John P. Graham Jr. ’56 was presented the Distinguished Alumnus award by R-MC’s Society of Alumni in a ceremony at the Boydton Society’s Annual Meeting on May 29, 2010 in the Butler Refectory of Estes Dining Hall. The award was presented by Alan Rashkind ’69.
The Society of Alumni created the Distinguished Alumnus Award to honor those alumni who have achieved wide recognition through contributions made to society through their chosen professions.
Graham earned his B.S. in physics from Randolph-Macon College in 1956. He played football for the Yellow Jackets and was named All State in the Mason-Dixon Conference two years in a row. He was also a member of Lambda Chi Alpha and president of the Varsity Club. Graham was inducted into the Randolph-Macon College Athletic Hall of Fame in 1996.
Graham was employed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for nearly two decades. He began his career at NASA, then known as NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) in 1956 as an aeronautical research engineer. Graham was a member of a group of people responsible for developing the landing and recovery systems of the Mercury space capsule. He was also in charge of the NASA team on board of the recovery aircraft carrier in the Pacific for the flight of Astronaut Gordon Cooper.
Graham was assigned, in 1963, to a program called Lunar Orbiter. In support of NASA’s effort to land a man on the moon, Graham was responsible for the configuration and operation of the ground-tracking network and the mission operation control center in California. During the mission, he was in charge of video reconstruction of the photographs as they were received at the mission control center. As a result, he was the first man on earth to view earth from the moon.
After a 19-year career at NASA, Graham joined his family’s crab-processing business, Graham & Rollins, Incorporated, located in Hampton, Virginia.
Graham has been a longstanding member of the Yellow Jacket Club and he is a former member of the Society of Alumni.
Randolph-Macon is grateful to Graham for his support of the college. Graham, who lives in Poquoson, Virginia, is the father of John ’87, Casey and Terri. His brother, Felton ’63, is also an alumnus.
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