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 From Custer to Space and Home Again

Pejsa at Observatory naming

Art Pejsa also was a lead member of the team that developed the guidance systems to bring the Space Shuttle back to earth. He has authored two books on ballistics for gun enthusiasts and another on the game of bridge. But let's start at the beginning in the small town of Custer, just east of Stevens Point, where Pejsa grew up. Could this boy, raised where birds control the skies, even imagine that one day he would part of a team directing manned space flight?

After graduating from Steven Point's P.J. Jacobs High School in 1940, Pejsa remained in town to attend Central State Teacher's College, which became UW-Stevens Point. Almost immediately, his studies in math, physics and history were interrupted by World War II.

Like a number of the brightest young enlistees at the time, Pejsa was sent to flight training. As a B-29 Superfortress pilot, he flew 30 missions over Asia, including Japan, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

With peace, Pejsa returned to campus and to Doc Nixon's calculus and Mr. Rightsell's physics classes, to Dean's Steiner's enlightening history lectures, to Mr. Knutson's glee club and to Mr. Schmeeckle's passionate lessons in conservation—a passion that resulted in the planting of thousands of pine trees by his students.

Pejsa graduated at the top of his 1947 class and was, for the next eight years, assistant professor of mathematics and mechanics at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Pejsa's career took off, quite literally, when he entered the private sector and became one of the pioneers of aerospace engineering. At the AC Electronics Division of General Motors Corporation, he headed the system design and analysis group for the Thor Missile, the world's first successful long-range inertial guidance system. He had a similar role for the Titan II ICBM, which was later adapted for the submarine-launched Polaris nuclear missile.

At Honeywell, he analyzed control systems for manned vehicles such as Apollo. He also led guidance system development and personally designed the complex reentry guidance for the Space Shuttle. Later he headed software development for Honeywell's inertial navigation system for long-range aircraft.

Art Pejsa during WWII

During the active decades of space exploration beginning the late 1950s, United States also was working on plans for a moon landing as well as for interplanetary missions. One project, sponsored by NASA, was the Mars Flyby Mission. Pejsa, as described on a display of his calculations hanging in the Chancellor's suite in Old Main, "derived the system of equations to determine the precise velocity and direction to reach Mars from Earth orbit on a particular day. These equations included the velocities necessary to traverse the far side of Mars and return to Earth orbit."

While they were both working at Honeywell, Pejsa met his wife, Jane. Carleton College Distinguished Alumna and native Minnesotan, Jane Pejsa is an award-winning historian and biographer. Together, the Pejsa's spent several years in Stevens Point where they were active in the community and claimed a favorite spot in the Route 66 Diner.

Pejsa has graciously given back to his alma mater. In 1986, he endowed a physics and astronomy scholarship to encourage and support a future aerospace scientist. Most recently, in May 2013, Art and Jane Pejsa, joined friends, students and faculty to celebrate the naming of the Arthur J. Pejsa Observatory atop the Science Building.

Despite his lifetime of service to the United States in war and peace, his significant engineering achievements, his contributions to mathematics, physics and the game of bridge, and his generosity to UW-Stevens Point, Art Pejsa humbly remains, as he titled his 1992 autobiography, "The Boy from Custer."