In another episode of Potential Sudden Backstory™, in the season 7 (!) episode "Interface", Geordi's mother, Capt. Silva La Forge is
MIA, and his father Cmdr. Edward M. La Forge is planning her funeral.
Is this truly the first canon reference to Geordi's parents being Starfleet officers?
From the episode Imaginary Friend:
SUTTER: Commander, I understand that you had a parent who was in Starfleet.
LAFORGE: Two of them, as a matter of fact. My father was an exozoologist, my mother a Command officer.
Several users have commented on the fact that Geordi describes his parents' occupations in past-tense despite them still performing the roles he describes when we see them in season 7. I believe this can be explained by the context of Sutter's question, and the dialog that follows the excerpt above:
SUTTER: They must have been posted to a lot of different assignments.
LAFORGE: That's putting it mildly. They were always on the move. Some of the time together, sometimes separately. I never knew whether or not I was going to be stationed with my father while he studied invertebrates in the Modean system or on some outpost near the Neutral Zone with my mom.
SUTTER: Was that hard on you?
LAFORGE: I don't remember it that way.
SUTTER: It must have been disruptive if you didn't stay in one place long enough to make friends.
LAFORGE: Well, I suppose there were aspects of my childhood that were less than ideal, but to me it was just one long adventure. Children are a lot stronger than you think. As long as they know you love them, they can handle just about anything life throws at them, you know.
SUTTER: Thanks, Commander.
Sutter is raising his daughter on board the Enterprise and is concerned that moving from starship to starship is negatively affecting her. We see near the end of the second excerpt that Geordi understands the source of Sutter's concern. I infer from this that he replied in past tense because he was thinking about his own childhood experience and how it relates to the source of Sutter's worries.
