N.C. Highway Historical Marker to Honor NASA Mastermind

When most people think of the first landing of a man on the moon, they don’t think of a behind the scenes bureaucrat, but there was James E. Webb. Born in Tally Ho, in Granville County, raised and educated in Oxford, N.C., Webb was picked by President John Kennedy to take control of the fledgling National Aeronautics and Space Administration in early 1961. Four months later he charged Webb and NASA to land a man on the moon within a decade and safely return him. He did.

Webb will be recognized with a North Carolina Highway Historical Marker to be dedicated Saturday, April 6, 2 p.m., in front of C. G. Credle Elementary School, 223 College St., Oxford. 

An experienced administrator, Webb had served as vice president of Sperry Gyroscope in New York, commander of the First Marine Air Warning Group at Cherry Point during WWII, director of the budget and undersecretary of state in the Truman administration, and in the offices of North Carolina Congressman Edward Pou and former governor O. Max Gardner. He had served on boards and committees to Harvard, MIT, Oklahoma State, National Municipal League and the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, among others. His resume seemed to fit the job.

After restructuring the NASA staff and boosting it to 35,000 members supported by 400,000 contractors, Webb established the agency’s two most pivotal centers. Today the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center and the Florida Launch Operations Center are known as the Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers, respectively. He brought the agency’s scattered offices under one management system and managed a “scientific-technical-managerial undertaking unparalleled in peacetime.”

Webb advocated relentlessly for his agency, answering questions and taking the heat for setbacks and failures, including after the tragic loss of life of three astronauts in the Apollo I fire on Jan. 20, 1967. Webb’s response may have allowed the agency to survive relatively unscathed, even to thrive. By 1971 the NASA return on investment was seven to one – the country’s gross domestic product received seven dollars for every one dollar spent on the agency.

Undoubtedly the successful lunar landing in July 1969 was Webb’s greatest achievement. He retired from NASA just nine months before the landing to allow the incoming president to pick an administrator, but historians credit Webb with laying the groundwork to make the moon landing possible through Projects Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.

A reception at the Granville Museum—1 Museums Lane, Oxford, will follow the marker dedication, where an exhibit on Webb is on display.

For additional information on the Highway Marker program, please call (919) 814-6625. The Highway Marker Program is collaboration between the N.C. Departments of Natural and Cultural Resources and Transportation.