Lieutenant Colonel Michael P. Anderson, born on Christmas Day in 1959 at the Plattsburgh Air Force Base Hospital, was a Plattsburgh native who became a U.S. Air Force pilot and NASA astronaut. The son of Barbara and Bobbie Anderson, who serviced jets for the Air Force, he grew up primarily in Spokane, Washington, earned a degree in physics and astronomy at the University of Washington, and upon graduation was commissioned an Air Force second lieutenant. He became a pilot, earned a master's degree in physics from Creighton University, and returned to Plattsburgh AFB to serve as aircraft commander instructor pilot and tactics officer. In 1994, while stationed at PAFB, he was selected for astronaut training by NASA and assigned as a mission specialist. He logged more than 593 hours in space aboard two Space Shuttle missions, STS-89, Endeavor, and STS-107, Columbia, serving as payload commander in charge of science experiments on the latter flight. While returning to earth after a 16-day mission, Columbia was destroyed during reentry on February 1, 2003, killing all seven crew members. Survived by his wife and two daughters, Anderson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.