Fifteen Years

Two weeks ago, I participated in the NASA Remembrance Day and lessons learned activities which happen every year around February 1.  I believe it is very important to remember Dick Scobee, Gus Grissom, and Rick Husband and their crews; to remind ourselves of their sacrifice and what we need to do to safeguard future space travelers.  But this post is not about those brave crews or the lessons should remember.

What really blew me away was the realization that fifteen years have passed since the loss of Columbia and her crew.  It seems like yesterday.

Isn’t that what all the old folks say; it seems like just yesterday.

That tragedy sparked changes in my professional life that I had neither foreseen nor desired.  Reviewing the events in my life over the past fifteen years brings so much to mind:  being selected to leadership roles in the Space Shuttle Program, working feverishly to fix the problems, change the culture, and get flying again, making sure that the program would operate safely – or rather, more safely – all that in just the first five years.  Changing jobs inside NASA to build partnerships with other organizations, supporting the President’s commission to plan the future of human spaceflight, helping to develop the initial stages of NASA’s commercial crew program – that took the next three years.  Then retirement from the government and the start of a new career providing support to commercial spaceflight on the industry side – where I am today.  Katrina, Ike, Harvey.  And in between it all seeing my son and daughter graduate from college; experiencing the wedding of my son and his beloved; the blessing of grandchildren into our lives; the passing of my mother, the passing of my wife’s parents, and the passing – oh how hard to write this – the passing of my daughter.  The last fifteen years have been packed full of happiness and tears.

Just like the song: “sunrise, sunset; I don’t remember growing older, when did they?

Fifteen years earlier, at the end of February 1988, my class of flight directors was selected.  Becoming a NASA Flight Director had been my top career goal for years.  It proved to be the best job I ever had.  There is no feeling like leading a team of highly trained and highly motivated folks to achieve great things in a difficult environment.  It was tremendously exciting and equally frightening.  There were tremendous possibilities and “always be aware that suddenly and unexpectedly we may find ourselves in a role where our performance has ultimate consequences.”   Making tough calls about the weather and priorities and all the little things that go wrong; participating in Hubble and ISS assembly and Chandra and on and on.   I got to work hand in hand with astronauts, senior NASA executives, scientists; meet numerous VIPs that were interested in our work – everybody from movie stars to US senators to members of foreign royalty.  And through all that watching my children grow, coaching them through all kinds of activities, actively participating in local civic affairs, taking long family vacations.  Its hard to see how I could have done so must; I must have been much younger.

Fifteen years earlier, an astounding 45 years ago, I was a college freshman just trying to figure out who I was – even though I knew who I wanted to become.  In the following fifteen years I met and married my beautiful wife, graduated from college both undergrad and grad school.  I got my dream job at NASA:  Mission Control and STS-1 and Challenger, working with Sally Ride, John Young, and working for Gene Kranz.  And we bought our first and second houses, and in between had babies.  Claudette, Alicia, Allison.  How could all of that be packed into just 15 years.

Fifteen years earlier – can it be 60 years ago?  It was 1958 and I was three.  I don’t remember – who remembers when they were three – but according to family legend I was totally captivated by space; sputnik in October 57, Vanguard (kaboom!), Explorer 1 at the end of January 1958.  Then hanging breathlessly on the adventures of Mercury, Gemini, a hundred robot explorers, and the Moon landing.   It seems I was destined to participate in the great adventure from my earliest years.  Growing up in the 60’s was sometimes a surreal experience and it is filled with memories even of people I knew that never came back from southeast Asia and others we lost.  ‘Has anybody here seen my old friend John, can you tell me where he’s gone?’  It was an unbelievable time.

Sunrise sunset, swiftly pass the years.

Fifteen years is simultaneously a long time and the merest instant.  So much to be learned. So much to experience.  So much more to come.

I just pray the next fifteen years will have more happiness and less tears.