Prominent Tech alumnus delivers Commencement address

David Terraso
Institute Communications and Public Affairs

Astronaut and alumnus John Young delivered the address at Georgia Tech’s 217th commencement ceremony, adding more than 1,000 newly-minted graduates to alumni rolls.

	John Young

Young received his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering in 1952. Since then, he has dedicated his entire professional life to the pursuit of perfecting spaceflight as a tool for the advancement of humankind.

Associate director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center since 1996, Young is responsible for technical, operational and safety oversight of all NASA programs and activities assigned to the center. As an active astronaut, he remains eligible to command future shuttle astronaut crews.

Young’s NASA career began in 1962 when he was selected as an astronaut. His first flight was with Astronaut Gus Grissom aboard Gemini 3 in 1965. He subsequently served as commander of Gemini 10 in 1966 and as command module pilot of Apollo 10 in 1969.

In 1972, Young served as spacecraft commander for Apollo 16, a lunar exploration mission that places him among the 12 people to walk on the moon. Young made aeronautical history again in 1981 as spacecraft commander of the first flight of the space shuttle, the orbiter Columbia. Columbia was also the first winged re-entry vehicle to return from space to a runway landing.

Altogether, Young has logged more than 14,000 hours — nearly 20 months — of flying time, which includes 835 hours during six space flights.

Young has also received the Georgia Tech Distinguished Young Alumni Award, Distinguished Alumni Service Award and the Exceptional Engineering Achievement Award.

Six years, seven organ transplants

When Kathryn Smith enrolled at Georgia Tech in the fall of 1997, she knew the road to graduation wouldn’t be easy, but she had no idea what would be involved. After just her first week at Tech, complications from a liver disease forced her to spend two weeks in intensive care. After her first year, she underwent a liver transplant. The next month she had another transplant and lapsed into a coma. Eight months later she endured a rare five-organ transplant involving her small intestine, liver, pancreas, kidney and stomach.

Kathryn Smith

Doctors didn’t expect her to live. On Saturday, she received a bachelor’s degree in psychology with highest honors.

“I didn’t think I would get through it,” said Smith. “You hope you just get out of the hospital first and then you just hope you can walk. It helped me more than anything to come back [to Tech], because it forces you to do things, rather than sitting around.”
Smith is applying to medical school. “I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, but this experience has strengthened my desire,” she said. “I think I can bring something unique because I’ve been on the other side of it.”

In 1996, she was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis, a disease that causes the immune system to destroy the liver. With her liver functioning at 50 percent of capacity, she enrolled at Georgia Tech in the fall of 1997. The day after she got her bid from her sorority, she passed out and spent the next two weeks in intensive care at Emory University Hospital, where she was placed on a transplant list. She finished up her first year at Tech and was beginning the next one when she got the call that a liver had become available.

After the surgery, she thought she was in the clear. “I remember waking up and thinking that was easy. It was almost too easy,” she said. Within a week of the operation, the liver failed, weakened by a blocked artery.

In December 1998, Smith had a second transplant, which was plagued by complications. Her intestines began to shut down. She was unconscious for a month.

“The doctors said there was nothing more they could do. Then my mom asked about an intestinal transplant,” Smith said.

She not only needed a new liver, but also a small intestine, kidney, pancreas and stomach. In January 1999, she was taken to Miami for the rare operation.

By August the infections were under control, allowing for the five-organ transplant. She spent the next nine months in the hospital. Drugged and exhausted, Smith began to experience hallucinations and depression.

“I woke up and had no idea where I was. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t sit up. You take all that stuff for granted,” she said.

She finally went home in October 2000 and spent a year recuperating. Her parents’ support, Smith said, was critical to her recovery.

Smith took a few classes at Augusta State before returning to Tech in August 2001. Now that she’s graduating, medical school is her next challenge. Though she still must take medication to suppress her immune system to keep her body from rejecting the organs, she says that’s not going to stop her.

“If I always stopped when people said I couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t be here,” she said.