S P R I N G 2 0 2 2 | 2 3 Willoughby, who was raised by a single mom and extended family, sometimes having to rely on public assistance, had imagined at an early age that he’d be a bartender, like his grandfather. Though good at science and math—a skill, he says, honed by helping his grandfather figure out horse- betting odds—he didn’t think he could afford college. Then a friend handed him an application that could be used to apply to Lehigh. To his surprise, he says, he was accepted. And he was awarded a financial scholarship that made it possible. “I hadn’t been out of my enclave,”Willoughby says. When he drove out to campus with his dad for a tour and took in Lehigh’s beautiful stone buildings, he found it both intimidating and welcoming. “You ran into people and they were nice to you,” he says. “To some degree, they didn’t know if I was accomplished or not accomplished. I was a freshman, and you’re going to go cut your teeth on your own.” Years later, approaching his Lehigh graduation, Willoughby set his sights on California, where his brother was then living. He combed Lehigh’s printed alumni directories to find electrical engineers there and wrote to about 20 of them. “I said, I want to move to California. I’d love to get a job out there, to talk to you,” Willoughby recalls. One Lehigh alumwho was working at TRW, nowNorthrop Grumman, helped himmake a connection there, and the rest is history. Today, Willoughby is paying it forward with the Sarah and Scott Willoughby Scholarship Fund at Lehigh. He also has spoken to Lehigh classes, met with other first-generation students like himself and led students on tours of the Webb telescope while it was under construction. Do you remember the first time you learned about space? What got you hooked? It’s an interesting question because a lot of people assume—I’ve been working in space for 32 years—that I grew up and I aspired to that. And the interesting thing was, I really didn’t. I always was a nerd about things, puzzle-solving. I like space. I watched Star Trek. I was always inspired by movies like that, but when I went to [Lehigh] to be an engineer, I wasn’t destined to be in space. I really just liked solving problems. ... My first days of work at TRW, which is nowNorthrop Grumman, the company I hired into, they put me on a space program. And at that moment in time, I was hooked. What was it that kept you there and kept you excited about the work you were doing? I probably would have been voted by my friends, most likely not to be in a job for 32 years. I’m impatient or I move around a lot. I like to solve things, but I like trying different things, and to be in the same company for 32 years is pretty amazing. … I’ve actually had well over a dozen different jobs [at TRW and Northrop Grumman], so I didn’t have to leave the team, so to speak. But when I got into space, it seemed like this almost magical thing. The idea that I was building something that would just leave and go thousands of miles away fromEarth and have to do its job, wasn’t going to return, no ability to service it, it puts a lot of pressure on you, and, for some reason, I enjoyed responding to that pressure.
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