Al Cook:  

Graduated from Penn State in '87. 20 years as an Officer of US Marines (Combat Arms / Airborne). Was paid to assail the world and break stuff. Stepped foot on every continent except Antarctica. Totally Based. Not Woke! Not Broke! Was stationed (PCS) on the East Coast, West Coast, some fu__ing US Army Post (twice), Hawaii and Okinawa, Japan. Felt like I had TAD Orders around the world considering all the deployments and assignments. Fought and avoided being assigned to a duty station in Wash D.C. Lifetime member of the VFW. They didn't kill me! 2o22 - Just finished a 15 year gig at NASA supporting spaceflight/spacecraft hardware development, sub-orbital atmospheric and bio-science spaceflight payload projects. It was fun, but if you stay at a government organization like that for too long, it will give you Stockholm Syndrome. NASA has world class branding, but absolutely ,terrible discipline. They didn't kill me either. 2022 - Took a short sabbatical to wrench on the Harleys. (Edit Change 2022): Decided to quit being scooter trash and end my short sabbatical. Accepted an interesting position as Stanford University faculty supporting High Energy Physics research projects at a DOE National Lab. NASA provided an opportunity to build hardware for exploring outer space, and now the current gig is focused on building large complex facilities and hardware to explore innerspace at the Itsy bitsy teenie weenie scale. I wish the very best to the few people I connected with at Old Mill.. Old Mill was the 4th High School I attended, so I kind of..... sort of.... remember some of you as people specific to Old Mill. Except for a couple of very special nice young ladies, I mostly remember the rest of you by just your first names; primarily from math classes or the Cross Country and Track teams. As with many of us, my yearbook was lost in some move to some faraway place. Most likely, I remember so few of you because I chose not to be social with the vast majority of you outside of school hours, and spent most of my time in Glenn Burnie, Spa Creek in Annapolis or weekends partying in my older brother's dorm room at Loyola, Baltimore. For what trivia it is worth - After '83 (see below): ...Expand for more