Jerry Elliott (4)

(born 1943 in Oklahoma, of Osage and Cherokee heritage)

Traditional American Indian flute player and physicist. One of the first Native Americans who worked at NASA.

Worked for NASA from 1966 to 1986. Started as Flight Mission Operations Engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Notable is Elliott’s role in the historic Apollo 13 mission. In 1970 he was serving as the Retrofire Officer at the NASA Mission Control Center in Houston when the now infamous radio transmission crackled through space and announced that the Apollo 13 crew was experiencing an emergency situation. Elliott was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his calculations of a return trajectory to allow the capsule back into Earth’s atmosphere.

After his active career focused on music and poetic writings. He was featured as a musician for the soundtrack to the CBS television movie, “Walker, Texas Ranger,” starring Hollywood actor Chuck Norris. He was also an actor in the television ABC Suspense Movie of the Week (Universal Studios).