Personal background and education
I come from southern Missouri, a fairly small town, and I, for sure, wasn't the brightest kid in school. I'm the youngest of five boys, and when I came along to go to school and just because of my name, a lot of my teachers had taught my brothers, so I was blacklisted the moment they found out my name! So I had a pretty tough time getting through school, had to make sure I followed the rules, and did things right. I never thought in those days that I would have the opportunity to be able to do the things I've been able to do. I'm not college degreed, as I say I've been at JPL forty-two years, so I figure that's forty-two years of pretty d*** good on the job training. And I feel so d*** fortunate for things I've gotten to do. I don't think a ten-year college degree would have made my job any more interesting and fun, and that's very important, "fun." If you've got a job that you can go home at the end of the day and say, you know, we really had a good day today, and not only that, I had some fun at work, that means a lot.

Degrees are wonderful. You know, I'm for everybody having a degree, there's no question about it. But I've been all over the world, I've been to France and several other countries, to Moscow, to Kazachstan to see their facilities, and that's not really because of my having a college degree. I guess it's because of all the on-the-job training that I was lucky enough to have, and the people I got to work with that were patient and good enough to teach me the ropes. And so that's sort of where I come from. As I say, it's just been a great honor to me, I just feel so blessed for the things I've gotten to do these forty-two years at JPL.