Francis T. Hoban Sr., retired NASA program director, research professor and director of George Mason University's Continuing Career Program, died of heart failure Dec. 5 at Gettysburg Hospital in Pennsylvania. He was 67 and lived in Taneytown.
Mr. Hoban was born and raised in Eastern Pennsylvania. After graduation from Minersville High School there, he enlisted in the Army and served with the 11th and 82nd Airborne Divisions stateside and in Europe.
He earned his bachelor's degree from St. Louis University in 1960 and a master's degree from George Washington University. He earned his master's degree in business administration from the College of William and Mary in 1976.
Mr. Hoban began working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1963 at the agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. After moving to Washington in the 1970s, he was executive assistant to Wernher von Braun, pioneering rocket engineer and proponent of space travel, and for George Lower, former deputy NASA administrator.
During his 34-year career with the agency, he specialized in starting programs and in the development of NASA's project management work force. He was director of NASA's Project Support Office for the Office of the Space Station in the 1980s. He retired in 1997.
Mr. Hoban also was director of administration for the presidential commission that investigated the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.
He wrote Where Do You Go After You've Been to the Moon, a critical study of NASA in the post-Apollo era.
Mr. Hoban joined the faculty of George Mason University in 1992, and was there at the time of his death.
Mr. Hoban was a communicant of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Emmitsburg, where a Mass of Christian burial was offered Tuesday.
He is survived by his wife of 42 years, the former Mary Louise Scally; a son, Francis T. Hoban Jr. of Philadelphia; two daughters, Maria L. Killingstad of Berlin, Germany, and Loretta Ann Himes of Littlestown, Pa; a brother, Thomas Hoban of Minersville; and three grandchildren.