Greetings from Betty Murphy (if you knew me at Wilson, you probably didn’t even know my real name was Elizabeth). After high school, I graduated from Duke (it took a long time – I wasn’t a good enough student for Duke) with a degree in psychology (because it was the easiest major) and then went to Computer Learning Center in Falls Church to learn programming (because a BA in psychology did not prepare a person for useful employment).
I got a job with a contractor at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. Turned out I loved developing software for satellite ground systems and ended up doing it for about 25 years. It was very exciting, especially around launch time (I missed our 25th reunion in 1991 because I had to work in the control center during the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite deployment from the Space Shuttle). The last ten years that I spent working at Goddard, I worked on the Earth Observing System satellites Terra, Aqua, and Aura. If you saw the Nova episode “Earth from Space” – those are my satellites that collected all that data.
When I wasn’t working I traveled – two trips to Greece and one 3-month trip around Europe by Eurorail (don’t know if that even exists anymore), a couple of trips to Mexico and one to Guatemala. I fell in love with the hula on a trip to Hawaii and came home to Silver Spring and took classes in Polynesian dance.
I’m now retired and living in southeastern NC, near the beach. Can’t make it to the reunion. Hope you all have a great time and post lots of pictures. Here's one of me and Nina Douty at graduation.