Blog Page

As part of a microphone check before a television interview at The Piedmont Club in Spartanburg, Charlie Blackwell Thompson was asked to count to 10. 
“I prefer to count backward,” she said with a smile. She has some experience with countdowns.  
Blackwell-Thompson, a Gaffney native and Clemson graduate, is the first woman to be named a NASA launch director. She was the keynote speaker at the Mary L. Thomas Award for Civic Leadership and Community Change Fund’s annual Women’s Leadership Luncheon. 
More:Gaffney native has director’s seat at launch
Thomas, the COO of the Spartanburg County Foundation and the executive director of its Robert Hett Chapman III Center for Philanthropy, founded the event in 2018 to honor women who are leaders and change agents in the Spartanburg area.   
In her introductory remarks to the overflow crowd of more than 300, Thomas said that Blackwell-Thompson’s career exemplifies the theme of the event, “courage, strength and resilience.”  
Charlene Blackwell graduated from Gaffney High School in 1983 and earned a computer engineering degree from Clemson in 1988.  
During her senior year at Clemson, while trying to decide on a career path, she went to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for an interview for a software engineering job with Boeing. She toured Firing Room 1, the launch control nerve center for the Space Shuttle program.  
She said the NASA engineers were testing the shuttle Discovery to prepare for the first mission after the Challenger disaster, which had happened more than two years earlier in January 1986.  
Blackwell-Thompson described the “different language” of call signs and acronyms spoken in the room and also the sense of excitement and purpose of the people working there.  
”I didn’t know what they were doing, but the one thing I did know was that I had to get myself a job in that room,” she said. “I had to earn my way into the room and that became my goal.” 
With Boeing and eventually with NASA itself, she worked on software and electrical systems for the shuttle and the payloads it carried, like the Hubble Space Telescope.  
As a test director, she became one of the voices viewers heard on numerous broadcasts of launches describing the process of getting a spacecraft ready for liftoff.  
And in 2016, she was named launch director for what has become the Artemis program of missions to return human explorers to the moon and beyond.  
But once a Tiger, always a Tiger. Even today, she wears a Clemson lanyard when she’s overseeing operations in the firing room from the launch director’s console, in front of the angled windows overlooking Pad 39B. 
She says she tries to return to Clemson – and to Gaffney to see her family – as often as her schedule allows.   
“I love South Carolina,” Blackwell-Thompson said. “I’ve been away for 30 years, but when someone asks where home is, I say ‘I live in Florida, but my home is in South Carolina.’” 
Thomas’s description of the process of inviting Blackwell-Thompson to speak at the event on Dec. 3, is a study in small-town networking in South Carolina.  
After appearing together in March on a panel discussion as part of a video conference presented by Milliken, Thomas said she hoped to invite Blackwell-Thompson to speak at the Women in Leadership event.  
Through Facebook, Thomas learned that a high school friend is a cousin of Blackwell-Thompson. The friend’s mother, Blackwell-Thompson’s aunt, talked to Blackwell-Thompson’s mother, who then relayed Thomas’ invitation during her weekly Saturday morning phone conversation with her daughter.  
“See, that’s how we do things here,” Thomas said to laughter and applause. 
Once the connection was made, details were ironed out for Blackwell-Thompson’s appearance and keynote talk. 
One of those details was the timing of the often-delayed launch of NASA’s Artemis I mission, which finally roared into space from Cape Canaveral in the early morning hours of Nov. 16, a 10-minute countdown after Blackwell-Thompson had declared it “Go for launch.”  
After a successful launch and million-mile journey around the moon, the Orion capsule is expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the Southern California coast on Sunday, Dec. 11, 25 days after liftoff. 
From USAToday:NASA’s Orion flies over Apollo landing sites as Artemis I mission nears its conclusion
Once the rocket was safely on its way into deep space after days, months and years of setbacks and challenges, Blackwell-Thompson had the opportunity to come home to South Carolina and talk about resilience, courage and strength – rather than daily trying to summon them. “The harder the climb, the better the view,” she told her team shortly after the launch. 
She credited her upbringing in the Upstate with instilling in her the values that have served her well in her life and career – hard work, caring for others and the importance of family. And teamwork. 
Related:NASA’s first female launch director to lead countdowns during Artemis missions to the moon
“It’s about all of us working together, supporting each other, lifting us up,” she said. “It is in that community, whether you’re launching a rocket that will put the first woman and the first person of color on the moon or launching a business or leading a team, regardless of what you’re doing, those values allow us to do incredible things.”  
Honored at the event were six women who were judged to exemplify essential qualities of women’s leadership.  
∎ Courage: Cousins Sundra Proctor and Cierra Kelly, for their leadership in responding to episodes of racist vandalism in the Little Africa Community. Proctor is an educator and Kelly is a health care executive.  
∎ Faith: Entrepreneur and First Lady of Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church Latron McDaniel, for her work as the founder and visionary of the Live. Laugh. Love. Experience, which aims to educate, empower and encourage women.  
∎ Civic Engagement: Cindy Jackson Kelly, Spartanburg Market President for TNB Financial, for her service on the boards of numerous Spartanburg nonprofits.  
∎ Community: Anne Flynn, for her extensive career of volunteer work and leadership of organizations in Spartanburg and beyond.  
∎ Leadership: Former South Carolina Rep. Rita Allison, for her long career as a public servant and community activist. 
Blackwell-Thompson tied her work at NASA with the work of the honorees.     
“One of my favorite parts of launch countdown is that step where I give the ‘Go for launch.’ That’s a huge honor and a blessing. It’s a pretty simple word, but it symbolizes so much more,” she said. “I think about the women being recognized here, and I think you have displayed, demonstrated and lived your own version of ‘Go.’ ‘Go’ to make a difference. ‘Go’ to launch your dreams. ‘Go’ to help someone else launch their dreams. That ‘Go’ that you are living is making such a difference.” 

source