Thanks Blinker, that was the solution. But I needed more information and I was able to find it on google.
For other newbies out there this is what I needed to do.
Reboot the computer (CTRL+ALT+DEL)
As the computer was booting up, press the ESC key at the LILO boot options screen. This takes you to a text -based screen with the list of boot options (linux, failsafe, etc) and a boot: prompt.
At the boot: prompt, type "linux single" and press Enter.
The computer then continues to boot up, halfway through booting it says something like "Enter root password for maintenance: (or press Ctrl+D to enter normal mode)" at which point I enter root password.
Then I get a command prompt:
[root@localhost root]$
where I can type "passwd username" and change my users' password! Yay!
Unfortunately after I did that, and rebooted, I couldn't "su" ebcause my root password account was expired. So I had to do the linux single thing again to reset my root password. What a pain.
Thanks.
--A