A 20th Century Guy is about a guy, me, who grew up early in the 20th century between WWI and WWII in time to become involved in WWII as a Naval Aviator and was lucky enough to seek and obtain work as an experimental test pilot.

After survival of 15 years of flight testing in the Navy, at Grumman Aircraft and with North American Aviation which was throughout the developmental stage of jet flight testing, my professional flying days came to an end.
 
In the middle of that period of flight testing, I lost the lower half of my left leg, but  I did return to test flying after only four months out of the cockpit! 

My transfer out of flight testing came about when I was selected to direct and manage the major testing of the Apollo Lunar Mission Command and Service Modules by my employer, North American Aviation, when they won the contracts to build the Apollo Command and Service Modules, as well as, the Second Stage of the Saturn Rocket.  After seven years as the North American Director of Test Operations on the Apollo Project, in the aftermath of the Apollo "fire on the pad" which cost the lives of Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, I was removed from my job and I returned to Grumman Aircraft, where I had held my first civilian test pilot job.  Grumman was in the process of manufacturing the Apollo Lunar Landing Module and wanted my help in working with their customer, NASA.