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The Greentown Historical Society will hold its 2025 Annual Meeting and Dinner on Thu., Nov. 13, at 6 p.m. The event will be held in the Keystone Cooperative Community Building on the Howard County 4H Fairgrounds in Greentown.
The guest speaker for the event will be Stephen Hall, a 1963 graduate of Purdue University who worked for NASA.
Hall lived on a rural farm and attended Union Grade School until entering junior high school. He attended subsequent grades in Greentown and graduated from Eastern High School in 1963.
He set two career goals early in life. In the fourth grade, upon hearing the United States would launch an earth satellite during the International Geophysical Year, he decided that he would work on spacecraft. A few years later, after seeing TV programs that Walt Disney produced which featured rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and dealt with manned spaceflight, he decided he would work for von Braun.
He met both goals after earning a bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering at Purdue University. The morning after graduation, Hall began work at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama. MSFC was the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) largest field center, was heavily involved in the Apollo Program, and was directed by von Braun.
Spaceflight technology advanced dramatically in the next 35 years. In that era, Hall worked in manned spacecraft design, development, and mission support. He was often a test subject for zero gravity simulations in neutral buoyancy and in KC-135 flights performing space-suited as well as shirt-sleeve operations. Projects he worked on ranged from the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), through the Space Shuttle missions, and then, the International Space Station (ISS) and its experiments. Notably, the ISS has been manned continuously since November 2, 2000.
As he approached retiring at MSFC, he learned springboard diving, started coaching city league divers, then high school divers. After retiring, he reestablished a year around dive program at the Huntsville Aquatic Center.
Hall currently lives with his wife, two cats, four horses, and an abundance of wildlife on a small farm northeast of Huntsville. He occasionally has speaking engagements and participates in activities at the Alabama Space & Rocket Center and Space Camp which are located nearby.
The meal for the event will be caterd by Main Occasions Catering of Greentown, and the cost of the meal is $25 per person. The meal will consist of beef and chciken, side dishes, dessert, and a drink.
Reservations for the meal are required by Nov. 6 and may be made by calling 765-626-0164 or by mailing a check to the Greentown Historical Society, P.O. Box 313, Greentown, IN 46936. The facility is handicap accessible.