Decency, discipline and faith will no doubt be the themes of Roland Toups’ legacy. They have been integral to his character since he was a young boy in Houma, when he even considered, then eventually decided against, entering the priesthood.
Later, as a young man, Toups, who is being honored next month with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Louisiana Energy Awards presented by 10/12 Industry Report, found himself on the front lines of history, accompanied—as he usually was back then—by his identical twin brother, Leon. After the brothers earned graduate degrees in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, they joined the Air Force and were stationed at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
It was 1962, and it was the early days of the NASA space program. “We worked with a bunch of brilliant scientists and engineers,” Toups says. “It was a wonderful time to be there.” While at the Cape, the Toups brothers worked with the Atlas missile program and even played a role in preparing for John Glenn’s first space flight.
Toups later became embroiled in the Cuban Missile Crisis, when he was a launch officer and Leon a test conductor. “We were ordered to put a nuclear warhead on top of an Atlas D missile,” Toups says. “Obviously, we were ordered to stand down, but it was there just in case (Soviet Union premier Nikita) Khrushchev did not back down. Thankfully, Kennedy called his bluff.”
He also led the design-build of two massive missile tracking ships at a Brooklyn shipyard—at a then-staggering cost of $100 million. Sperry Corp. was the prime contractor, and its chairman at the time was retired Gen. Douglas MacArthur. “At the end of the job, MacArthur said to me, ‘Lieutenant, job well done.’ It was like an apostolic blessing,” he says.
Through it all, necessity dictated that Toups develop the problem-solving skillsets—and the unwavering work ethic—that would one day prove immensely beneficial to his career.
Read the full story. Also read about the Danos Foundation, who is being recognized with the Community Impact Award, and the stories of all of the Louisiana Energy Awards finalists in an array of categories.
