Me and Kathy Brown as we departed for Europe with the U of L Foreign Language
program in June '77 (I have some REALLY good stories of how Kathy and I nearly
caused the chaperones to have heart attacks on this trip.... more than once!)
Me and Jill Anderson at her house in North Carolina after we both moved south
Now -
Me and Don, Nov 2003
After Central;
I actually left Central after junior year thanks to the foreign language program's summer of '77
trip to Europe with U of L and some correspondence courses. My family moved to South Carolina
in the fall of '77, where I spent my (would-be) senior year working several minimum wage jobs.
This gave me the motivation I needed to enter the University of South Carolina in 1978, where
I earned a BS in Computer Science in 1982. After graduation, I headed back north to work for
NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio (now NASA Glenn Research Center) as a
Computer Scientist. I have been in Cleveland ever since.
Now I'm;
Married with 4 boys, still working at NASA Glenn as a Software Engineer. I met my husband,
Don Varga, at the fitness center at NASA. We married in Jan. 1989 and in Oct. 1989 I delivered
twin boys, Aaron and Michael, now 16. After having twins I lost all sense of reason, and went on
to have two more sons, Sean in April 1992 (now 13) and Corey in Feb. 1995 (now 10).
My career with NASA has had some exciting moments. One of my projects was Lead Software
Engineer for one of our space experiments that flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia on two
different missions in 1997. We developed all the software for operating the experiment on the
Shuttle, for providing the crew an application to run the experiment, and for collecting the
downlinked data on the ground and providing it to scientists. I worked as part of the Operations
team in the Payload Operations Control Center in Huntsville, AL during the mission, helping the
astronauts execute the experiments and perform any troubleshooting. Unfortunately, a reflight
of this experiment was onboard the Columbia when it exploded in 2003.
In August 2003 I went to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to earn my Masters Degree
in Software Engineering on a 12-month NASA Fellowship program. Since returning from that,
NASA has fallen on hard times and there are predictions of layoffs at Glenn numbering in the
hundreds next year. My dream right now is to get a job in the game industry programming
computer and video games. (Argh... when did I become a GEEK!?) If anyone has any contacts....
LET ME KNOW!
Memorable CHS Moments;
Going to Mrs. Washington's Spanish class with Kathy Brown after our courtyard visits...
"Now Chil'ren!!!" (Does anyone know Kathy's whereabouts?) Red Barn... Cherokee Park...
The courtyard... The swimming pool... Concerts: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac...
Missing 2 months of school due to the Teachers Strike and a month of snow days.
