47 years of building… and the next launch
Our dad retired after nearly 50 years in aerospace engineering, supervising satellite launches that helped to better connect our world.
To celebrate, we’re raising $4,700 for his next big, beautiful launch: Open Hands CI, a nonprofit that began through service trips and deep and powerful relationships with migrant and indigenous communities in Leticia, Colombia.
Our parents have spent a lifetime connecting people. Help us honor their next launch, and this new chapter for the dad we love and respect so much!
“My dad retired after nearly 50 years in aerospace engineering. 🚀
My dad is the youngest of eight children. He grew up in South Korea, came of age in Brazil, and finished high school in Los Angeles. By the time most people were just getting started, he had already crossed three countries and two continents.
He graduated college in 1979, walked into his first job, and never looked back. Satellites at TRW Space & Technology. Defense research at The Aerospace Corporation. Decades across four company names in the same building, saying goodbye to what is now Intuitive Machines.
As my dad approached retirement, he started sharing some reflections with my brother and me. He wrote about raising kids while navigating layoffs and company sales, about mission trips that changed his perspective on grace, about a house fire (hopefully not to be repeated 😅🙏), and about grandchildren who are now his greatest joy.
And he closed his retirement reflection with this: “Not of accomplishments, but of meaning. Not of speed, but of direction. Not for myself, but for the next generation.”
Here’s what I carry from watching you live this life, Dad:
🪐 Work ethic that never needed an audience
👩🚀 Servant leadership — quiet, consistent, humble
🛰️ Generosity as a way of life, not an occasion
🌎 That you can honor people’s dignity and hold high expectations simultaneously
📡 That loving your work is possible, and worth protecting
🔭 That how you leave something matters as much as how you showed up — you stayed until the project was finished, because that’s just who you are
Retirement isn’t the end for him. He’s already building — supporting community development and vocational training in remote villages in Colombia, leveraging corporate giving programs to double the impact of every dollar.
In celebration of my dad’s retirement, I’m launching a fundraiser to raise $4,700 for his nonprofit, Open Hands Charity International because the best way I know to celebrate the man is to extend his reach a little further.
Dad, you gave 47 years to something you loved, and you still have more to give. That’s not a career. That’s a calling. Here’s to the new dreams, Dad. Dobby is free!!! 🧦✨”
Stephanie Kim-Poston