DARRELL SHOUP

After high school, I joined the Army. Went to Ft. Jackson, SC for boot camp and Ft. Gordon, GA for AIT (school). Upon graduation, I received orders for Ft. Riley, KS. At this point, I was shocked. All I knew of Kansas was Dorthoy, red slippers, and the movie The Day After. I came to love the area, especially the time I spent in Manhattan, KS partying at Aggieville (why Las Cruces is the only college town without a bar/club strip is beyond me). Went to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait care of the Big Red One (1st ID). I love my country and cherish those that have or will serve her...

Worked for a while in Abq before growing up (too many nights at Cadillac Ranch) and coming home to State (Go Aggies) to get my degree. Actually, I met my wife up there as she was just getting ready to go to Kansas (of all places) for a Co-Op and was visiting her mom before leaving. Where we met... IHOP. It was 4 in the a.m. after bar hopping and she wanted a coke, so I offered. She was a good girl and we courted with the long distance relationship thing for a while. After going back to State from the co-op, she talked me into coming back down to Cruces(I had the Army College Fund and until then was busy working for Furr's supermarket and drinking my very little money away). Anyhow, I came home and worked on my degree while she was working around the state for NRCS.

Received my bachelors in Engineering Technology and masters in Industrial Engineering.

I now work at White Sands Test Facility (the NASA site) as a manager of the standards and calibration lab and am the program manager for ERC, Inc at WSTF. I was fortunate to see STS-123 launch in February and stand inches below and around Endeavor that same week.

Prior to WSTF I worked at HELSTF on the Sea-Lite Beam Director pointer-tracker system as a servo systems engineer. Lot of great things to learn, but at the time, Raytheon (and every other contract) was on a year-to-year contract renewal. Too unstable for my blood.

I am a die-hard Aggie fan... Go to www.newmexicostate.scout.com and navigate to the sports forum to talk Aggie sports if you are a nut like me!

Today, Addy is 3 and, as I write this, baby #2 is 25 weeks in momma's belly.

One night, Kirk Clifton, Don Titzler and I (being the designated driver... actually sober, no kidding)are coming back from J-town. I had this 1975 Buick that I had an issue with the pipes that mate between the muffler and the engine always coming apart, thus giving the loud unmuffled car sound.

Anywho, just going over the interstate bridge in El Paso, this happens and I pull in to a parking lot, take off my shirt to use as a buffer between the hot pipes and my hands and proceed to crawl under the car to re-engineer the muffler. Well, Don, having had a few toooooo many puts his head out the window and blesses my exposed chest and stomach with 1/2 of what he purchased earlier in the day from Tequilla Derby. Then, at some point, while coming home, Kirk takes out the back seat floorboard with even more chunks of glory.

I had fun with it... a few days after the car aired out.