Life Since High School
Oh Boy! This going to be long...
After graduation, I attended Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, FL. It was heaven to me, got my pilot's license, surfed, scuba dove...but my grades suffered severely...my downfall, my roomate and decided to move off campus in year 2. We got an apartment on the beach in Cocoa Beach...party city then. Before websurfing was invented, I surfed my way out of college...any waves...that's where I was instead of class.
Moved back with parents and worked as a life guard in summer and blew snow at the Pine Hill Ski place in winter...Filled the gaps as a part time commercial diver in Camden
Well during that time while at the ski slope I met this girl who a niece to the owner slope. Well we married and moved back down to Florida. She had her degree and rapidly became employed at the Cape as a writer...she even interviewed Walter Cronkite!. I bounced from job to job...Finally made up my mind and went back to College...this time UCF, for $$ I got a co-op job with NASA. During that time we divorced...but I finally got a degree in Civil Engineering...Now the 2nd half of my life begins!
NASA hired me full time as a fluid systems engineer on the space shuttle's Orbiting Maneuvering System...Lotsa of very hard hours sitting in the firing rooms but rewarding. Well now that I was making real money....I decided to pursue my other career...I got my scuba instructors card...worked for NASA during the day...taught scuba evenings and weekends and back in the dating scene again. In one of my classes, I had this couple that owned a sailboat. During the classes they told me they had this friend in Georgia who was trying to transfer from the Army in Ft Benning to NASA and she had an interview with NASA coming up and she would be staying with them on their boat and I had to meet her
We hit it off...she got the job and we started dating. I taught her to dive and we got married underwater in the Bahamas (Is this marriage legal?)
We had our 1st boy in 1983 and 2nd in 1985 (I got clipped after that!)
Then my career changes with the Challenger disaster (More to come)
