He Dreamed of Flying to the Stars, And Practiced by Dancing With One

Just after he got his wings and on the eve of his 20th birthday, Navy aviator Len Cormier danced the night away with Norma Jeane Dougherty at Tommy Dorsey's Casino Gardens in Santa Monica, Calif. He loved to dance almost as much as he loved to fly.

It was a first date for the young pilot and the beautiful model-about-to-be-starlet, who had been introduced by a family friend. That night, they danced to big band music and walked along the midway, where Norma Jeane took aim at milk bottles.

"She was good at that," Mr. Cormier told his family. "I know I had a great time and seems like she did too."

On one of their dates, Mr. Cormier took Norma Jeane flying. "We did half rolls and slow rolls and loops," he recalled. "She's still the only civilian I've ever taken up in an airplane."

Before he left California for training in Florida, she asked his advice on a career move suggested by a 20th Century Fox executive. He disagreed.

"Norma Jeane asked me about changing her name to Marilyn Monroe, and I didn't think it was too good of an idea, because she would get mixed up with Marilyn Maxwell," Mr. Cormier said of the movie actress and entertainer who performed often with Bob Hope. "I don't know how many people remember Marilyn Maxwell these days, but it's kind of a 'How wrong can you be,' I guess."

Mr. Cormier -- who always spoke fondly of those early years, said his wife -- went on to become a Navy fighter pilot and an executive officer in an anti-submarine warfare patrol squadron. After leaving active duty in 1947, the Boston native received a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of California at Berkley.

Eventually, Mr. Cormier's passion for flying took him to some heady places and brought him in contact with some of the top scientists in the space industry. He became an aerospace consultant and entrepreneur who designed a space van and worked feverishly to find funding for his craft, which would provide low-cost space travel.

Along the way, as one colleague once told him, he was "in the midst of people and organizations that were making history."

During the tense days of the Cold War, he was on the staff of the National Academy of Sciences. He attended the International Geophysical Year proceedings in 1957 and 1958, where U.S. and Soviet scientists were excited about new rocket technologies that made space exploration more than a distant notion.

Mr. Cormier, who spoke some Russian, was present at a reception in Russia on the October day in 1957 when the Soviets surprised everyone with the launch of Sputnik. It left an indelible impression on Mr. Cormier.

For one thing, he said he felt that there was a lot of psychological fallout with the Soviet launch. "However, in my opinion, this was not at all bad," he wrote in a posting on his Web site. "At the reception itself, I found it was almost immediately easier to communicate with some of the Russians -- as if some type of feelings of inferiority suddenly vanished."