ah yes, sorry, I was at NASA’s Marshal Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama from January 1988 to March 1993...thanks for catching that.
Side question - where were you when the Challenger exploded in 1986?
Funny you should ask. I was at my research job at the UT Health Science Center in Dallas. The lab I worked in was a couple of rooms away and across the hall from a lab for an astronaut, who was training to be a payload specialist. His lab had exercise gear in it, and they were designing things for the astronauts to use while in space. He was SUPPOSED to be on the Challenger, but they yanked him for Christa McAuliffe, about a week before that.
Those us who worked with that lab were all angry about it, so when it was aired, there was a big tv screen set up in the lobby, and most of us took a few minutes off from work to go watch the teacher in flight. It was such a to do compared to other flights.
Needless to say, we all watched in shock and horror, and anger turned into gratitude that one of ours wasn’t on that flight after all.
My son got his nickname from that guy. All of his papers said F. Andrew “Drew” Gaffney on them. I only met him a few times, and always it was just in passing. He eventually got to go to space once the program was restarted, maybe 5 years later.
P.S. I forgot to mention I was pregnant when that happened. My son was born a few months later.