Hans Friedrich Kennel of Huntsville, Madison Co., AL passed away Wednesday, 9 January 2013, at Huntsville Hospital.
The first child of Friedrich Heinrich Kennel and Elsa Karolina Binkle, he was born in Weißenfels an der Saale, Burgenlandkreis, Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany, but soon moved to Frankfurt am Main and then on to Pirmasens, approximately 332 miles southwest of Weißenfels, and nearby Gersbach (north of Alsace-Lorraine, near the French border), where he grew up.
At that time, Pirmasens was the shoe capital of Europe, and it was in that arena that Hans' father plied his trade. Hans commented that the area's Pfälzisch (Palatine dialect) had a lot of French words in it, with the proper French pronunciation. Not surprisingly he took classes in French and English and a bit of Spanish.
His paternal grandparents were Friedrich "Opa" Kennel and Katharina "Oma" Hartmann; maternal grandparents were Karl Binkle and Amalie Jacquart. While Hans never knew his mother's parents, his father's folks – his grandmother, in particular – would figure greatly in his youth.
In the 1930's, things changed drastically for everyone in Germany; in fact the signs were already apparent when Hans was born. Too young to be directly involved in the political upheaval that gave rise to WWII, he was nevertheless embroiled in its repercussions; like many on the French border, his family was uprooted in fall 1939 once Adolf Hitler decided to invade. Elsa, Hans, and his young brother Fritz "Fritzel" Karl were temporarily relocated to Helmstadt, moving on to a small village on the Main River before rejoining the paterfamilias at their final destination, Heilbronn.
Here, he attended the Robert Mayer Oberschule, the German equivalent of the upper grades of high school. Around 1942, Elsa wished him to join an elite Nazi school, NAPOLA (Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt), in nearby Backnang, but he was not considered a "team player" and was turned down. Said he, "…And was that rejection ever lucky for me, because after the war the ones accepted were blackballed and were not allowed to get a higher education, essentially forcing them to take menial jobs."
That same year, Friedrich's only brother, Richard Phillip, perished in the Russian campaign. Luckily Hans' father, who had converted from the shoe trade to heading production for the making of bomb fuses in the munitions factory, was considered an essential worker and thus exempt from military service. However, the Kennels' luck was not to last.
On 4 December 1944, Hans (as part of his school's security team) was at the Oberschule during an Allied bombing raid on Heilbronn. Afterwards, he managed to make his way back to the family's now-leveled home, only to discover Elsa and Fritzel, along with ten other people, had perished while hiding just past the old wine cellar in the underground wine storage area under the paved back yard. One teenager survived, but was incoherent, perhaps due to the fumes from the burst wine barrels; Friedrich was also spared, as he'd been housed at an out-of-town hospital while recovering from an operation.
Hans returned a few days later, but in the resulting chaos, the bodies had been removed to parts unknown and he never found where Elsa and Fritzel were buried. He and Friedrich managed to reunite, moving five miles east to a temporary home at Weinsberg an der Weibertreu.
Desperation grew during the war's waning days, and in May 1945 Hans himself was marched south by the SchutzStaffel to the Bavarian mountains, where he and his fellow teenaged boys of the "Hitler Jugend," or Hitler Youth, were to train as resistance fighters. En route, they passed other SS men accompanying a group of concentration camp inmates, confirming for Hans the rumors that had gotten around regarding their existence. Onward the group marched, unable to actually stop and train since they were barely keeping ahead of the Allies.
Then suddenly, everyone accepted the fact that the end was near for the war in Europe and the SS, changing from uniforms to civilian clothing, vanished into the civilian population, stranding the young men at Tegernsee, near Rottach-Egern.
Of his own accord, and with just enough provisions to prevent him from literally starving, Hans returned to Weinsberg, covering some 217-plus miles on foot in ten days while dragging a cast-off wagon he'd "repurposed" behind him. He utilized the Autobahn for much of his trip, which not only sped up the process, but apparently made him a unique photographic subject for drive-by U.S. troops.
That fall, Hans and his father were uprooted again, compelled to return to their prewar location, Pirmasens. Moreover, Friedrich had been required to utilize forced foreign laborers in recent years and the "less appreciative" among them were gunning for their tough wartime supervisor.
Things were even harsher after the war; the Reichsmark was ruined, hunger was commonplace, and Hans' father was not only running a household alone, but was greatly changed due to his wartime losses. As was the case with many families, he required his parents' help. Although they were sixty-seven and seventy at the time, Oma and Opa took Hans in, while Friedrich moved to a Gersbach farm to lay low and work.
Despite Oma's admonitions, Hans refused to opt for the "easy out" of blue collar employ and single-mindedly used his own money—derived from selling his tobacco rations; he never smoked—to put himself through the local Oberschule. He also joined the Pirmasenser Turnverein (Gymnastics Club of Pirmasens) and a dance class so contentious that they jokingly named themselves "Diskordia."
In 1950, Hans began his studies at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt; five years later, he received a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in Hydraulics.
Though not advertised, "Operation Paperclip," which had transferred the Wernher von Braun rocket team to Fort Bliss, TX in 1945, was still in force and Hans would benefit from this "human capital flight" as a result.
In the fall of the 1956, he was brought to Huntsville to work as an Aerospace Engineer for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) in general and later for von Braun's group specifically. Hans' field of expertise was Guidance and Control Flight Software.
Along with the German rocket scientists who'd transferred to Huntsville from Fort Bliss, Hans and many other ABMA employees made a lateral move to NASA and what had been christened the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC; both organizations are housed at Redstone Arsenal) in 1960.
Meanwhile, he was introduced to Margarete "Margaret" NMN Müller, daughter of Christian Wilhelm Müller and Anna Maria Lang.
Originally from Kleinaspach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Margaret had come to the U.S. as an au-pair for the Rudolf and Dorette Schlidt family. Rudolf was one of von Braun's original team members; Dorette, it seems, was a matchmaker...and on 1 (church) and 2 (civil registration) December 1961, Hans and Margaret married in Kleinaspach, returning to Huntsville later in the month and making the Rocket City their permanent home. The Kennels did, of course, periodically visit family and friends back in Germany, and vice-versa, but the children would all be born at Huntsville Hospital.
During his Redstone tenure, Hans worked on many space and rocket projects, in particular the Jupiter, Saturn V, Space Lab, Hubble Space Telescope, and HEAO-2 (Einstein X-ray Telescope) missions. Many of his associates there remained lifelong friends.
Hans' most notable area of work was in the development of new software algorithms involving space vehicle angular momentum management and control moment gyros. These algorithms were successfully used on the original 1973 and 1974 Skylab missions, as well as the Skylab reentry mission in 1979.
His Control Moment Gyro Steering Law was advanced and versatile enough to be used years later by the International Space Station. For these accomplishments, Hans received several commendations, including the two highest awards given to NASA employees: the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
After 36 years of government service, Hans retired from MSFC in 1992 (fortuitously, perhaps, since it was just weeks before the birth of his first grandchild).
He enjoyed SCUBA, skiing, traveling, square-dancing, and model railroading. It was not at all uncommon to happen upon the Kennels out on the town with their friends decked out in full square-dancing apparel.
Of the latter "avocation," the story is involved: when he was six, his Uncle Richard built him a steam engine from scratch; during the postwar years in then-West Germany, toys were scarce, yet Hans' grandmother found him a small, windup locomotive.
Hans' railway-centric interests resurfaced when, for Christmas 1969, his father mailed a Märklin electric set to his grandchildren. As it turned out, they may have owned the railroad, but Hans maintained the offices of Supervisor and Engineer.
Complementing his sundry interests, Hans added, "I also liked to take things apart to see what made them work."
Surviving Hans are his wife of fifty-one years, Margaret; three sons, Robert Hans of Huntsville, Frederick "Fred" Michael (Sandra) of Old Hickory, TN, and Steven Thomas (Ana Paula) Kennel, of Abu Dhabi, UAE; a daughter, Tonya Susan Carden (Richard) of Huntsville; four granddaughters, Stephanie and Bianca Kennel and Cheyenne and Britney Carden; a half-brother, Karl-Heinz Kennel of Pirmasens; and a stepmother, Irma Franz Kennel.
He is interred at Huntsville's Valhalla Memory Gardens on Winchester Road.
Valhalla added:
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to englishfirst.org or woundedwarriorproject.org.
- Bio by James "Jim" E. Zielinski
========
========
OBIT
.
The first child of Friedrich Heinrich Kennel and Elsa Karolina Binkle, he was born in Weißenfels an der Saale, Burgenlandkreis, Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany, but soon moved to Frankfurt am Main and then on to Pirmasens, approximately 332 miles southwest of Weißenfels, and nearby Gersbach (north of Alsace-Lorraine, near the French border), where he grew up.
At that time, Pirmasens was the shoe capital of Europe, and it was in that arena that Hans' father plied his trade. Hans commented that the area's Pfälzisch (Palatine dialect) had a lot of French words in it, with the proper French pronunciation. Not surprisingly he took classes in French and English and a bit of Spanish.
His paternal grandparents were Friedrich "Opa" Kennel and Katharina "Oma" Hartmann; maternal grandparents were Karl Binkle and Amalie Jacquart. While Hans never knew his mother's parents, his father's folks – his grandmother, in particular – would figure greatly in his youth.
In the 1930's, things changed drastically for everyone in Germany; in fact the signs were already apparent when Hans was born. Too young to be directly involved in the political upheaval that gave rise to WWII, he was nevertheless embroiled in its repercussions; like many on the French border, his family was uprooted in fall 1939 once Adolf Hitler decided to invade. Elsa, Hans, and his young brother Fritz "Fritzel" Karl were temporarily relocated to Helmstadt, moving on to a small village on the Main River before rejoining the paterfamilias at their final destination, Heilbronn.
Here, he attended the Robert Mayer Oberschule, the German equivalent of the upper grades of high school. Around 1942, Elsa wished him to join an elite Nazi school, NAPOLA (Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt), in nearby Backnang, but he was not considered a "team player" and was turned down. Said he, "…And was that rejection ever lucky for me, because after the war the ones accepted were blackballed and were not allowed to get a higher education, essentially forcing them to take menial jobs."
That same year, Friedrich's only brother, Richard Phillip, perished in the Russian campaign. Luckily Hans' father, who had converted from the shoe trade to heading production for the making of bomb fuses in the munitions factory, was considered an essential worker and thus exempt from military service. However, the Kennels' luck was not to last.
On 4 December 1944, Hans (as part of his school's security team) was at the Oberschule during an Allied bombing raid on Heilbronn. Afterwards, he managed to make his way back to the family's now-leveled home, only to discover Elsa and Fritzel, along with ten other people, had perished while hiding just past the old wine cellar in the underground wine storage area under the paved back yard. One teenager survived, but was incoherent, perhaps due to the fumes from the burst wine barrels; Friedrich was also spared, as he'd been housed at an out-of-town hospital while recovering from an operation.
Hans returned a few days later, but in the resulting chaos, the bodies had been removed to parts unknown and he never found where Elsa and Fritzel were buried. He and Friedrich managed to reunite, moving five miles east to a temporary home at Weinsberg an der Weibertreu.
Desperation grew during the war's waning days, and in May 1945 Hans himself was marched south by the SchutzStaffel to the Bavarian mountains, where he and his fellow teenaged boys of the "Hitler Jugend," or Hitler Youth, were to train as resistance fighters. En route, they passed other SS men accompanying a group of concentration camp inmates, confirming for Hans the rumors that had gotten around regarding their existence. Onward the group marched, unable to actually stop and train since they were barely keeping ahead of the Allies.
Then suddenly, everyone accepted the fact that the end was near for the war in Europe and the SS, changing from uniforms to civilian clothing, vanished into the civilian population, stranding the young men at Tegernsee, near Rottach-Egern.
Of his own accord, and with just enough provisions to prevent him from literally starving, Hans returned to Weinsberg, covering some 217-plus miles on foot in ten days while dragging a cast-off wagon he'd "repurposed" behind him. He utilized the Autobahn for much of his trip, which not only sped up the process, but apparently made him a unique photographic subject for drive-by U.S. troops.
That fall, Hans and his father were uprooted again, compelled to return to their prewar location, Pirmasens. Moreover, Friedrich had been required to utilize forced foreign laborers in recent years and the "less appreciative" among them were gunning for their tough wartime supervisor.
Things were even harsher after the war; the Reichsmark was ruined, hunger was commonplace, and Hans' father was not only running a household alone, but was greatly changed due to his wartime losses. As was the case with many families, he required his parents' help. Although they were sixty-seven and seventy at the time, Oma and Opa took Hans in, while Friedrich moved to a Gersbach farm to lay low and work.
Despite Oma's admonitions, Hans refused to opt for the "easy out" of blue collar employ and single-mindedly used his own money—derived from selling his tobacco rations; he never smoked—to put himself through the local Oberschule. He also joined the Pirmasenser Turnverein (Gymnastics Club of Pirmasens) and a dance class so contentious that they jokingly named themselves "Diskordia."
In 1950, Hans began his studies at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt; five years later, he received a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in Hydraulics.
Though not advertised, "Operation Paperclip," which had transferred the Wernher von Braun rocket team to Fort Bliss, TX in 1945, was still in force and Hans would benefit from this "human capital flight" as a result.
In the fall of the 1956, he was brought to Huntsville to work as an Aerospace Engineer for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) in general and later for von Braun's group specifically. Hans' field of expertise was Guidance and Control Flight Software.
Along with the German rocket scientists who'd transferred to Huntsville from Fort Bliss, Hans and many other ABMA employees made a lateral move to NASA and what had been christened the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC; both organizations are housed at Redstone Arsenal) in 1960.
Meanwhile, he was introduced to Margarete "Margaret" NMN Müller, daughter of Christian Wilhelm Müller and Anna Maria Lang.
Originally from Kleinaspach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Margaret had come to the U.S. as an au-pair for the Rudolf and Dorette Schlidt family. Rudolf was one of von Braun's original team members; Dorette, it seems, was a matchmaker...and on 1 (church) and 2 (civil registration) December 1961, Hans and Margaret married in Kleinaspach, returning to Huntsville later in the month and making the Rocket City their permanent home. The Kennels did, of course, periodically visit family and friends back in Germany, and vice-versa, but the children would all be born at Huntsville Hospital.
During his Redstone tenure, Hans worked on many space and rocket projects, in particular the Jupiter, Saturn V, Space Lab, Hubble Space Telescope, and HEAO-2 (Einstein X-ray Telescope) missions. Many of his associates there remained lifelong friends.
Hans' most notable area of work was in the development of new software algorithms involving space vehicle angular momentum management and control moment gyros. These algorithms were successfully used on the original 1973 and 1974 Skylab missions, as well as the Skylab reentry mission in 1979.
His Control Moment Gyro Steering Law was advanced and versatile enough to be used years later by the International Space Station. For these accomplishments, Hans received several commendations, including the two highest awards given to NASA employees: the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
After 36 years of government service, Hans retired from MSFC in 1992 (fortuitously, perhaps, since it was just weeks before the birth of his first grandchild).
He enjoyed SCUBA, skiing, traveling, square-dancing, and model railroading. It was not at all uncommon to happen upon the Kennels out on the town with their friends decked out in full square-dancing apparel.
Of the latter "avocation," the story is involved: when he was six, his Uncle Richard built him a steam engine from scratch; during the postwar years in then-West Germany, toys were scarce, yet Hans' grandmother found him a small, windup locomotive.
Hans' railway-centric interests resurfaced when, for Christmas 1969, his father mailed a Märklin electric set to his grandchildren. As it turned out, they may have owned the railroad, but Hans maintained the offices of Supervisor and Engineer.
Complementing his sundry interests, Hans added, "I also liked to take things apart to see what made them work."
Surviving Hans are his wife of fifty-one years, Margaret; three sons, Robert Hans of Huntsville, Frederick "Fred" Michael (Sandra) of Old Hickory, TN, and Steven Thomas (Ana Paula) Kennel, of Abu Dhabi, UAE; a daughter, Tonya Susan Carden (Richard) of Huntsville; four granddaughters, Stephanie and Bianca Kennel and Cheyenne and Britney Carden; a half-brother, Karl-Heinz Kennel of Pirmasens; and a stepmother, Irma Franz Kennel.
He is interred at Huntsville's Valhalla Memory Gardens on Winchester Road.
Valhalla added:
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to englishfirst.org or woundedwarriorproject.org.
- Bio by James "Jim" E. Zielinski
========
========
OBIT
.
Hans Friedrich Kennel of Huntsville, Madison Co., AL passed away Wednesday, 9 January 2013, at Huntsville Hospital.
The first child of Friedrich Heinrich Kennel and Elsa Karolina Binkle, he was born in Weißenfels an der Saale, Burgenlandkreis, Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany, but soon moved to Frankfurt am Main and then on to Pirmasens, approximately 332 miles southwest of Weißenfels, and nearby Gersbach (north of Alsace-Lorraine, near the French border), where he grew up.
At that time, Pirmasens was the shoe capital of Europe, and it was in that arena that Hans' father plied his trade. Hans commented that the area's Pfälzisch (Palatine dialect) had a lot of French words in it, with the proper French pronunciation. Not surprisingly he took classes in French and English and a bit of Spanish.
His paternal grandparents were Friedrich "Opa" Kennel and Katharina "Oma" Hartmann; maternal grandparents were Karl Binkle and Amalie Jacquart. While Hans never knew his mother's parents, his father's folks – his grandmother, in particular – would figure greatly in his youth.
In the 1930's, things changed drastically for everyone in Germany; in fact the signs were already apparent when Hans was born. Too young to be directly involved in the political upheaval that gave rise to WWII, he was nevertheless embroiled in its repercussions; like many on the French border, his family was uprooted in fall 1939 once Adolf Hitler decided to invade. Elsa, Hans, and his young brother Fritz "Fritzel" Karl were temporarily relocated to Helmstadt, moving on to a small village on the Main River before rejoining the paterfamilias at their final destination, Heilbronn.
Here, he attended the Robert Mayer Oberschule, the German equivalent of the upper grades of high school. Around 1942, Elsa wished him to join an elite Nazi school, NAPOLA (Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt), in nearby Backnang, but he was not considered a "team player" and was turned down. Said he, "…And was that rejection ever lucky for me, because after the war the ones accepted were blackballed and were not allowed to get a higher education, essentially forcing them to take menial jobs."
That same year, Friedrich's only brother, Richard Phillip, perished in the Russian campaign. Luckily Hans' father, who had converted from the shoe trade to heading production for the making of bomb fuses in the munitions factory, was considered an essential worker and thus exempt from military service. However, the Kennels' luck was not to last.
On 4 December 1944, Hans (as part of his school's security team) was at the Oberschule during an Allied bombing raid on Heilbronn. Afterwards, he managed to make his way back to the family's now-leveled home, only to discover Elsa and Fritzel, along with ten other people, had perished while hiding just past the old wine cellar in the underground wine storage area under the paved back yard. One teenager survived, but was incoherent, perhaps due to the fumes from the burst wine barrels; Friedrich was also spared, as he'd been housed at an out-of-town hospital while recovering from an operation.
Hans returned a few days later, but in the resulting chaos, the bodies had been removed to parts unknown and he never found where Elsa and Fritzel were buried. He and Friedrich managed to reunite, moving five miles east to a temporary home at Weinsberg an der Weibertreu.
Desperation grew during the war's waning days, and in May 1945 Hans himself was marched south by the SchutzStaffel to the Bavarian mountains, where he and his fellow teenaged boys of the "Hitler Jugend," or Hitler Youth, were to train as resistance fighters. En route, they passed other SS men accompanying a group of concentration camp inmates, confirming for Hans the rumors that had gotten around regarding their existence. Onward the group marched, unable to actually stop and train since they were barely keeping ahead of the Allies.
Then suddenly, everyone accepted the fact that the end was near for the war in Europe and the SS, changing from uniforms to civilian clothing, vanished into the civilian population, stranding the young men at Tegernsee, near Rottach-Egern.
Of his own accord, and with just enough provisions to prevent him from literally starving, Hans returned to Weinsberg, covering some 217-plus miles on foot in ten days while dragging a cast-off wagon he'd "repurposed" behind him. He utilized the Autobahn for much of his trip, which not only sped up the process, but apparently made him a unique photographic subject for drive-by U.S. troops.
That fall, Hans and his father were uprooted again, compelled to return to their prewar location, Pirmasens. Moreover, Friedrich had been required to utilize forced foreign laborers in recent years and the "less appreciative" among them were gunning for their tough wartime supervisor.
Things were even harsher after the war; the Reichsmark was ruined, hunger was commonplace, and Hans' father was not only running a household alone, but was greatly changed due to his wartime losses. As was the case with many families, he required his parents' help. Although they were sixty-seven and seventy at the time, Oma and Opa took Hans in, while Friedrich moved to a Gersbach farm to lay low and work.
Despite Oma's admonitions, Hans refused to opt for the "easy out" of blue collar employ and single-mindedly used his own money—derived from selling his tobacco rations; he never smoked—to put himself through the local Oberschule. He also joined the Pirmasenser Turnverein (Gymnastics Club of Pirmasens) and a dance class so contentious that they jokingly named themselves "Diskordia."
In 1950, Hans began his studies at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt; five years later, he received a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in Hydraulics.
Though not advertised, "Operation Paperclip," which had transferred the Wernher von Braun rocket team to Fort Bliss, TX in 1945, was still in force and Hans would benefit from this "human capital flight" as a result.
In the fall of the 1956, he was brought to Huntsville to work as an Aerospace Engineer for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) in general and later for von Braun's group specifically. Hans' field of expertise was Guidance and Control Flight Software.
Along with the German rocket scientists who'd transferred to Huntsville from Fort Bliss, Hans and many other ABMA employees made a lateral move to NASA and what had been christened the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC; both organizations are housed at Redstone Arsenal) in 1960.
Meanwhile, he was introduced to Margarete "Margaret" NMN Müller, daughter of Christian Wilhelm Müller and Anna Maria Lang.
Originally from Kleinaspach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Margaret had come to the U.S. as an au-pair for the Rudolf and Dorette Schlidt family. Rudolf was one of von Braun's original team members; Dorette, it seems, was a matchmaker...and on 1 (church) and 2 (civil registration) December 1961, Hans and Margaret married in Kleinaspach, returning to Huntsville later in the month and making the Rocket City their permanent home. The Kennels did, of course, periodically visit family and friends back in Germany, and vice-versa, but the children would all be born at Huntsville Hospital.
During his Redstone tenure, Hans worked on many space and rocket projects, in particular the Jupiter, Saturn V, Space Lab, Hubble Space Telescope, and HEAO-2 (Einstein X-ray Telescope) missions. Many of his associates there remained lifelong friends.
Hans' most notable area of work was in the development of new software algorithms involving space vehicle angular momentum management and control moment gyros. These algorithms were successfully used on the original 1973 and 1974 Skylab missions, as well as the Skylab reentry mission in 1979.
His Control Moment Gyro Steering Law was advanced and versatile enough to be used years later by the International Space Station. For these accomplishments, Hans received several commendations, including the two highest awards given to NASA employees: the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
After 36 years of government service, Hans retired from MSFC in 1992 (fortuitously, perhaps, since it was just weeks before the birth of his first grandchild).
He enjoyed SCUBA, skiing, traveling, square-dancing, and model railroading. It was not at all uncommon to happen upon the Kennels out on the town with their friends decked out in full square-dancing apparel.
Of the latter "avocation," the story is involved: when he was six, his Uncle Richard built him a steam engine from scratch; during the postwar years in then-West Germany, toys were scarce, yet Hans' grandmother found him a small, windup locomotive.
Hans' railway-centric interests resurfaced when, for Christmas 1969, his father mailed a Märklin electric set to his grandchildren. As it turned out, they may have owned the railroad, but Hans maintained the offices of Supervisor and Engineer.
Complementing his sundry interests, Hans added, "I also liked to take things apart to see what made them work."
Surviving Hans are his wife of fifty-one years, Margaret; three sons, Robert Hans of Huntsville, Frederick "Fred" Michael (Sandra) of Old Hickory, TN, and Steven Thomas (Ana Paula) Kennel, of Abu Dhabi, UAE; a daughter, Tonya Susan Carden (Richard) of Huntsville; four granddaughters, Stephanie and Bianca Kennel and Cheyenne and Britney Carden; a half-brother, Karl-Heinz Kennel of Pirmasens; and a stepmother, Irma Franz Kennel.
He is interred at Huntsville's Valhalla Memory Gardens on Winchester Road.
Valhalla added:
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to englishfirst.org or woundedwarriorproject.org.
- Bio by James "Jim" E. Zielinski
========
========
OBIT
.
The first child of Friedrich Heinrich Kennel and Elsa Karolina Binkle, he was born in Weißenfels an der Saale, Burgenlandkreis, Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany, but soon moved to Frankfurt am Main and then on to Pirmasens, approximately 332 miles southwest of Weißenfels, and nearby Gersbach (north of Alsace-Lorraine, near the French border), where he grew up.
At that time, Pirmasens was the shoe capital of Europe, and it was in that arena that Hans' father plied his trade. Hans commented that the area's Pfälzisch (Palatine dialect) had a lot of French words in it, with the proper French pronunciation. Not surprisingly he took classes in French and English and a bit of Spanish.
His paternal grandparents were Friedrich "Opa" Kennel and Katharina "Oma" Hartmann; maternal grandparents were Karl Binkle and Amalie Jacquart. While Hans never knew his mother's parents, his father's folks – his grandmother, in particular – would figure greatly in his youth.
In the 1930's, things changed drastically for everyone in Germany; in fact the signs were already apparent when Hans was born. Too young to be directly involved in the political upheaval that gave rise to WWII, he was nevertheless embroiled in its repercussions; like many on the French border, his family was uprooted in fall 1939 once Adolf Hitler decided to invade. Elsa, Hans, and his young brother Fritz "Fritzel" Karl were temporarily relocated to Helmstadt, moving on to a small village on the Main River before rejoining the paterfamilias at their final destination, Heilbronn.
Here, he attended the Robert Mayer Oberschule, the German equivalent of the upper grades of high school. Around 1942, Elsa wished him to join an elite Nazi school, NAPOLA (Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt), in nearby Backnang, but he was not considered a "team player" and was turned down. Said he, "…And was that rejection ever lucky for me, because after the war the ones accepted were blackballed and were not allowed to get a higher education, essentially forcing them to take menial jobs."
That same year, Friedrich's only brother, Richard Phillip, perished in the Russian campaign. Luckily Hans' father, who had converted from the shoe trade to heading production for the making of bomb fuses in the munitions factory, was considered an essential worker and thus exempt from military service. However, the Kennels' luck was not to last.
On 4 December 1944, Hans (as part of his school's security team) was at the Oberschule during an Allied bombing raid on Heilbronn. Afterwards, he managed to make his way back to the family's now-leveled home, only to discover Elsa and Fritzel, along with ten other people, had perished while hiding just past the old wine cellar in the underground wine storage area under the paved back yard. One teenager survived, but was incoherent, perhaps due to the fumes from the burst wine barrels; Friedrich was also spared, as he'd been housed at an out-of-town hospital while recovering from an operation.
Hans returned a few days later, but in the resulting chaos, the bodies had been removed to parts unknown and he never found where Elsa and Fritzel were buried. He and Friedrich managed to reunite, moving five miles east to a temporary home at Weinsberg an der Weibertreu.
Desperation grew during the war's waning days, and in May 1945 Hans himself was marched south by the SchutzStaffel to the Bavarian mountains, where he and his fellow teenaged boys of the "Hitler Jugend," or Hitler Youth, were to train as resistance fighters. En route, they passed other SS men accompanying a group of concentration camp inmates, confirming for Hans the rumors that had gotten around regarding their existence. Onward the group marched, unable to actually stop and train since they were barely keeping ahead of the Allies.
Then suddenly, everyone accepted the fact that the end was near for the war in Europe and the SS, changing from uniforms to civilian clothing, vanished into the civilian population, stranding the young men at Tegernsee, near Rottach-Egern.
Of his own accord, and with just enough provisions to prevent him from literally starving, Hans returned to Weinsberg, covering some 217-plus miles on foot in ten days while dragging a cast-off wagon he'd "repurposed" behind him. He utilized the Autobahn for much of his trip, which not only sped up the process, but apparently made him a unique photographic subject for drive-by U.S. troops.
That fall, Hans and his father were uprooted again, compelled to return to their prewar location, Pirmasens. Moreover, Friedrich had been required to utilize forced foreign laborers in recent years and the "less appreciative" among them were gunning for their tough wartime supervisor.
Things were even harsher after the war; the Reichsmark was ruined, hunger was commonplace, and Hans' father was not only running a household alone, but was greatly changed due to his wartime losses. As was the case with many families, he required his parents' help. Although they were sixty-seven and seventy at the time, Oma and Opa took Hans in, while Friedrich moved to a Gersbach farm to lay low and work.
Despite Oma's admonitions, Hans refused to opt for the "easy out" of blue collar employ and single-mindedly used his own money—derived from selling his tobacco rations; he never smoked—to put himself through the local Oberschule. He also joined the Pirmasenser Turnverein (Gymnastics Club of Pirmasens) and a dance class so contentious that they jokingly named themselves "Diskordia."
In 1950, Hans began his studies at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt; five years later, he received a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in Hydraulics.
Though not advertised, "Operation Paperclip," which had transferred the Wernher von Braun rocket team to Fort Bliss, TX in 1945, was still in force and Hans would benefit from this "human capital flight" as a result.
In the fall of the 1956, he was brought to Huntsville to work as an Aerospace Engineer for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) in general and later for von Braun's group specifically. Hans' field of expertise was Guidance and Control Flight Software.
Along with the German rocket scientists who'd transferred to Huntsville from Fort Bliss, Hans and many other ABMA employees made a lateral move to NASA and what had been christened the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC; both organizations are housed at Redstone Arsenal) in 1960.
Meanwhile, he was introduced to Margarete "Margaret" NMN Müller, daughter of Christian Wilhelm Müller and Anna Maria Lang.
Originally from Kleinaspach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Margaret had come to the U.S. as an au-pair for the Rudolf and Dorette Schlidt family. Rudolf was one of von Braun's original team members; Dorette, it seems, was a matchmaker...and on 1 (church) and 2 (civil registration) December 1961, Hans and Margaret married in Kleinaspach, returning to Huntsville later in the month and making the Rocket City their permanent home. The Kennels did, of course, periodically visit family and friends back in Germany, and vice-versa, but the children would all be born at Huntsville Hospital.
During his Redstone tenure, Hans worked on many space and rocket projects, in particular the Jupiter, Saturn V, Space Lab, Hubble Space Telescope, and HEAO-2 (Einstein X-ray Telescope) missions. Many of his associates there remained lifelong friends.
Hans' most notable area of work was in the development of new software algorithms involving space vehicle angular momentum management and control moment gyros. These algorithms were successfully used on the original 1973 and 1974 Skylab missions, as well as the Skylab reentry mission in 1979.
His Control Moment Gyro Steering Law was advanced and versatile enough to be used years later by the International Space Station. For these accomplishments, Hans received several commendations, including the two highest awards given to NASA employees: the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
After 36 years of government service, Hans retired from MSFC in 1992 (fortuitously, perhaps, since it was just weeks before the birth of his first grandchild).
He enjoyed SCUBA, skiing, traveling, square-dancing, and model railroading. It was not at all uncommon to happen upon the Kennels out on the town with their friends decked out in full square-dancing apparel.
Of the latter "avocation," the story is involved: when he was six, his Uncle Richard built him a steam engine from scratch; during the postwar years in then-West Germany, toys were scarce, yet Hans' grandmother found him a small, windup locomotive.
Hans' railway-centric interests resurfaced when, for Christmas 1969, his father mailed a Märklin electric set to his grandchildren. As it turned out, they may have owned the railroad, but Hans maintained the offices of Supervisor and Engineer.
Complementing his sundry interests, Hans added, "I also liked to take things apart to see what made them work."
Surviving Hans are his wife of fifty-one years, Margaret; three sons, Robert Hans of Huntsville, Frederick "Fred" Michael (Sandra) of Old Hickory, TN, and Steven Thomas (Ana Paula) Kennel, of Abu Dhabi, UAE; a daughter, Tonya Susan Carden (Richard) of Huntsville; four granddaughters, Stephanie and Bianca Kennel and Cheyenne and Britney Carden; a half-brother, Karl-Heinz Kennel of Pirmasens; and a stepmother, Irma Franz Kennel.
He is interred at Huntsville's Valhalla Memory Gardens on Winchester Road.
Valhalla added:
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to englishfirst.org or woundedwarriorproject.org.
- Bio by James "Jim" E. Zielinski
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