Perhaps you didn't have access to an ADA compiler 25 years ago, but GNAT has been free and open source for about 20 years and part of GCC for more than 15. Of course, 20 years ago, ADA was already 15 years old, so no surprise that when it became accessible it was already branded fusty.
Even back in the 1980s, ada had a "stodgy government bondage & discipline language" reputation. At least among the hacker set, who back then was all about bit-banging the machine.
I'd speculate that ada never received the big commercial push, like Sun Java received. There were no salesreps talking up ada on the golf-course to CIOs, and there weren't marketing people planting 'Ada is great' stories in the popular press. It always had "the pentagon made me use it" aura around it.
