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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Sponsor

Honored by:
Ms. Phyllis J. Cook

Henry (Hank) Norman Lange was born in 1930 in Chicago, Illinois to Henry and Alida Lange. Hank grew up in southern California surrounded by the innovators of aviation Hughes, Northrup, Lockheed, and Douglas Aircraft and saw in this a career opportunity. Hank started his aviation career with Firestone-Guided Missile Division as a custodian but quickly moved into the test lab where he eventually became the Supervisor of the Environmental Test Lab working on ground-to-ground missiles.
From there he moved to Martin-Marrietta in Denver, as Supervisor of Environmental Testing for Titan 1 & 2. He later became the Manager of Source Inspection and eventually the Deputy Director of Quality for West Coast Suppliers.
Hank's last company change was to Douglas Aircraft in 1967 (which shortly after his joining became McDonnell Douglas) as Section Chief for Supplier Review. During his 29 years with McDonnell Douglas he served as Section Chief-Quality Data & Control, Branch Manager for the ACE & AMR Programs, Director of Quality Assurance, Director of Special Space Programs, Vice President General Manager for General Support Services, Deputy Vice President Engineering for C-17 and Vice President General Manager for General Services and Quality.
Programs that Hank has worked on include WAC Sergeant & Corporal ground-to-ground missile, Titan I & II launch vehicles, Delta I, II, III & IV launch vehicles, Space Station, Japanese N1, N2 & H1 launch vehicles, C-17, DC-9, DC-10, MD11, MD80 (series) aircraft, along with many other NASA and DoD programs.
During this time Hank earned both his Bachelors and Masters Degrees from California State University at Long Beach. He also, earned numerous industry certifications including: Certified Quality Engineer, Certified Reliability Engineer, and California Professional Engineer. Hank was the Chairman of the Orange Empire Section of the American Society of Quality Control (ASQC) and earned the rank of Fellow with the ASQC in 1978.
In his three decades with McDonnell Douglas Hank was instrumental in transforming the company's culture from Engineering based, where Quality Assurance was seen as mainly an inspection operation, to bringing Quality Assurance to a professional level equal in respect to both Engineering and Production.