Lonnie Jones Schorer
Lonnie Schorer earned a BA in Russian from Connecticut College in New London and a Masters of Architecture degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. Lonnie spent more than 20 years living overseas in Thailand, Turkey, Italy, Norway, and the former USSR. While supporting her husband’s State Department career and raising a son and two daughters in different languages, cultures and often unsettled political climates, she was professionally engaged in UNESCO World Heritage programs, participated in land planning, residential, commercial, and architectural preservation projects and established educational programs for young children and college students. She has been a staff member for two Olympic and two Paralympics Games, coming away awed by the power of the human spirit to believe in dreams and strive for seemingly impossible goals. As a member of the Explorers Club, Women in Aerospace and The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, and as a member of TIGHAR’s Earhart Expedition Team, Lonnie’s fascination with exploration and the freedom of flight led her to look skyward, first as a skydiver and then as a private pilot and space advocate. Believing in the pursuit of visionary goals and new frontiers, as head of design for the new-concept 43,000-ton shipboard community at sea - the World of ResidenSea - and currently as director of Global Space Travelers, a subsidiary of ShareSpace, with Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Lonnie believes that the future of space travel - with rocket ship shuttles ferrying people and supplies and docking at destination spaceports - could be successfully modeled on the cruise ship industry. Four grandsons got her thinking about “to infinity and beyond,” and that led to the continuing development of the Kids to Space project, with its goal of supporting teachers and inspiring kids to think about tomorrow and their future in space.