Inez Dominguez:  

After my May 1965 graduation from Gadsden High School, I started my freshman year of college at New Mexico State University in the fall of 1965, enrolled in the College of Electrical Engineering. Right at the end of my freshman year, IBM came to the campus looking for two electrical engineering (EE) students who were about to start their sophomore year to interest them to go work as co-op students in Huntsville, Alabama. IBM in Huntsville had a contract with NASA to build the instrument unit for the Apollo Space Program. I was interviewed and offered a job by IBM and I joined the co-op program at New Mexico State as an IBM co-op student. In mid-July 1966, the other EE student and I headed to Huntsville, Alabama on a six-month work phase. The co-op agreement was to work six months and save money to pay for school of the next six months. I went on three work phases, the last one starting in mid-July 1968. On my last work phase, I had the privilege of working on the Apollo 8 program. On mid-night of December 24, 1968, I started a 12 hour shift where my job was to record the communications between Houston Control and the Apollo 8 astronauts as they orbited around the moon. On Friday evening July 19, 1968, before I was to start on my last work phase, I married Martha Y. Ramirez, also a Gadsden 1965 graduate, and we started on our journey towards Huntsville on Saturday morning. We are still married. Martha and I were blessed with four daughters - Sylvia Marie, Cynthia Joyce, Sandra Ruth, and Sarah Irene. Now we are blessed with eight grandkids, ages 4-9, six girls and two boys. Each of our girls has two children with my oldest, Sylvia, having the two boys. I finally graduated from New Mexico State University in December of 1971 with Bachelor of Science Degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. After the Arm...Expand for more