Vergil C.Givens 1925-2019

After graduating from Union High School at age 16, he attended West Virginia Tech before entering the United States Military Academy, where he graduated in 1945. Vergil served as a USAF Fighter pilot in the Philippine Islands and Japan from 1945-8 before returning to the US and getting his Masters in Mechanical Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. While there he met Janet Louise Eckert who was attending nearby Russell Sage College and they married in 1951. After a brief stint at Wright Patterson AFB, they moved to Edwards AFB in Southern California, where Vergil was an Experimental Flight Test Pilot during the "Right Stuff" era. He was the Project Control Officer and Test Director for the Lockheed F-104, in which he was the second pilot to break Mach 2. He joined Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in Burbank as a civilian test pilot before joining the Lockheed Missile & Space Company in Sunnyvale in 1960. After retiring from Lockheed Vergil continued to work in the aerospace industry.