Phil Davis:
CLASS OF 1966
Bladensburg High SchoolClass of 1966
Bladensburg, MD
Bladensburg Junior High SchoolClass of 1963
Bladensburg, MD
Cheverly-Tuxedo Elementary SchoolClass of 1960
Cheverly, MD
Phil's Story
My Story
Phil Davis
Davidsonville, Maryland
BHS Class of 1966
Education
I received an honorary scholarship to Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, with the intent of going into International Law, but later transferred to the University of Maryland to continue in Government and Politics. However, I soon discovered the University’s burgeoning Computer Science Department and graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science.
Family
Married to Barbara Gomez Davis of Beltsville, MD (High Point High School - 1975; University of Maryland - 1979). My brother, Brad, now lives near Charleston SC and my sister, Marla, lives near Atlanta, GA. My mother, Ruth, passed away at age 92 in 2017 and my father, Bob, is still in independent living at age 100 (!). We have three parrots (Gus, Maggie, and Cooper) and in 2021, Barbara got her first dog, Pebbles, a “pandemic puppy.”
Professional Career
My entire career was as a Federal Government contractor in the information technology, aerospace/space systems, and air traffic control fields; mostly for NASA, the USAF, and the FAA. In 1968, I began as a computer operator on night shifts at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. In 1973, I joined Bendix Field Engineering Corporation as a programmer of a computer onboard a NASA test aircraft and, for over three years, I travelled on that aircraft to NASA tracking stations around the world to conduct tests and simulations. Two of my trips were literally “around the world in 80 days” (one east and one west). Our airplane was a propeller-driven C-118A (essentially, a DC6) so we island hopped across the oceans and stopped at many exotic places that we would have just flown over if we were in a jet aircraft. I was a member of NASA’s Simulation Team and one of my “claims to fame” was my role as a simulated Russian Cosmonaut for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program (ASTP) mission.
The bulk of my professional career was with OAO Corporation in Greenbelt. Another “claim to fame” was that I was a member of the original Global Positioning System (GPS) Development Team during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1999, I left OAO as the Senior Vice President of the Aerospace Systems Group after having managed over 700 employees and $100M in annual revenue and winning a multi-billion-dollar NASA contract. I started my own consulting practice to help companies prepare proposals to win government aerospace and IT business contracts. In 2013, I retired, professionally.
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Birding
My passion is birding/birdwatching, especially pursuing North American rare birds. Barbara and I got hooked on bird watching in the mid-1980s and one thing led to another until we owned a “wild bird” store and took all our vacation time, until I retired, to go birdwatching in strange and exotic places. In 2001, we started leading birdwatching tour groups to Western Alaska remote Bering Sea outposts in to find vagrant Asian birds that are rarely seen in North America. Now, I mostly research and publish papers on ornithological history and rare bird records while we continue to travel the world to watch and photograph birds. My birdwatching claims to fame include having published bird photos, among them, a journal cover photo, field guide photos, and a photo credit in Sports Illustrated (but the full story behind that one needs to be told over a beer!) Barbara and I were also featured on a BBC nature show about flying squirrels, Daylight Robbery II, that was shown around the world. I have seen over 800 species of birds in the United States. For more than 20 years I have served as the Secretary of the Maryland-District of Columbia Records Committee, as standing committee of the Maryland Ornithological Society.
Travels
In addition to my two “around the world in 80-day” trips, I have visited all seven continents, especially South America, Africa, and Australia. During my working years, I visited and spent time at exotic places such as Kwajalein Island, Papua New Guinea, Cocos/Keeling Island, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, Mauritius, Madagascar, and Ascension Island.
I made thirteen trips to Western Alaska and spent the equivalent of six months in the Aleutian Islands (including on Attu, the last island in the chain) and in the Bering Sea looking for rare Asian birds. I have seen Russia from Alaska!
Barbara and I apparently have an affinity for birding at the “ends of the earth,” especially for islands. We have birded Antarctica and backpacked above the Arctic Circle (to search for just one particular bird species!). We have birded in the Amazon Basin, the Pantanal wetlands of Brazil, the Galapagos, Trinidad and Tobago, on the Azores, Madeira, Canary, and Cape Verde Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, and Easter Island. We have birded in the Andes of Ecuador and Chile, including taking in the 2017 total solar eclipse from the Chilean high desert.
Special Honors and Achievements
Fed 100 Award (for government and industry leadership in the IT field)
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Reunions
Photos