Here\u2019s today’s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture.<\/p>\n
A life well lived.<\/strong> That pretty sums up the ongoing life of Harold Finch, the NASA engineer turned motivational speaker\/author\/entrepreneur\/movie producer\u00a0 — though it doesn’t quite convey his whole story. Harold, a very nice man who I met on the set of his upcoming faith-based film Unlimited,<\/em><\/a> and whose book (The Three Keys That Open the Door to Great Success<\/em><\/a>) I found personally inspiring, has just been honored the 2013 Distinguished Service Award from his alma mater, the University of Kansas School of Engineering.<\/p>\n Here’s Harold’s uplifting story (literally, considering his contribution to NASA), per KU Communications Coordinator Cody Howard:<\/p>\n To become a believer that every person has unlimited potential, one only has to look at the life of Harold Finch, or listen to the inspirational message on reaching for the stars that he\u2019s delivered in hundreds of motivational speeches to thousands of young students, future engineers and business leaders over the past five decades.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0A look at Finch\u2019s career shows remarkable expertise in various professions.\u00a0 He developed a method to keep astronauts safe from the vast temperature swings in outer space and enable humans to land safely on the moon.\u00a0 He served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer conducting top-secret studies and analyses of potential enemies, including research on UFOs.\u00a0 He played a key role in launching and managing a community college.\u00a0 He founded two vastly different and wildly successful businesses. \u00a0He started and funded a foundation that sponsored humanitarian projects in underdeveloped countries. \u00a0He served as the inspiration \u2013 and executive producer \u2013 for a film based on his life, starring Fred Thompson.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0Finch managed all this while giving thousands of hours of his time \u2013 pro bono \u2013 to spread a message of setting lofty goals and maximizing potential \u2013 with each lecture mixing in a touch of Jayhawk pride.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0Finch graduated from the University of Kansas in 1956 with a B.S. in mechanical engineering and an ROTC commission as an Air Force officer.\u00a0 In 1961, he earned a master\u2019s degree in mechanical engineering from The Ohio State University, and received a doctorate in education from KU in 1971.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0From 1957-61, Finch served at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.\u00a0 His responsibilities included developing analytical techniques for predicting the weight of foreign aircraft. \u00a0He worked on Project Blue Book, one of the systematic studies of UFOs conducted by the Air Force.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0In 1961, he went to work as an engineer with Kansas City\u2019s Midwest Research Institute MRI.\u00a0 Through his work with MRI, Finch was selected by NASA to be the project director for the Apollo Heating Program.\u00a0 He developed a program that monitored and controlled vehicle temperatures while a lunar craft executed slow rolls around a longitudinal axis.\u00a0 This maneuver was dubbed the Barbecue Roll, which served the same purpose as a backyard rotisserie by distributing heat loads uniformly around the vehicle. It was made famous by Tom Hanks in \u201cApollo 13.\u201d Finch was the youngest person in MRI\u2019s history to be named a principle.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0Because of his reputation as an innovator and achiever, he was recruited in 1967 to help start Johnson County Community College.\u00a0 He served as the school\u2019s first academic dean and chief administrator until 1978.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0His entrepreneurial spirit led him to co-found two successful businesses.\u00a0 Padgett-Thompson was a management-training firm that worked to teach engineers and other professionals skills not typically acquired in undergraduate studies.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0He later co-founded Cottage Care, Inc., which centralized certain operations for business franchisors \u2013 allowing them to focus on daily operations and customer satisfaction.\u00a0 Both businesses earned the prestigious Inc. 500 award, which recognizes the nation\u2019s fastest growing private businesses.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0Finch eventually sold both businesses and devoted his time to philanthropy and the power of positive thinking.\u00a0 In 1985, he launched the Wellspring Foundation, which sponsored more than 1,200 people worldwide to work on humanitarian projects in impoverished nations during the 11 years it was in existence.\u00a0 He\u2019s given more than 750 seminars around the world promoting the virtues of integrity, honesty, excellence and the pursuit of one\u2019s unlimited potential.<\/em><\/p>\n