About the Authors

Joe Hartt
Joe Hartt spent 3 years serving his country as a Naval Aviator primarily aboard CVA-31, U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard, flying A-Skyhawks with Air Groups 12,19, and 4. Joe logged thousands of hours of flight time and hundreds of day and night carrier landings. This experience, together with extensive night and instrument flight time subsequent to Navy days, has guided his thinking toward development of improved lighting to aid the critical IFR and VFR transition. Subsequent to his service with the Navy, Joe joined the IBM Corporation, Data Processing contractors to NASA at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas. From 1967 to 1973, he performed a range of tasks in support of the Apollo and early Skylab programs. These included technical and programming requirements definition, systems integration, computer siniulations, and actual mission support. He was Manager, Mission Support, and directly responsible for all computer processing functions within the Real Time Computer Complex (RTCC) of the Missions Operations Control Center during all Apollo missions with the exception of Apollo 17. Joe was the sole or joint holder of several patents, including the Hypersonic Vertical Take-off and Landing Aircraft, Pneumatic Surgical Hand Scrubber, Stratified Change Chamber and Spark Plug, Skateboard Ice and Snow Runner and the Light-R-Lite. Joe Hartt died in 1997.


Barney Visser
In 1967, during the height of the Vietnam War, Barney Visser volunteered for the army draft. After his placement testing he was given an option of attending his choice of safe, prestigious, stateside service academies. Instead he volunteered for active duty in Vietnam. He served with the 173rd Airborne Brigade as a paratrooper for 11 months, from July1968 until June1969, He served a total of 21 months. Since Vietnam, Barney, an entrepreneur, founded and built a series of retail stores which today employ over 2,200 full-time team members. Barney and his wife, Carolyn, are the parents of 7 children.

Joe Hartt and Barney Visser

(Joe Hartt - Left, Barney Visser - Right)

 



NOTE: To avoid confusion in a book written by two authors, it has been less confusing to use I, me, mine instead of we, our, ours. We hope you understand me.