In a recent NASA interview, Doug was asked "Tell us about your hometown and what it was like growing up there" Doug answered:  "I grew up in Apalachin, New York, which is a small town in upstate New York, pretty rural, four, five hours away from New York City so I think people, when they ask you where you're from, you say "New York", they assume you're from the city and I've probably only been there twice, at least that I can remember. And so my father worked for, at the time, IBM in Owego, New York, and my mom was [a] homemaker and it was just a great small town existence. I mean, small high school, very small hometown. We didn't get a stoplight until I was a, I think, in college at that point, so, and played the usual sports, you know, played baseball and skied and played football, soccer and those kinds of things but just a, I think just an average American childhood."