. Heiney helped develop solid-fuel rocket motors at Norton Air Force Base for the Mobile Midrange Missile system--a nuclear arsenal meant to be ferried by rail.
At night, he pursued his master’s degree at USC in aerospace engineering. And while he stopped short of completing doctoral studies at USC because a job change took him to Florida, his wife said, Heiney never stopped learning.
“After he got his degree, he would go to school to take photography, he got a correspondence degree from a mechanic’s school . . . and he took Spanish,” Judith Heiney said. “He just liked to go to school.”
Heiney left the Air Force in 1965 to take a series of civilian jobs--at Northrop, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
He worked at Eglin for 14 years, developing solid propellants for rockets and artillery shells, until the Air Force ended the program in 1984 and he came to Rocketdyne. And there, he worked on solid and gel-liquid ordnance propellants.
Both men hewed to a strict personal code: a solid work ethic and strong support for their children.
Pugh “raised me to be very, very independent and to find the answers to questions within myself,” said daughter Meredith Pugh, 22.
Heiney also taught a code of self-reliance to his daughter, Kristine Cooksey, 34. “He just accepted life and people on their own terms,” she said. “He had friends from all walks of life.”
After his death, Heiney’s fishing buddies and poker partners paid their respects, among them a beer truck driver, an accountant, a gardener, an architect, a secretary and a retired doctor’s wife.
Pugh’s widow, too, said friends she never knew he had made “came by the house and said things and cried.”
She added, “He was so bright and he had so much more to do. He was such a gentle man, and the fact that he died in such a violent way is so incongruent.”
