 I guess on a personal level, I was working for General Motors years ago and I had my family on vacation. I took my kids to Disney World in Florida and we heard on the radio that there was going to be a shuttle launch. So we looked into it and found out and we went down to the beach and it was like going to a rock concert. Basically those were the days of people having boom boxes and everybody did the countdown on the beach and as it turned out it was the initial maiden voyage of the Challenger. Just a few years later I was working down in Florida, working for Pratt Whitney and unfortunately I did see the demise out the window of the second store building with all my coworkers of the Challenger disaster. I was very remorseful to the whole situation and I guess that's the key thing that keeps me driving in the passion of the shuttle program. I'm getting goosebumps. My first engine test was at Kanoga Park up on the hill at Santa Susana and the shock waves that came off the engine, the power that came off of our engines was so amazing. It just filled me with an excitement that I can't even share with you in words because you have to feel it. And I felt that when I've been at every SSME launch and it's never changed. I think it has a major effect on how you look at the job that you have to do. I'm still filled with excitement and energy and that's what's important here. To support shuttle you have to be energized and you have to be motivated to do that job just the best that you very best you can. One of the things that stand out in my mind when we first ran our fuel pumps, the gases that went through the turbine was exhausted through a orifice that was ignited and put a big flame out the side of the hot gas manifold and then the hydrogen that was pumped went up a stack and they actually had to call Palm Beach International Airport every time we ran and reroute commercial traffic around the area when we were going to do our runs and I was pretty amazed about that, that the heat from the running could go that high to possibly interrupt a commercial flight. A group of us were at KSC and we had the good fortune to visit the Columbia room where they store the recovered artifacts from the Columbia accident. Well, our group was in the VAB waiting on our tour guide to arrive and we were all just kind of standing around talking, laughing and joking around and the mood was very light. When our tour guide arrived and took us to the artifacts room, she opened the door and you could have heard a pin drop. As we saw the displays, it was a very somber, very quiet moment and I think the magnitude of the tragedy really sank in with all of us. I think together we've all done some wonderful, awesome things working main engine and working on the space shuttle program and so we celebrate those things but at the same time we're very mindful of the sacrifices that some extremely courageous people have made throughout the entire history of NASA to get us where we are today and we will always remember and honor that. I think the most memorable time in my career working on SSME was in the early 90s when we had the on-pad aborts that we had. We had actually four of them within the span of two or three years and I had been an engineer at the company for four or five years when those happened so I was just getting my feet wet. During hours and you spend a lot of time, you learn a lot is what I'm trying to say and those experiences working for those aborts when the eyes of the world were on you, that's something that's pretty memorable to me. I came to SSME in around December 2005 so the first launch that I saw working for SSME was in December 2006. My husband and I took vacation and took both of our mothers and a lot of our great nieces and nephews down for the launch so we were out in the causeway and it was a night launch. Oh it was fantastic, it was beautiful and as after the launch and you're watching it you're going to watch it as long as you can and it's so exciting and so then the guy comes over the intercom and says three main engines operating nominal and I'm going whoo whoo whoo and then the launch goes out of sight and my great nephew came up to me and patted me on the shoulder and said good job Anna Lisa and you know to me just fantastic. In the 80s we had a major engine incident and we were supposed to fly nine days later and we literally worked around the clock to make sure that we could clear that engine and we had different failure scenarios that we were working we didn't know exactly what it was but we had to make sure for any of those failure scenarios that were possible that the next flight was not going to experience that same problem so that's one of those fire drill memories that you have. The other memories are just I love working with the folks around here you know just working with true rocket scientists you know people that are experts in their field passionate about what they do really dedicated to keeping astronauts safe we get to talk with astronauts and get to know them so that's just kind of a day to day pleasure to work here and the folks we get to work with. I think one of the saddest memories that I have is when we decided to move engine assembly out of Kanoga Park it was a business decision at that time and it was a good decision to do it because we weren't building that many more engines but one memory we had is we took a picture of it and we were all waving goodbye to the engine as it was the last engine that left the engine line so that's that's one of the sad memories that I had of the engine line but there's tons and tons of other good memories of successful launches and great accolades for everyone that have done good things here at Rockadine so there's a there's a whole archive of good memories across the board. I had a recent experience that I think was really pretty special to me it changed some of my perspective I took a class in ground operations for the shuttle at KSC and of course during this class they're talking about the whole flow from the day of shuttle lands and all the steps that they go through to get it ready to launch again and they have schedules literally down to 15 minute increments during the flow of everything that has to happen to that shuttle and in all of these flows they're just this little tiny part about the SSME and it basically is a little block that says install SSME or remove SSME and I kept thinking wait a minute we're like the most important thing on the orbit or why are they only spending a couple little bars on all these flow charts and after about three days of this I finally figured out you know why we aren't showing up on that because we are always there ready to support our hardware is ready the folks doing the flow at KSC they don't even have to think about the SSME because they know we are going to be there ready to support yeah we're the SSME we're there we're supporting our customer and they don't even have to think about us I remember when I was a little kid probably about 12 years old and I was excited about space program I remember writing a letter to NASA and I didn't I don't know what I wrote but I think it was along the lines of dear NASA please send me stuff and I remember getting an envelope back from them a big old brown envelope and for all I knew at that time it was sent to me by John Glenn himself and I opened it up and it was pictures of the Apollo 8 program and the the decal about circling the moon and circling the earth with the big eight and that's truly why I got excited about the space program I remember the excitement that I felt and admittedly I was probably only 11 or 12 years old but that really had an impact on me and at that point in time I decided hey I want to be part of something bigger and I thought the space program you can't get any bigger than that and that's why I'm here today starting here at the test stands they had the burn stacks you get the burn stacks going first and the flame the hydrogen flame that we shoot into the air 5000 feet a lot of the tests were late at night seemed like you got things done during the day and tested at night that's historically true for anybody but you were so close you could feel the heat and then right before the the start sequence would be enabled the valves would start to creak ice would start to fall and that that sense of what's going to happen next just built and then when the pump lit off the roar the sound it was just incredible it to be so close and so much power at the end of the day when I walk away from the space shuttle main engine program one of their most memorable or rewarding parts of working on the program were the people that they worked with there's not a lot of people in the world that have the opportunity to work on rocket engines and so you become very close I think when you leave SSME or leave or retire you're going to miss the people the most always remember one time I decided to take my wife to a launch and I decided I would just enjoy the launch with my wife and so we were at the viewing area on on the banana river and and I remember that you know I was on the cell phone constantly with the guys in the launch control room asking them for data and they would feed me numbers and ask questions and we went back and forth and and finally the launch went off right on time which was kind of special in those days and I always remember we were sitting in this large grandstand of people and you know everybody was cheering and yelling as the shuttle took off and then when you finally couldn't see it anymore everybody started leaving of course we were sitting there still glued on my cell phone as because the shuttle engines were still firing and and by the time we hit Miko my wife and I were the only ones sitting in a grandstand everybody else was left and was already partying I guess at that time but you know it was always special those missions to hit Miko and the thrill of that was just something special and a lot of us got together and it was my first time actually going to Stennis I'd never been to Stennis before I've seen pictures of the test stands and whatnot but I'd never been on top of them I decided I was going to make a little paper airplane just to see how it was stand up to flying off the top of the test stand I really didn't tell anybody that I was doing it so who knows I probably could have gotten a little bit of trouble doing that but when I first got up there I was probably like anybody else I was a little scared because it's a little high up there when nobody was looking and I turned to the side went over there walking like I was looking at the trees and trying to see what else was out there I threw it and needless to say because of the wind and everything that paper airplane didn't fare so well that's my little special story dealing with SSM. The controller software lab used to be in Canoga Park California building four and in 1994 there was a decision to bring the lab closer to the Marshall Space Flight Center customer and there were a number of of us working in the Huntsville that were integrated with the Canoga Park team to facilitate that move. A crew of three of us and Kevin and Bob and myself we moved the lab from Canoga Park over here we spent a lot of days underneath the floor I remember a funny story because Bob that we sent him underneath the floor and he would disappear the only thing we could see was his feet and then Kevin and I when he needed to get out we would pull him out by his feet out of the floor spent four days underneath a raised floor with about one foot of clearance you know I go underneath there at eight o'clock and come out for lunch and dive back in there again pulling cables you know all kinds of stuff we found underneath there and packing it up and sending it to Huntsville. A lot of hard work went into that move and you know we worked hard but we had a good time doing it and I think we did it very well and that makes me proud. I think the most fulfilling piece was watching the first fuel pump fly I mean but the lockspump was exciting too but I went up to launch for the for the first fuel pump is STS-104 I believe was and it was a 5 a.m. launch so we all went up the night before and we were lucky enough to take a family member with us and I brought my son who was five years old at the time and we stayed up all night and five o'clock in the morning is awfully early for a five-year-old but he saw the shuttle launch it lit up the sky and he said dad that it looks like it's morning time and then the shuttle left it was dark again but he was very excited seeing that launch and that really gave me a lot of pride not only in what I do but for my family too. One of our jobs here with the project support group is to transfer files back and forth when the NASA customer needs data whatever since we aren't compliant back and forth through our servers we serve as that conduit so Kenoga Park will put or West Palm whichever will put their charts in flight ops which is a server that the SSME team uses myself I have a folder it's called Marcy and over the years that server has been set out there for years and all of our guys that I work with with the different product teams you know they know that that's where they're supposed to put the files so at Kenoga we were sitting out there one day when I was visiting with a big group of turbo machinery people and a new guy came up that I had never seen before and he has this amazed look on his face like wait a minute Marcy as in the Marcy folder he said I thought that was not a real person he said I just thought that was a folder I had no idea there was somebody who actually took care of that that that was your folder I think the strangest thing I've ever had to do on the program was actually non concur with the change that I wrote and the way that came down was when I was at the Cape the engineers up here called me and told me that we had got an action from the program to change a requirement well I immediately knew that whoever gave us the action did not even understand the test so I told them that we can't do it we can't complete that action so I told them I would call back to the CM guy back in Houston and telling that that action wasn't when it needs to be withdrawn because it wasn't appropriate so I called the JSC guy and he said they don't have a mechanism for withdrawing actions and so he said my only option was to submit the change and if I didn't agree with it non concur which I did I wrote the change and it went through the change process then I wrote a non concur to the change that I wrote it went to the board and was rejected because we didn't concur with it and that closed the action and caused this twitch the shuttle is hugely important to the space program the space program is one of America's crown jewels and the shuttle is the centerpiece of it two things really stick out in my mind that that I just absolutely love number one is seeing a launch that's a very very moving experience and until you have experience that you can't really describe it there's nothing really that prepares you for that experience the other thing is in my family we like to look on the website for when the space station is going to pass over again and I take my kids outside and we look at the space station go by and to see the brightest star in the night sky cross over and you can tell your children that the people that you worked with helped put it there that's quite special very very gratifying in october I was at a suppliers it was one of his open house events and I think it was a 20 year celebration and it was the first time I was getting the opportunity to go and be with an astronaut and the astronaut was Robert Hoot Gibson and I remember it very well because I when I showed up I had a lot of anticipation and being able to meet him talk to him get to know him and I remember that when I was introduced we had a quick little conversation and then he said well I'll get back to you and talk to you later well later never came because of the fact that we were so busy with the events and everything so after everything was over I went back to the hotel and I thought jeez I would have loved to have talked to him and shortly thereafter the phone rang and I picked it up and he said Lee and I said yeah he said this is Hoot, Hoot Gibson he says how about meeting me downstairs in the lounge and let's have a couple beers and I thought kind what a great thing to have happen he showed me he's a real person he was talking about his family his goals in life what he wanted and I think from that I took the fact that this is really for the astronauts and we need to be very much aware of bringing them back safely for their families