Stars of O'Ryan - Thank you Dippers; facts and personal history

I’ve been really encouraged by the comments, fellow Dippers! Your comments are invaluable, your encouragement is humbling, and you have kept passages from disappearing into the recycle bin. I really cannot thank you enough.

My dad was the cost accountant on the Orion Project. He was a man of few words and not a writer. He asked me if I could tell this story. We started this about 8-9 years ago. He passed away May 30, 2019. He’d heard a few pages of prior drafts. I never got as far as I’ve gotten now. He didn’t want the Orion Project, the endeavor to disappear into the annals of history. Yes, George Dyson wrote a book about it, but George, like his father, has an advanced physics background and the book is not for the layperson. My dad and I thought fiction would be a better medium. Use some facts but couch the whole in fiction to make it readable, accessible. We came up with the plot together, something to capture people’s interest. My dad really did “straighten up the safe” causing about a week’s delay whilst the scientists put things back in order. My father never organized a stack of papers again in his life.


I’ve received comments on the “innocence” of Jamie and Helen. I plan to develop the story between them that it’s not so much innocent as respectful. They are basically good kids. But they’re both a bit different. So, they decide to use that difference to explore what their friendship could be, rather than succumb to teen hormones.
On that note, I think that some of our cultural decencies, common courtesy, respect for each other has, in fact, disappeared in recent years. We, as a society, seem more and more OK with division, with antagonism, more tolerant of a lot of the “isms” but less tolerant of each other.

While the Orion Project was real, and the cost accountant and Ted Taylor were real people. Everything else is fiction. I think I’m trying to capture some of the innocence that I perceive as disappearing from the world. Maybe pure fiction, maybe an expression of hope that there are kids out there who grow up technologically savvy without being phone addicted without relying on social media for validation. If Helen existed in real life, she’d very likely have been social media bullied starting back in the third grade. But here, I can let her exist. I can give her a best friend who will accept her as she is. I also wanted her to be a strong, self-sufficient and confident person.

My dad, like Grandpa George, believed that homosexuality was a choice. I listened to an argument between my dad and his older brother, a medical doctor, where my uncle tried to explain it was medical fact that people were born the way they were born. I was surprised when my father suggested a gay character in this story. I’ve been able to include some history there that is, I believe, worth preserving. Rights people have now could so easily disappear. Setting us back as a whole society, setting individual groups back. Disappearance of people’s rights is a scary prospect. I hope to help remember where we came from to avoid some of those pitfalls in the future.

I never wanted children, never dreamed of being a mother. As it would turn out, my siblings and I are the end of the line. None of us have children. Our line disappears, the family stories disappear, there’s no one to pass anything to when we go. So I write. It’s a way to not disappear. My words are written down. Maybe someone remembers something I wrote, maybe they have a conversation with someone else about it.

Dad – I really did try to get this story on paper before you joined the ancestors. I know I cannot fact check everything and have to rely on notes and memories. I hope I do the story justice. But it’s getting written now. Your name won’t disappear.

— Lkai