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Show Published in the interest of the personnel of White Sands Missile Range THE/lWHfTE SANDS White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico Friday, May 72, 7972 He is last to retire of employes I working here since posf opened ByVernHunt Charles A. Brink, a charter member of the White Sands Missile Range work force and the only current employe who has worked continuously at the range since its establishment in 1945, will retire Friday (May 19). Now a civil engineer with the Plans and Engineering Office, National Range Operations, Mr. Brink was initially with a Corps of Engineers crew which came to the New Mexico desert site in mid-1945 to survey the Tularosa Basin for the first all-land missile range, Coming here from Ft. Wingate, near Gallup, N.M. on temporary orders, he managed to renew his orders several times until he was finally transferred to the Ordnance Corps and became a permanent resident of Las Cruces, N.M. He retires with 30 years federal service.* In recent years he has been involved with building and road construction at WSMR. However, during the early days, he was assigned to the Technical Operations Office to assist in missile recovery work. He halped establish a number of spotting stations in locations like Tula Peak and San Andres Peak. Perched on top of a peak, his job was to spot impacting missiles and report their locations, using a 360 degree azimuth range finder, to recovery teams. At San Andres Peak, the only access to the spotting location was by way of a now-abandoned tramway on the west side of the mountain. He recalls many a day when he became nearly frozen at that 8,000-foot altitude. During this stint he saw most of the V-2 and Tiny Tim firings. One of Mr. Brink's first jobs was to establish sectional land markers, spaced a mile apart, before the geodetic surveys were made. He needed something easy to spot, and for this he found a surplus of old target rockets with wooden fins. The fins were ideal for quick identification and one or two may still be found along the Las Cruces access road. Although born in Iowa, Mr. Brink considers himself a native New Mexican. His family moved to Taos in 1919, where he was graduated from high school in 1924, and he has been hooked on the Land of Enchantment ever since. He is married to the former Ruth Black of Blossom, Tex. They have one son, Charles, Jr., who is employed in California. The Brinks live at 415 Palmer Road, Las Cruces. During the years, he has watched the original tent city here grow into a billion dollar establishment which boasts the most sophisticated instrumentation of any range in the Western World. Asked what has impressed him the most during his missilery career, he replied that the current level of that sophistication, as compared to the embryonic days, must overshadow everything else. He also has fond recollections of the early days when there were no phones or paved roads up-range, and when his jeep occasionally ran out of gas, he walked to the nearest village which sometimes took hours. He first entered federal service in February 1942 when he was employed by the Corps of Engineers at the old Army Air Base at Hobbs. |