User:KITTY ROEDEL/sandbox

KITTY ROEDEL was born Kathleen McAuliffe in Newport News, Virginia. Her parents were Ellen Imbert McAuliffe and Robert Cleveland McAuliffe. She had a sister, Mary Ellen McAuliffe, born a year earlier and later in life a half brother, William Sleeman. Eventually, her parents divorced and her mother remarried twice after.

Kitty (her nickname) moved to Florida when Langley Air Force Base became Nasa and the Space Program started in earnest. It had been a life long dream of her mother's to move to Florida. Kitty, her mother and soon to be third husband, Bill Sleeman, moved to Titusville, Fl. Titusville was an old sleepy community with a massive new influx of NASA engineers focused on the development of missles and eventually human space flight. For the first two years in Titusville, Kitty went to catholic school at St. Mary's in Rockledge, Fl. Her sister Mary Ellen stayed in Virginia, living with her maternal grandparents.

Living in Titusville at the beginning of the Space Program gave Kitty a first hand experience of the fits and starts of NASA and Cape Canaveral. She experienced all the early space launches with animals at first and then humans. She vividly remembers the Alan Shepard launch. There were frequent launches, some successful, some not. Just about everyone in Titusville worked at "the Cape".

Two years after Kitty entered public school for the first time at Parkway Junior High School. There she formed friendships that would last a lifetime. In 2020, she is still close with her friends from Titusville, having been friends for more than 55+ years! Many of them still live in Florida. Some are now deceased.