Randal Morgan:  

After HS, Mark Pennington and I were going to go into the Army on the buddy program. He originally wanted to go into an office MOS but I wanted to go into the Airborne as my father had been a paratrooper; for those of you who knew me in HS know I needed the discipline....we got to Jacksonville and he ended up getting put in the office MOS anyway and I had to go home for a couple months until there was a slot in the paratroopers. I ended up going into the 82nd Airborne for three years. A few years in the Army turned out to be good for me, and I met the gal I would end up marrying (it will be 20 years Nov 2009). We got married in North Carolina Nov 1989 and we lived there until Aug 2000. Going to school at night I worked for a national telecommunications company in Raleigh, got through enough Accounting courses to work as an accountant but it was not my passion; courses for Aerospace Engineering looked much more interesting. I wasn't what you would call "focused" in high school so I made a deal with myself....continue the Accounting classes, but take one math class starting with Pre-Algebra each quarter and see if I could do that math thing. Well, who knew I was good at what I put my mind to :-) I completed the first two years of the engineering course of study and was accepted into the Aerospace Engineering program at North Carolina State which I completed. Since Aug 2000 I have been working at NASA...Expand for more