Smithfield’s Gregory Blaney finds success at NASA
It is the story of a boy from Smithfield, Fayette County, who grew up to have an important place in America’s modern space program.
On the way, Gregory Blaney played football at Albert Gallatin High School; worked construction projects in Fayette and Centre counties; directed air traffic control operations in Toledo, Ohio; sold appliances alongside two of his wife’s uncles; and took his skills in the control tower to a place among the stars.
Today, Blaney, 61, is director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Independent Verification & Validation (IV&V) Program in Fairmont, West Virginia.
“The facility is responsible for ensuring the safety and reliability of NASA’s most critical software,” said Blaney, who oversees approximately 250 staffers.
“IV&V has discovered and ensured resolution of issues that posed significant risk to missions,” said former astronaut Terry Wilcutt, Blaney’s immediate superior and chief of NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance. “IV&V has made tremendous innovations, including software simulations in the (Jon McBride Software Testing and Research) lab and advancement of cyber security and information assurance capabilities.”
On July 28, Blaney was honored by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden for being one of 12 NASA executives to be awarded the 2015 Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious Executive.
“Greg was recognized for 26 years of federal and five years of contract support of NASA,” Wilcutt said.
That honor was announced in December of last year, but it took half a year to arrange the ceremony at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C.
There at Blaney’s side was his wife, the former Cheryl Leech, 60, whom Blaney helped to get a bachelor’s degree in education from Penn State.
“She’s taught throughout the years,” Cheryl’s husband of 41 years said. “In Maryland (and) in Taylor County, Harrison County and Monongalia County (in West Virginia). She retired this summer. We have been blessed.”
Together they raised two children and are grandparents of six.
“As a carpenter, while she was in college, the goal was, I would put her through school because I was gainfully employed,” Gregory Blaney said, as he worked his way up the ladder at R&R Construction in State College. “I ended up becoming a foreman up there for R&R building a Long John Silver’s.”
Cheryl Blaney did very well en route to a bachelor’s degree in education, first at Penn State-Fayette then at the main campus in University Park.
His NASA biographies talk of his being a Morgantown native — he was born there.
“The nearest hospital was in Morgantown,” Blaney said. “My parents and my grandparents are all from the Smithfield area.”
So is his wife’s family, which had been close to the Blaney family long before Gregory and Cheryl really knew each other.
Morals are important in the Blaney family, which long has been involved in Mt. Moriah Baptist Church in Smithfield. An Aug. 2, 1974, article in the Evening Standard detailed Gregory Blaney’s involvement in a Baptist youth conference.
“My parents were hard-working people,” Blaney said. “My mother was a nurse, my grandfather was a farmer. Work ethic was very strong in my family and in my wife’s family.”
Blaney went to Albert Gallatin High School and was a defensive end on football teams coached by Fayette County Sports Hall of Famer Doc Franks that went undefeated in Blaney’s junior and senior years.
After graduation, Cheryl went to Penn State-Fayette while Gregory worked for Darby-Humbert Lumber Co. in Fairchance.
“My dad worked there for over 60 years,” Gregory Blaney recalled. “He was an outside foreman. I started right out of school. I worked there even in the summer. I went to work for them as a carpenter.”
Gregory and Cheryl wanted to get married.
“We had planned our wedding day on Oct. 4, 1975, one day after my 20th birthday,” Gregory said. “(Cheryl’s father) did not want his daughter marrying a teenager.”
The Blaneys would do a lot of moving in the years ahead.
“I was trying to figure out what I was going to do,” Gregory Blaney said. “I took a test to be an air traffic controller, I did well, so the Federal Aviation Administration hired me and sent me to Oklahoma City where their academy (early in 1979). We were only down there for six months. She enjoyed the pool and helping me study.”
That studying led to Gregory’s being assigned to the Toledo Express Airport in Ohio.
“I did well and got promoted — until President Reagan fired 11,000 controllers on Aug. 3, 1981,” Blaney said. “It was the famous PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) strike.”
Blaney said Reagan “did exactly what he should have done” but it forced the couple — and a son, Jarod, born in Toledo — back to Smithfield. Gregory Blaney went back into construction, including a couple warehouses and a showroom for Reese’s Wholesale in Smithfield.
Reese’s still is around today. Blaney opened a satellite store for Reese in Washington, Pa., with some help from two of his wife’s relatives also affected by the PATCO strike.
“I went into business with a couple of Cheryl’s uncles, one in Pittsburgh, one in Cleveland,” Gregory Blaney said. “We were all looking for work.”
Someone else was looking for Blaney.
“I heard that NASA was hiring fired air traffic controllers to go to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.,” Blaney said. “So I went down there. A contractor, Bendix Field Engineering, hired me at the Goddard Space Flight Center. We were scheduling and controlling satellites.”
Blaney worked with Bendix for nearly five years before switching over to being a NASA employee.
“Understanding satellites in space is not much different from understanding airplanes in space,” Blaney said. “I worked different jobs. I worked my way up and became the network director. I was responsible for providing service to classified missions. I had a top-secret clearance.”
Then, however, came a need to provide service to his parents and in-laws, all getting older and facing health problems. It was 1996.
“I heard they were opening a NASA facility in Fairmont,” Blaney said. “I came back and applied (and was hired) as a project manager. I have done just about every job here.”
He and Cheryl were raising a family, too. Their son, Jarod, and daughter, Lauren, would graduate from high school in Bridgeport, West Virginia, then both head down to Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Today, Jarod lives in Vienna, Virginia, with his wife, Kadie, and their three children. He followed his father and grandfather into construction.
“He’s the president of the Mid-Atlantic region of Pulte Homes,” Jarod’s father said. “He builds hundreds of homes a year. My daughter-in-law used to work for an engineering firm. She’s now a stay-at-home mom.”
Daughter Lauren married Daryl Reynolds and also had three children.
“He’s a professor of electrical engineering at WVU,” Lauren’s father said. “She’s running a home-school coop in Morgantown.”
Meanwhile, Gregory Blaney continues what he considers important work for NASA in Fairmont. He’s not planning retirement anytime soon.
“I’m having fun and my health is good,” he said.
However, while he works with astronauts and will help direct space flights, he never plans on being an astronaut himself.
“I get sick on roller coasters,” Blaney said. “I wouldn’t do well on a space ship.”