He met Linda when they were both freshmen at Penn State. He was in the aerospace engineering program there, because he liked planes and because he didn't like to read; he preferred mathematics ("you didn't have to read much in math classes and you could do your problem and at the back of the book was the answer—instantaneous gratification"). (Another aside: his parents had told them that when they went to college, they could not stay at home and, furthermore, they could not even stay in Philadelphia. They had to get out, to go. I thought that this was a great idea and made a mental note of it, in case I wanted to use that with my future children. Go, you must go and explore something new, someplace new, see the world, be free!)

Guy was in the ROTC, because it was a requirement. All the male Penn State students had to join the ROTC. And sign up for the draft. Afraid of being drafted to be a foot soldier in the Army (as the Vietnam War was beginning), Guion, who had no military leanings whatsoever, joined the Air Force. Originally thinking that he would be an engineer, he signed up to be a pilot instead, figuring that he could learn more about planes that way. He ended up dropping bombs on people in Vietnam.

When he said that—the part about the bomb dropping—I wondered how he was affected by that, if he thought about it at all, if he recognized that he was killing people by aeroplane. But he continued on, as if dropping bombs on people was no big thing. Or at least, no big thing that he wanted to talk about.

He meant to be in the Air Force for just 4 years (after he squeaked out of Penn State—with like a 2.4 GPA; "happiness was Penn State in my rear view mirror," he said). He didn't like all of the super structure of the military, all of the marching and the yes sir and the no sir and the hats. He hated wearing hats. He figured that after his 4 years were up, he would go to graduate school, get an advanced degree in aerospace engineering and then get a job with Boeing. He had two dreams: to get a job with Boeing and to get a Stingray. I believe the latter was a kind of Corvette. Neither of those things happened.

Instead, the Air Force told him, hey, we'll pay for you to go to graduate school if you want. So, with them paying for his education (at the Air Force Institute of Technology) and his living expenses, he went back to school full time, got the hang of the whole studying thing and was able to be a pretty good student. He was working on an MA and one of his professors suggested to him that since he was doing so well, why didn't he apply to the Phd program? He figured it was just a few more classes and what were a few more classes, really? So he applied. He finished the MA stuff and moved forward towards the Phd. He said that they had to choose one major and two minors and one language. So, he majored in Aerospace Engineering, minored in Lasor Optics and in Math and studied French. But it was much more than just a few classes. When I did all of that, he told me, there were these four hour exams in each of my subjects and then the Orals, where this whole room full of professors ask you questions and questions and questions and I didn't do that part so good, so I had to do it over again, and then after all of that, there was still a dissertation to be written.

He allotted himself two years for the dissertation. I believe that's what he said. One year to do the research and the work and one year to write it up. He had to work while he was working on the dissertation, so he had paced himself in a leisurely way. He wasn't sweating his deadlines. Aware that the Air Force had paid for his schooling and consequently expected him to be coming back to fly airplanes for them (a prospect that did not thrill him), he cast about for ways of putting that off. So he heard that NASA was looking for astronauts, for the first time in ten or fifteen years. So he applied. He had no expectation whatsoever that he would get in. Everyone else applying appeared to be "folks who could leap buildings in a single bound and walk on water" and besides, NASA had never before accepted black people and he had no expectation that they would be starting now. He thought he'd just be ensuring that the astronauts who did make it into the program were at least as qualified as he was.

NASA would send you a letter when they rejected your application. Tens of thousands of people applied. That's a lot of letters. People in the Air Force with him, upon receiving their letters of rejection, would ask him if he'd gotten the letter, yet, and he'd always say no, because, of course, he hadn't, and they'd say, "well, then, you're doing good." He never received that letter of rejection. He was called in, as part of a group of 200 that they wanted to interview in Houston. Twenty at a time. He was part of the ninth group to go forth and be interviewed. Apparently there were quite a few astronauts there in the room asking questions. "I didn't know who the heavy was," he said. At one point, someone asked him about the 2.4 at Penn State. He had to explain that, see, there were 15,000 eligible women at Penn State and . . . there was just a lot of distraction.

Guy said that while all the interviewing was going on, he also participated in a physical and psychological examination which took a whole week. There'd be this psychiatrist or psychologist or whatever asking me questions and I'd be standing there wondering, "what's the right answer?" He didn't know if he had passed the physical, but he asked them if they would send the results to his Air Force Base so that he wouldn't have to go through another physical when he got home. They forwarded the information for him and apparently one of the notations on the paperwork was that he had, indeed passed the astronaut physical examination.

Back home to Dayton winter there was a blizzard. A horrible, nasty, awful blizzard of historic proportions. And at some point he was driving home and heard on the radio that NASA had chosen 25 people to be part of the space program. That was interesting. He had never received that letter of rejection. He supposed that it was because of the blizzard and the postal service and whatnot. He shrugged it off.

When he got home, he received a phone call. From someone whose name I may not quite have right. It was from George or Edward or something Abbot. Abby? Anyway, apparently, he had been the heavy that was in the room. He asked him how the weather was out there in Dayton. "Oh, it's terrible. Just terrible. I've never seen anything like it. It's been snowing for days and days and we're supposed to get another 6 or 8 inches . . ."

George Abby said to him. "It never snows in Houston. How would you like to move out here?"