In Remembrance: Mrs. Hertha Goethert Published Jan. 10, 2008 By Janae Daniels AEDC/PA ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. -- The wife of the "father of rocket testing at AEDC" died at her home in Manchester, Tenn., Jan. 7 after battling a long illness. Hertha Todt Goethert, 94, was preceded in death by her husband of 53 years, Dr. B. H. Goethert. Dr. Goethert served as chief scientist for Air Force Systems Command from 1964-1966. He first came to AEDC in 1952 as chief of the Propulsion Wind Tunnel (PWT). In 1963 he was research vice president and chief scientist for ARO, Inc. at AEDC. His work in U.S. aerospace ground testing began at the end of World War II at Wright Field, Ohio and concluded as dean of the University of Tennessee Space Institute. His most significant contribution was convincing the U.S. rocket propulsion community of the necessity to add ground tests at altitude conditions as a necessary step in the full-scale development and qualification process for liquid and solid rocket propulsion systems. Mrs. Goethert is survived by one daughter, Hella Lacy of Linwood, N.J., and three sons, Winfried Goethert of Tullahoma, Tenn., Wolfhart Goethert of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Reinhard Goethert of Concord, Mass., and their spouses. She was grandmother to 10 and great-grandmother to 13. Mrs. Goethert was born in Hannover, Germany. In 1935, she married Bernhard Hermann Goethert, a young doctor of aeronautical engineering, native of the same city. At the height of World War II, she and her children fled for safety to Diemarden, an ancestral farming village. In 1947, the family emigrated to Dayton, Ohio and Wright-Patterson Field. They moved to Manchester in 1953. Mrs. Goethert maintained her residence in Tennessee for 56 years, but with interludes elsewhere.