44: SPACE COAST LIVING | SPACECOASTLIVING.COM
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER
CELEBRATES 60 YEARS
“He had 146 students, and everyone
worked at the Missile Test
Project,” Patterson said
Before 1964, when traditional
college-age students began
appearing, the school catered to
an older, working crowd, with an
average age of 31.
Just a couple of years after the
school’s first classes, Keuper quit
his well-paying job as a senior
engineer with the Missile Test
Project to devote himself full time
to the rapidly growing school. It
was a giant leap of faith.
Funding the fledgling college required
inventiveness, but Brevard
heartily endorsed its value.
“Brevard Engineering College will
help us keep engineers in the area,”
engineer John Wright told the
Orlando Sentinel in 1958.
Wright, who led a dozen engineers
at the cape, had enrolled in BEC to
earn a degree in space technology.
Irving Wolff, head of RCA’s
Princeton Labs, visited BEC and
was delighted with what he saw.
“Brevard Engineering College is
contributing significantly to the
added education of the engineers
and scientists at the Atlantic Missile
Range,” Wolff told the Orlando
Evening Star and presented Keuper
with a $2,400 donation from RCA,
big bucks for the little school.
Two other space cowboys, George
Shaw and Homer Denius, helped
out. The pair, who founded L3Harris
precursor Radiation, also served
as directors of the National Bank of
Melbourne. After Brevard County
schools evicted BEC, Shaw and
Denius orchestrated the college’s
move to an old bank building on
Telescopes on the
roof and the 0.8-meter
Ortega Telescope in
the background are
features of Florida
Tech’s Olin Physical
Sciences building on
the Melbourne campus.
Vintage photos show the progress at FIT’s campus.
Waverly Place in Melbourne.
Keuper died in 2002, but his successors have continued
the trajectory he took that day back in 1958.
“Jerry Keuper knew firsthand the excellence, innovation
and hard work that were required to build
the nation’s space program and we are fortunate >>
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