John Keller came up to me and asked me - he and I were up here by ourselves - and he said, "We need to figure out a name for this [facility] to honor Lauren."

And I immediately knew what the name would be.

I guess it was the Thursday afternoon before the accident, Lauren and I had spent probably five or six days straight, just by ourselves up here. She was teaching me everything I needed to know about all the solar stuff and all the CCD. John had been busy and so Lauren was passed on to me and I was supposed to learn everything she knew. I was going to be another lead telescope "tech" up here. So every day we'd come up here and spend hours and hours just learning all that I could about this place.

Wide shot of the Lauren Interess Observatory showing the "barns" on the telescopes

Every time I would do something, I'd lean up against something, there was Lauren, "Don't lean. Don't lean."

So it got to be a game where I'd walk up and start leaning on something and see how long it took for her...and she'd go nuts. She was very articulate and set in her ways.

And that last Friday morning, there was a solar class coming up and I wanted to tech it, and I wanted her to be up here with me in case I screwed up. And so I walked up and she said, " I'm going to get the barns off the 'scopes because you'll probably lean on them. You just need to go do something else."

I said, "All right, I'll go ahead and open the auditorium." And I opened up the door and walked in and I didn't hear anything. Usually when the silos move, you can hear them. I looked back out and Lauren was just standing there looking at me with her hands on her hips.

And I said, "What?" and I thought I had just done something wrong again. I said, "Don't look at me. I haven't done anything at all."

She said, "You're going to open the what?"

I said, "I'm going to open the auditorium."

She said, "No, no, no, no! This is the observatory. As a matter of fact, this is my observatory. It's the Lauren Interess Observatory, and that's what we shall call it."

And, little did I know, that's exactly what we would call it.

That's the last time I spent with Lauren, and that Sunday she was taken from us.

And that's how we got the name.