Jim:
Since you are a latecomer and obviously do not have all the
information I forgive you 
But I think I should point out:
About two years ago, Merit called upon Mark Knopper to accept the
position of manager of the Internet Engineering Group and to oversee
the transition from the T1 NSFNET to the T3 NSFNET. Mark stepped up
The planning/transition/design started in about mid-1989, some even
earlier. By the end of 1990 we had cross country T3 connectivity,
almost a year before the two years you mentioned. I will attach a
relevant message. Don't get me wrong, Mark deserves alot of credit (as
does Jordan Becker of ANS, for example), I am just commenting on your
wording.
Effective today, Elise Gerich will take the lead as Manager of the
Internet Engineering Group. As most of you know, Elise has been
instrumental in the management and operation of the NSFNET since its
inception. Elise is looking forward to helping the regional-techs
group evolve to a broader operational forum and to working with the
regionals to transition from the current NSFNET architecture to the
future architecture.
Elise also deserves alot of credit for her talents that allowed her to
grow into such a (well deserved) position. But, the NSFNET inception
was in about 1985-ish, well before Elise was hired as a Site
Coordinator into the Information Services group at Merit, which
happened shortly after Merit entered into the NSFNET backbone agreement
with NSF towards the end of 1987.
Besides that, great to see that Mark will help U.S. telecom industry
with data communications, I am sure his skills will be very valuable
to them. And also great to see Elise playing such an interesting role,
given all the efforts she has put into the project over the years.
Hans-Werner