PROGRAMS:

COMPANIES:

• Lockheed
• Lockheed Martin
• United Space Alliance

LOCATIONS:

Kennedy Space Center, Complex E, SLF
- OSB I

POSITIONS:

Technical OPS Staff, Technical Illustrator for Operations and Maintenance Documentation,

COMMENTS:

John Glenn – met him at the launch party and he happily posed for this photo that was taken by my friend Joe D’Aulerio

I began working with Lockheed in February of 1990, I started out in the Operations and Maintenance Department known as “OMD” with Bill Cheatham as my manager and Melinda Hester as my supervisor. We were in Complex E trailer and this is where I began my career that spanned 20 years.  We were in the Technical Writing group and made the redline corrections to the manuals utilized by the techs, engineer and Astronauts.  It was quite a crew we had back there working first and second shifts.  We eventually moved into the OSB building after the merger becoming Lockheed Martin.  We were excited to be among the other people and not off in “the trailers”.

After moving into OSB, I became interested in learning more than just “redlining”, I was told by Melinda to go and assist the Graphics department working with Mark Mulkey and Lynda Burdan helping to convert all the files from MAC computers to PC computers. This is something that Mark was NOT a fan of but he was very sweet and showed me the ropes.  I soon noticed that this was something I was very interested in learning – drawing the diagrams for the Space Shuttle program.  I asked if I could venture over there more and more and eventually I was told I could transfer into this department.

Mark and Lynda showed me a lot and were very happy to have me on-board.  As time went on, Mark left and Lynda as well, and I would end up being there permanently and loved being there.  Eventually, two more came on board our team, Joe D’aulerio and Julianne Davis. They made an amazing addition to the team and had previously worked in O & C building. Julie worked in department that designed the patches for the shuttle missions. I don’t recall what department Joe came from but he was very knowledgeable on databases and was a great teacher.

We all became quite a great team and worked on lots of projects involving engineers and we were able to go into the shuttle to take photographs of panels that were to be used in the documentation. We became friends with Ray Polniac “I called him Pontiac” and he kept us busy working with Larry Mullen who was our direct supervisor and we all loved what we did.

Bart Spangler came on board as the manager of the entire department and Pam Walters became the manager over the tech writers.

I enjoyed working with this team as we were all like a family – heck we saw them for more hours a day than we did our own families. I was fortunate enough to help out in the awards department working on awards for the entire company and I learned so much here as well, I learned how to make matte’s for the awards, learned some amazing things from this group as well on Photoshop and how to work well under a time constraint.

I was fortunate enough to become close friends with Mike McCulley through our friend Julie and he would always stop by to say “hello” when he was in the area and we even made him a “special” badge that he couldn’t possibly lose (after he made mistake of telling us he forgot his once). The launch director at the time was more than happy for us to have him receive the badge in his office.  We were serious about our jobs but we still found time to have a laugh or two.

I have the best memories of working for NASA over a span of 20 years, I made a lot of great friends and I am proud to talk about my many ventures while being a part of the space program family and I am honored to have been a part of such an amazing time in history.