Born on Groundhog's Day at a very
young age, Mr. Smith wasted most of his early years as a child, then as a teenager,
in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. His intended career as an astronomer
specializing in spectrographic analysis was abruptly curtailed by an evil 12th-grade
physics teacher, leading him to turn to the dreary world of computers to make
his meager living (although he was a political science major at the University
of Pittsburgh and only picked up computers as a necessity).
In his previous, pre-NASA lives, Mr. Smith worked as a construction laborer, a paralegal research assistant, a clerk in a health food store, an itinerant dealer in rare coins, a U.S. Justice Department official, and a computer specialist of one sort or another for several private and government organizations. He is the original author and was long-time curator of the NASA HQ Office of Space Flight website.
He would ride a bicycle everywhere he goes except for the ravages of old age on his knees, so now he's just gotten fat.
Editor's Note: Woody left NASA in 1999. His help in getting the ALSJ established on the NASA server and in maintaining and upgrading the site are appreciated.