Space Shuttle Astronaut to Visit Engineers Club in Dayton, Ohio

By Chelsey Levingston, Dayton Daily News, Ohio

Jul. 31–Fairborn High School graduate and NASA space shuttle pilot Col. Gregory H. Johnson will visit Dayton again and speak at the Dayton Engineers Club on Thursday Aug. 7.

Johnson was pilot of the shuttle Endeavour’s mission that ended with a March 26 landing at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. He will speak about his 16-day mission to the International Space Station and about his upcoming mission to train the Hubble Space Telescope’s rescue crew, said a press release.

“I think that the connection is that we have such a very strong history of aviation at the Engineers Club, starting with Orville Wright,” said Ben Graham, past Engineers Club president.

Open to the public, the meet and greet with Johnson is $20 a person and starts at 5:30 p.m. At 7 p.m., he will speak.

In November 2007, Johnson visited the Engineers Club and National Museum of the U.S. Air Force to discuss an astronaut’s challenges of working in space. A 1980 graduate of Park Hills High School, now Fairborn High School, Johnson also was an Air Force colonel and a fighter pilot in the Persian Gulf War.

Graham said Johnson has several friends at the Engineers Club now. “Here he is, a pilot, in the space program, in the area of the current breakthrough of aviation,” Graham said.

Col. Edward Deeds and Charles Kettering started The Engineers Club of Dayton in 1914 to discuss engineering and other scientific issues, according to the group’s Web site. There are about 450 members and the private club is open to all professions, said general manager Darbie Kincaid.

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