DENNIS ARMSTRONG: My name is Dennis Armstrong and I'm the public Web information manager at Kennedy Space Center.
Music.
When I was growing up, I grew up on a little farm town in Wisconsin, and it was a fairly cloistered existence.
I really didn't, didn't have any idea what I was going to do. I think probably the, the greatest hope that
I had was that I would be a professional baseball player, and didn't really change all that much until I went,
I was drafted and went into the military during the Vietnam War. And that's when the
world kind of opened up and I knew that there were going to be other possibilities out there for me.
I do have memories of the space program, and I think, certainly I remember Sputnik, when that occurred,
and I also remember some of the missions in the Mercury Program. I think that was,
those events in and of themselves kind of made me a little bit more aware of what
was out there in the world, although everything seemed pretty much out of reach at that point.
If I was going to put together an album of my memories here at Kennedy, I think certainly, first and foremost,
would be the people that I've, that I've worked with, the people that I've met,
and it would certainly include some of the places that I've gone. Certainly, I've gone up to Washington,
D.C., spent some time at Johnson Space Center, Huntsville, and it certainly would
include Vandenberg Air Force Base, where we supported missions several times.
I've had a lot of really good work experiences. I was fortunate enough to be able to
move into a new area, in effect, the Web and the Internet fairly late in my career, only about 10 years ago.
So it's been a really good experience for me and, and it's certainly paid dividends for me.
It's given me a lot of enjoyment, where I've been able to, with a lot of help from folks,
put together the Web operations group here at Kennedy and build the webcast studio. I think that would probably be my high spot.
I think, as I go into retirement, I'm certainly looking, I certainly have goals.
I think if you're going to stay young, you've got to have goals. So I certainly have a lot of them. I, I want to,
I know my wife and I both want to get back to traveling some more, both here in the states and probably in Europe some more.
I think I want to spend certainly more time with my family, and if at all possible,
be a part of my grandkids' lives as they grow up. But I think basically, the thing that's always kept me going,
will probably be my greatest goal, and that is just to find out what's around the next corner.
As far as advice for someone to fill my shoes? Well, you know, everyone really has to do kind of their own thing,
and I'm sure -- one of the things that I'm happy about is that I think the studio's on fairly firm grounds now,
the studio and the Web operations team, and that those programs will continue to go forward and, and prosper.
And as far as the people that are here, I think that everything is kind of in place.
We've got people that have been here for awhile, they're really good at what they do.
And I think that whoever will take my place here will have a really good group to work with,
and I'm sure that there won't be any problems. I think everything will go along really well.
At least that's what I'm hoping for, and I'm certainly going to be watching things as I'm out there doing what I'm doing.