Recently I lost a friend, Olaf O. Storaasli, Ph.D., due to medical complications. I first met him through the NASA Langley Alumni Association after giving a lecture titled Life After Academics. Although we did not overlap during my time at NASA, we connected through shared experiences. Later, he and his wife visited Florida, and I hosted them at the University of Florida. During that visit, I introduced him to several senior design groups, invited him to speak to my class, and arranged a seminar with my research group.
Olaf had spent many years at NASA, primarily in Tennessee and at Oak Ridge, where he was a pioneer in early high performance computing. I believe he was at NASA during one of the space shuttle disasters. Many people from that era carry a lasting sense of responsibility for those events. It raises an important question—whether the hard-won lessons of safety from that time have truly endured, or whether we have started to drift back toward the cowboy mindset of the so-called Golden Age of Aerospace in the 1950s and 60s.
His visit to the university left a strong impression. I remember a dinner I hosted for him and his wife in Gainesville, a moment of quiet conversation and reflection. The students were especially engaged. In one senior design course, he stayed after class answering questions for over an hour, until I finally had to pull him away. Experiences like these remind me how valuable it is for students to engage with experienced professionals. Despite the noise of modern academic life, students remain eager to learn, listen, and absorb the lessons of those who came before them. That, I think, is a good sign.