Tyler R. Perry
For the Advertiser
CASS CITY — Few people return to their hometown to find their name emblazoned on the village limits sign welcoming visitors to the community. Even fewer people will man shuttles into space. Cass City native Brewster Shaw, Jr. has had both experiences.
A recent visit home for his 50th high school class reunion provided some time for Shaw to reminisce about his early life in the Cass City area and his illustrious career with NASA.
For many young people, leaving their small hometown after high school is a top priority. It wasn’t for Brewster Shaw. In fact, he credits the life lessons and experiences he had in Cass City with forming a solid “launch pad” for his future. “We lived on a farm. When you live on a farm, you learn a good work ethic. You know, it’s just part of growing up, part of your existence. Cass City was a very comfortable community … it was a great place to grow up.”
Shaw’s greatest role models were his parents. His mother, Ione Shaw, was a teacher in the Cass City public school system for many years and his father was a farmer. “I still hear my mother correcting my English and telling me what the proper way to speak is,” he says. “I still feel the presence of my father offering me the opportunity to do hard work, but then feeling good about what I accomplished.”
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Shaw, a 1963 graduate of Cass City High School, took an active role in the life of the community. For him, school athletics was a way to burn energy and make friends. “I’m not a big guy, I’m not a great athlete, but at Cass City High School I was able to play athletics,” Shaw says. “I played football for Mike Yedinak until senior year, and then the coaching staff changed. I played basketball for a couple of years for Irv Claseman, but I was short and slow, and so senior year I didn’t even go out. And I ran track – ? mile, mile kind of stuff, because I’m not fast. Had we lived in a big city with a much bigger high school, it wouldn’t have been that way. So, I thought that was a positive.”
In addition to athletics, Shaw dabbled in the music world — a hobby that paid off…literally. While his junior high trombone career was short-lived, playing in a rock band for his senior trip turned out to be beneficial. “[Playing for the senior trip] was a good primer, because I paid for the majority of my college education by playing in a rock band at the University of Wisconsin, which was relatively lucrative.”
When it came time to make plans for college, Shaw says he was a typical high school senior. “I wanted to go to school out of state, because I felt like I needed some space between myself and my parents at that particular time, not unlike a lot of 18-year-old guys. My mother and my three older sisters had all gone to the University of Michigan; my father had gone to the University of Wisconsin, so it was a fairly easy sell to get my parents to support me going to the University of Wisconsin.”
For Shaw, going to space was not an early aspiration. “When I was growing up here…I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he says. “Math was something that was relatively easy for me, and I liked physics, so I got a University of Wisconsin catalog and started flipping through. My dad had an engineering degree, so I looked into engineering and I found this thing called ‘engineering mechanics’ and read all the courses for the 4-year program. I thought those looked ok, so that’s what I signed up for without having a clue what I would do with it.”
It wasn’t until college that Shaw began to think about a career with NASA. “There were three or four things that created this perfect storm of an idea.” The first “ingredient” for that storm was a love for flying planes. “One of the drummers in our band was a private pilot,” Shaw says. “He took me flying one day and I’ve never stopped flying since that day. I got a private pilot’s license while I was in college.”
The second component was a celestial mechanics course at the University of Wisconsin. “I enjoyed that course a lot,” Shaw says. “[It was taught by] a professor who did become a role model, sort of a mentor, that I liked very much.”
The third contributing factor to Shaw’s pursuit of his career was a sense of awe at man’s rapid development of space technology and exploration. “That was in the mid-60’s and I was watching, like everybody else in this country, us getting ready to go to the moon. And all of those guys that were involved in Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo were military test pilots. So, it seemed like the only avenue to do what they were doing, which intrigued me, was to be a military test pilot.”
The final part of the equation stemmed from current events. The Vietnam War was in full swing and the call of the draft was inevitable. “We had gone recently to a lottery system,” Shaw says. “I had a very low lottery number. It was pretty clear I was going to be drafted.” Faced with compulsory recruitment, Shaw had a decision to make. “I could allow myself to be drafted into the army, or I could choose to fly and maybe someday get to get to test pilot school…maybe someday I would be able to do what those guys were doing, those guys who were getting ready to go to the moon.”
When those four components came together, Shaw’s “perfect storm” began brewing. In 1969, after his completion of Officer Training School and attending undergraduate pilot training, Shaw entered the U.S. Air Force. He served during the Vietnam War, attended USAF Test Pilot School, and realized his dream of becoming a test pilot.
In 1978, NASA selected Shaw to be a United States astronaut. For four years, he was involved in various technical assignments. But in 1982, Shaw was “tapped on the shoulder” and assigned to a flight. Three years later, Shaw boarded STS-9 Columbia, which he piloted.
“Like a sledge hammer hitting the back of your seat.” That’s how Shaw describes the initial jolt of the rockets attached to the shuttle, as it lifts off the ground. He says he knew that the ascent into orbit would be rough, because of the accounts of other astronauts. As he spoke, tears welling up in his eyes, it was apparent that he did not expect the beauty and sense of awe he would feel as he caught his first glimpse of earth from space. “It’s an experience everyone should have a right to,” he said.
The years since that first extraterrestrial trip have been anything but boring for the astronaut. In 1985, Shaw was shuttle commander for STS-61B Atlantis. Four years later, he was shuttle commander yet again, this time for STS-28 Columbia.
Following his career as an astronaut, Shaw served in various NASA management positions. He retired from NASA in 1996, choosing to work in the private sector. His career path took him to Rockwell International, a leading manufacturer for the aircraft/space craft industry. Rockwell was soon acquired by Boeing, where Shaw worked as a senior executive official until his retirement, in 2011. In 2006, the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation inducted Brewster Shaw, Jr. into the Astronaut Hall of Fame.
Today, Shaw and his wife, Kathy, live in Houston, Texas. They enjoy traveling, visiting their children and grandchildren, and making occasional trips home to Cass City.
Shaw has by no means abandoned his love for adventure. On any given day, you may find him riding his motorcycle cross country, or flying his plane – yes, his own plane – in the Texas skies.