AREA NATIVE WILL HEAD NAVAL PROGRAM

WASHINGTON -- A Gordonville native who helped develop the computer programming for the Navy's Tomahawk cruise missile has been named technical director of a new naval research and development command in California.

"It's good news and bad news for me and my family," said Paul Wessel, 53, of Silver Springs, Md., in a telephone interview from his home. "It's going to be a challenging job, with a lot of new things to do. The bad news is that we'll be leaving friends we have known for over 30 years."

Wessel is currently technical director of the Navy's Warfare Systems Architecture and Engineering Directorate at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in Washington.

On Jan. 8, 1992, he'll become technical director of the Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Center in San Diego.

The command was created as a result of the reorganization and consolidation of the Naval Ocean Systems Center in San Diego with nine other Navy activities in the United States.

Wessel and his military counterpart, Rear Adm. John J. Donegan Jr., will head a mixed civilian and military command made up of nearly 6,000 people, the majority of them civilians. The command will have an annual budget of about $1 billion.

Its mission is to keep the Navy and the United States on the cutting edge in the development of new weapons systems technology and weapons detections systems, such as underwater detection of submarines.

Wessel said the end of the Cold War has resulted in sweeping changes in defense spending.

But Wessel feels the cutbacks, if made properly, will not harm the ability of the Untied States to defend itself in the future.

"It will be very important to make sure research and development continues to be funded at adequate levels so that our capacities do not become outdated," he said.

Wessel said creation of the consolidated command is a result of cutbacks in military spending announced earlier this year by the Defense Department. "The intention is, over a period of time, to significantly reduce the number of employees and activities with in the new command," he said.

Since his selection was announced last summer, Wessel has been visiting the various organizations that will be consolidated into the new command.

Wessel said he and his wife, the former Gwyen Mowery of Jackson, and their family, plan to stop briefly in Gordonville in early January, en route to San Diego, to visit his parents, Henry and Sophia Wessel.

Paul Wessel grew up in rural Gordonville and graduated from Jackson High School in 1955. He received his bachelor's degree in physics and math from Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau in 1958, and earned his master's in solid state physics in 1962 from the University of Maryland.

Immediately after graduating from Southeast, Wessel went to work for the Navy's Surface Warfare Center in Washington, D.C. That was only a short time after the Soviet Union sent up the world's first operational satellite.

"Right after Sputnik went up and the entire country became concerned about science and research, the government made a major investment in that area," said Wessel. "The problem was, there weren't enough scientists, so there was a lot of recruiting on college campuses between 1957-59.

"An alumnus of Southeast who was in a naval research lab came to Southeast Missouri State to do some recruiting. I liked what he had to say and decided to get involved."

Jerry Lorberg of Gordonville is a close friend of Wessel's. The two of them grew up together on neighboring farms.

"Paul was always ready to go and do things. You ask him if he wanted to go fishing, and he would say, `What time, and where?'" said Lorberg. "Paul comes from a big family, two boys and four sisters. He's a hard worker and he works smart."

Although he's now an avid student of history, Wessel says he actually hated the subject in high school and college. But after taking a course in the history of warfare at the Naval War College, he developed a strong interest in wars and major battles.

Lorberg recalls when he toured Germany with Wessel, "It was like traveling with a very informed guide," he said.