A match made in Florida: Stephen Bauder and Decker navigate NASA side by side
2016-11-21
For National Disability Awareness Month, Johnson Space Center is honoring an employee (and his faithful helper) whose character, courage and commitment has helped shape him into the person he is today.
Sitting across from Stephen Bauder, NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Enterprise risk manager and Performance Management lead, it’s easy to be misled into believing that he can truly see you. But that is a misconception—one only enhanced by the big butterscotch-hued dog lying at apparent inattention on the floor beside him.
Bauder is visually impaired, and Decker, his guide dog, is just doing his job. Decker plays dead with unparalleled skill, quite like his master can make you certain that he has no disability whatsoever.
“I think part of adapting is learning how to focus on people, and I’ve been told I can fake it really well,” Bauder admitted.
But fake it … he is. Bauder has Retinitis Pigmentosa, a degenerative disease of the eye. Diagnosed in 1982, Bauder has been dealing with the progressive loss of his sight—something most of us take for granted.
Bauder had been taking his life’s path for granted, too, up until his diagnosis. An aerospace nut from the very beginning, as a kid he would wake up in the middle of the night to watch Apollo launches.
“I’ve always been interested in space,” Bauder said. “I actually had a goal of becoming a pilot and going into the Air Force. It was at my flight physical where they detected my eye disease.”
Just as some have had to ditch an aircraft, Bauder found himself ditching his dreams as reality crashed down.
“At the time, the prognosis was, ‘Well, you know, between the next 20 to 30 years … you’ll be blind,’” Bauder said. “For me it was frustrating, because not only could I not become a pilot in the Air Force, then I was disqualified from joining any of the services. Luckily, I was working toward my degree in aerospace engineering, so I just continued on.”
If anything, no one can accuse Bauder of not being pragmatic.
“I think we all just deal with our life condition, no matter what it is,” Bauder said.
Bauder works primarily at JSC, which has a robust Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity to ensure he has the right accommodations for his job. Visual aids such as a screen magnifier in high contrast help him read. Many times he will resort to using audio, having items read back to him instead of reading it. But his biggest tools are his white cane—and canine.
Before Decker, Bauder relied on his cane when traveling to other NASA centers.
“In a way, he’s made me lazier,” Bauder said with a laugh, “because I was really good at counting steps and remembering which way was in and which way was out and having to memorize a lot more things—and he does a lot of that for me. Like in D.C., taking the subways, he can find the gates, escalators. He knows which one is going up and which one’s going down. I was Florida last week, and in the hotel he turned to go into the room. I was like, oh, no, that’s not our room … and kept going. Most of the time he’s right and I’m wrong.”
But even Decker’s only human—er, dog. On occasion, he’s led his owner off the beaten path to follow a squirrel. But by and large, Decker is on track to receive rave reviews come performance evaluation time. His one-year anniversary of pairing with Bauder will be next February.
Though Decker hails from Leader Dogs for the Blind of Michigan, he and Bauder joined up in Naples, Florida, to meet and complete a compressed 10-day training program. Normally, training takes 25 days.
“It was exhausting, to be honest with you, because you have to learn the commands and his behaviors,” Bauder said. “They actually say that as a team, you don’t get fully integrated until about a year. But I’ve already seen it’s just progressively getting better and better to work with him.”
Decker is quite the old hat when it comes to working at NASA, and his recent work trip with Bauder to Florida proves it. He did another compelling “playing dead” performance in a quarterly review meeting packed with more than 100 people. More distracting than squirrels, for sure, but he pretended it wasn’t.
“One of the things I would like to let the JSC community know about is behaviors around service animals,” Bauder said. “The fact that you’re not supposed to make eye contact with them, and you’re really not supposed to touch them. In order to keep him focused, people have to leave him alone. And, of course, I’ve been asked why these rules are in place—but if I allowed him to interact with everyone at work, then when I go into a meeting, he would not lay down and be quiet.”
In his free time, Bauder likes to cook and listen and play to music. Oh—and tend to his fish, house dog and house cat.
“I actually have an aquarium that I maintain, which people laugh at when they find out,” Bauder said. “But it’s a hobby that I’ve had for years, and I’ve just kept it up. My family enjoys it.”
At JSC, Bauder is waiting not-so-patiently for his program’s next launch in 2018. He’s itching to get back to operations mode.
“It’s also just the whole concept of going beyond low-Earth orbit. I know we’ve made it look easy, but the challenges that we have ahead of us … it’s exciting. I’m really looking forward to being able to go back to operations, which is where the majority of my career has been. I was heavily involved in shuttle right until the end of it.
“I guess I would call it instant gratification,” Bauder said with a smile.
Catherine Ragin Williams
NASA Johnson Space Center
Sitting across from Stephen Bauder, NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Enterprise risk manager and Performance Management lead, it’s easy to be misled into believing that he can truly see you. But that is a misconception—one only enhanced by the big butterscotch-hued dog lying at apparent inattention on the floor beside him.
Bauder is visually impaired, and Decker, his guide dog, is just doing his job. Decker plays dead with unparalleled skill, quite like his master can make you certain that he has no disability whatsoever.
“I think part of adapting is learning how to focus on people, and I’ve been told I can fake it really well,” Bauder admitted.
But fake it … he is. Bauder has Retinitis Pigmentosa, a degenerative disease of the eye. Diagnosed in 1982, Bauder has been dealing with the progressive loss of his sight—something most of us take for granted.
Bauder had been taking his life’s path for granted, too, up until his diagnosis. An aerospace nut from the very beginning, as a kid he would wake up in the middle of the night to watch Apollo launches.
“I’ve always been interested in space,” Bauder said. “I actually had a goal of becoming a pilot and going into the Air Force. It was at my flight physical where they detected my eye disease.”
Just as some have had to ditch an aircraft, Bauder found himself ditching his dreams as reality crashed down.
“At the time, the prognosis was, ‘Well, you know, between the next 20 to 30 years … you’ll be blind,’” Bauder said. “For me it was frustrating, because not only could I not become a pilot in the Air Force, then I was disqualified from joining any of the services. Luckily, I was working toward my degree in aerospace engineering, so I just continued on.”
If anything, no one can accuse Bauder of not being pragmatic.
“I think we all just deal with our life condition, no matter what it is,” Bauder said.
Bauder works primarily at JSC, which has a robust Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity to ensure he has the right accommodations for his job. Visual aids such as a screen magnifier in high contrast help him read. Many times he will resort to using audio, having items read back to him instead of reading it. But his biggest tools are his white cane—and canine.
Before Decker, Bauder relied on his cane when traveling to other NASA centers.
“In a way, he’s made me lazier,” Bauder said with a laugh, “because I was really good at counting steps and remembering which way was in and which way was out and having to memorize a lot more things—and he does a lot of that for me. Like in D.C., taking the subways, he can find the gates, escalators. He knows which one is going up and which one’s going down. I was Florida last week, and in the hotel he turned to go into the room. I was like, oh, no, that’s not our room … and kept going. Most of the time he’s right and I’m wrong.”
But even Decker’s only human—er, dog. On occasion, he’s led his owner off the beaten path to follow a squirrel. But by and large, Decker is on track to receive rave reviews come performance evaluation time. His one-year anniversary of pairing with Bauder will be next February.
Though Decker hails from Leader Dogs for the Blind of Michigan, he and Bauder joined up in Naples, Florida, to meet and complete a compressed 10-day training program. Normally, training takes 25 days.
“It was exhausting, to be honest with you, because you have to learn the commands and his behaviors,” Bauder said. “They actually say that as a team, you don’t get fully integrated until about a year. But I’ve already seen it’s just progressively getting better and better to work with him.”
Decker is quite the old hat when it comes to working at NASA, and his recent work trip with Bauder to Florida proves it. He did another compelling “playing dead” performance in a quarterly review meeting packed with more than 100 people. More distracting than squirrels, for sure, but he pretended it wasn’t.
“One of the things I would like to let the JSC community know about is behaviors around service animals,” Bauder said. “The fact that you’re not supposed to make eye contact with them, and you’re really not supposed to touch them. In order to keep him focused, people have to leave him alone. And, of course, I’ve been asked why these rules are in place—but if I allowed him to interact with everyone at work, then when I go into a meeting, he would not lay down and be quiet.”
In his free time, Bauder likes to cook and listen and play to music. Oh—and tend to his fish, house dog and house cat.
“I actually have an aquarium that I maintain, which people laugh at when they find out,” Bauder said. “But it’s a hobby that I’ve had for years, and I’ve just kept it up. My family enjoys it.”
At JSC, Bauder is waiting not-so-patiently for his program’s next launch in 2018. He’s itching to get back to operations mode.
“It’s also just the whole concept of going beyond low-Earth orbit. I know we’ve made it look easy, but the challenges that we have ahead of us … it’s exciting. I’m really looking forward to being able to go back to operations, which is where the majority of my career has been. I was heavily involved in shuttle right until the end of it.
“I guess I would call it instant gratification,” Bauder said with a smile.
Catherine Ragin Williams
NASA Johnson Space Center
Stephen Bauder with Decker, his guide dog. Image courtesy of Stephen Bauder.