Mike Ferguson was a unique individual, one of the smartest people I've ever known. I met him many decades ago thru the Wilson Clan. In my young mind, he was larger than life, shaman like.
 I was not a 'techie person'.But Mike had a myriad of interests: a great affinity for nature, conversation, literature, the arts, food, wine, astronomy,orchids, opals,music, dance.... I have many fond memories of sharing the joys of life with him.I also remember a time when I'd pulled my back out badly at work, I went out to see Mike and over the next day he helped me to stretch, I soaked in a hot bath and with his help, I worked thru the pain. I called him recently and knew he was having some major health issues, he was optimistic and saw it as an obstacle to overcome. He was not perfect, but he was lovable. 'A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others', from the Wizard of Oz,  kind of like Mike. Farewell old friend, may the force be with you. 

I met Fergie through my husband Don, 10 - 15 years ago.  Fergie was striking in his intellect, quest for knowledge, love of coffee, love of opals, love of science and learning.  To make coffee, if you were Fergie, you had to first roast the specialty beans in an air popper for popcorn.  Then grind the beans right away, then make coffee, never with cream or sugar!  I do not I like cream and sugar, but Fergie's was good plain black.  I was privileged for Fergie to share his opal collection with me.  We spent time together at dinners, nature walks, parties at Sand Hill or our place, boating.  We talked about native plants.  We re-introduced Fergie and Elena to ballroom dancing.  Fergie made mosquito repellant from "beauty berry".  What a guy.  Too soon gone.  We never got to go blueberry picking- i was too slow on the draw on the invitation, and Fergie told me the boy scouts got all the berries.  Michael is sorely missed.       

Eileen Wilson
Merritt Island

One skill Michael had which was totally non-serious but guaranteed to engender mirth:  His “duck” talk.  I never failed to dissolve into helpless laughter!  He could talk “duck” on some very serious matter or another, such as a scientific discovery, on and on, with a straight face; or engage in conversation with another person where he’s talking duck and the other person is speaking normally.  Hysterical!  Occasionally he’d find someone else who could also talk duck, and then….Katie bar the door!!!!!

Janet Craig, Merritt Island, FL



Posted above, you will find three separate memories of Michael Ferguson from Donald Wilson.   But they are actually a single set of memories that had to be separated into three because of the 2000 character limit.  They are also posted in reverse order and should be read in the order last, middle, then first.

Donald Wilson

In addition to his passion for technology, Michael was also very passionate about one of his favorite hobbies, working with the beautiful gemstone opal.   He once made an extended trip to Australia where he explored Australian opal mines and acquainted himself with some of the more prominent players in this field, eventually becoming one of the most knowledgeable opal experts to be found anywhere.  He took great delight in transforming rough opal into magnificent gems worthy of the finest and most expensive jewelry.  His private collection of opal was without compare and was a source of great pride and fascination for him.  He established an exclusive relationship with the jeweler Kaufmann de Suisse to market some of his more notable opals and you can still see an example from his collection at https://kaufmanndesuisse.com/product/libras-cufflinks/.

I count my old friend and brother Michael Ferguson as one of the greatest and most influential friends of my life.  Had it not been for his seminal influence, I probably would not have become an Electrical Engineer and spent an enormously gratifying career as one of his colleagues at the Kennedy Space Center.  He will be profoundly missed and his remarkable life never forgotten.

Donald Wilson, Merritt Island, FL


After many years at KSC, Michael and a couple other colleagues formed their own engineering company in 1983, Sand Hill Engineering, to develop hardware and software products as well as to provide consultation services to NASA and various contractors at KSC and elsewhere.  Major customers of Sand Hill Engineering included Computer Sciences Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Black Box Corporation, Northern Telecom, NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Navy.  During the long Sand Hill chapter of Michael’s life, he turned his vast expertise in the command & control of rocket launches to the domestic side of life.  In 1996, Sand Hill entered the “home automation” market by incorporating their experience in large scale automation and multipoint communications into a home automation software product running on the Apple Macintosh computer.  Michael had long been a big fan of the Macintosh believing it to be vastly superior to ordinary Microsoft Windows computers. The software was designed to work with the “X10” protocol, an industry standard for communications between electronic devices used for home automation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard) , and was cleverly named “XTension” after the X10 protocol it was designed to support.  You can learn much more about XTension and Sand Hill Engineering at www.shed.bz and at www.machomeautomation.com.

Sometime after the year 2000, Michael decided to resume his support of the Space Shuttle Program and took a job with United Space Alliance (USA), again working at KSC.  Because of his extensive prior experience as an LPS Systems Engineer, he quickly found himself in charge of the Systems Engineering department and there continued to support Space Shuttle launches until the last flight of the Shuttle Atlantis in July of 2011 (https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts135/launch/sts-135_mission-overview.html).

My 50-year relationship with Michael Ferguson began sometime around 1970 when I was a teenager and he won the heart of my older sister.  It wasn’t long before they were married and Michael began the long process of influencing my young mind, and that of my brother, in ways that would profoundly affect the course of our lives.  It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that Michael was a technology genius whose affinity and aptitude for hardware and software were beyond measure.  He did not have a formal engineering degree but somehow managed to distinguish himself as one of the most brilliant engineers that I and countless other colleagues of his had ever known.

I don’t know when or where his informal technical training began, but I do recall that he was working in the Information Technology (IT) department of Dallas Federal Savings & Loan in Dallas, Texas when he met my sister and we first became acquainted.  Sometime in the 1970’s, they moved from the Dallas area to Winter Park, Florida and Michael took a job with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) working at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on the Space Shuttle program (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program).  

There, he became a highly accomplished and indispensable “Systems Engineer”, solving technical problems with all of the numerous subsystems that made up the “Launch Processing System” (LPS) used to control and monitor the preparation and launching of the Space Shuttle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_Processing_System).  This would be the first of two long periods of service for Michael at KSC.

My written memory of Michael Ferguson exceeds the 2000 character limit for this posting.  I will attempt to post the rest of it in another shared memory...


OBITUARY

David Michael Ferguson

17 July, 1944 – 23 July, 2020

Baldwin-Fairchild Oviedo Funeral Home

Show your support

Add a Memory

Share Obituary

Get Reminders

Services