Davenport, William M.

Davenport grew up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina. As a young man he hired on as a railroad pipefitter's apprentice where he learned that trade and worked on the last of the steam engines and the first of the diesels. He has a master's degree from East Carolina University and began a new career as an aerospace engineer for NASA at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. He retired in 1995.