Clarksdale Arts & Culture District sign honoring Gilroy Chow.
If a small Mississippi Delta town were to ever have a real rocket scientist, there could be none more community inspiring than our Gilroy Chow.
The Arts & Culture District sign honoring Gilroy is located on the 100 block of Delta Avenue, somewhat across the street of that of Clarksdale founder, John Clark. It was expertly mounted by Clarksdale Public Utilities.
If one saw the movie about the Apollo 13 Moon Mission that was directed by Ron Howard and starred Tom Hanks, there was a series of scenes about how NASA and our astronauts solved a critical problem to bring the crippled space module safely back to earth. The particular solution had to do with retrofitting a C02 filter to rid the cabin of deadly gas. In the movie, this became known as figuring out how to put a square peg in a round hole. Well, Gilroy was in the room, and he was part of the engineer team that came up with that solution! He was also one of the designers of the moon landing module, and more.
Clarksdale Arts & Culture District sign honoring Gilroy Chow.
Gilroy has spent many years here in Clarksdale; he lives here now. Two recent articles (one about being a space engineer, the other about being a great Chinese food cook) give wonderful flair and great background to Clarksdale’s one remarkable rocket scientist. Check both of these articles out here.