Visions

By: Kelly McDonald

I have a photo on my bookshelf of a much younger me with John Glenn, the astronaut, who I met at a conference when he was the guest speaker. It was a chance encounter, and I didn’t know he would be there; I stood in line for a photograph with him, few words spoken, nothing about his fame, simply a greeting.

When I was 9, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. On the day of his launch, I feigned illness so my mother would let me stay home from school. I watched his space capsule launch, Friendship 7, on our old black-and-white television. I sat in my own spacecraft, peering out at the TV screen through the porthole in the capsule I had made from a cardboard box. After launch, Glenn circled the earth three times, then came home to the spotlight. I continued to watch and listen at my young age as he and later astronauts captured the vision of the nation.

As I listened to Glenn’s launch-team dialogue during his mission, I discovered there were machines which guided his spacecraft. I learned these strange devices, computers, kept the rockets under control. Glenn’s critical discussion about those controlling computers launched my own interest in them.

When I was a teen I began to write my own computer programs, learning the languages of computers, creating solutions to the problems in my math classes. I enrolled in an evening computer class at a local college while still in high school, and I never looked back.

My eventual field of study at the university focused on computer science, then a long career in computing and information technology followed, where a computer conference took me back to my visionary catalyst, John Glenn.

Childhood heroes make

Life’s decisions more stellar,

As they inspire.