Lisa Prejean was the Graphic Artist & Exhibits Coordinator for Earth Sciences and Solar System Exploration Division since July 1997. She left at the end of February to be near her fiancé in Washington, D.C. Lisa and Jerry Butwid will marry in Galveston, Texas in September of this year.

Lisa was born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1964. She and her mother lived in Beaumont and then Houston before moving to Nassau Bay, Texas, in 1971 when her mother got a job at NASA-JSC and married Terry Semple, a flight controller for Apollo 13 - 17. Lisa lived in the NASA area until she graduated from Clear Lake High School in 1983 when she moved to Houston. In 1985 she moved to Knoxville, Tennessee where she lived for 7.5 years and attended University of Tennessee. Lisa moved back to the Clear Lake area in 1993 and finished her college education at the University of Houston - Clear Lake while working full time at Geocontrol Systems, GHG Corporation, and finally Lockheed Martin.

Lisa loves camping and any type of water sports, in particular, offshore fishing, water skiing, sailing and SCUBA diving. She also enjoys painting, acting, live music, and reading.

Washington, D.C., is Jerry's first assignment as an officer in the United States Coast Guard (he was enlisted for five years prior to getting a BS degree in Environmental Science from Texas A&M - Corpus). Lisa and her friend, NRC Fellow Melissa Lane, decided to take a SCUBA course in 1999 and Jerry was their Open Water diving instructor. Lisa continued through Advanced Open Water dive classes from Jerry, who also was employed as a diver in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab here at JSC. They became engaged on the beach in Cozumel, Mexico, on the one-year anniversary of their first date. The couple is looking forward to starting their lives together and, eventually, a new family.

Hats off to Lisa for doing an excellent job. Her bubbly personality and big smile will surely be missed. We wish the very best for Jerry and Lisa.