No one here at Firestone High School could have expected their first official tribute to astronaut Judith Resnik would end up being the American flag flown at half-staff.
”She just sent us her picture about three weeks ago,” said Principal Robert Hatherill. ”She was going to come here for a ceremony and be the first person on our `Wall of Fame.` We were making arrangements to have the picture enlarged.”
Instead, Tuesday morning a stunned Hatherill found himself announcing over the school`s public address system that Firestone`s most famous alumna
–and the second woman to fly in space–had died along with six others when the space shuttle Challenger suddenly exploded shortly after liftoff.
”I think this city is going to be touched pretty hard by this,” said Burton Willeford, an administrator with the Akron Board of Education and one of the 36-year-old Resnik`s former high school math teachers. ”She had kind of given us a lift. This city has been through some pretty hard times and she was a high point.”
While the nation stood still in shock Tuesday after having viewed the explosion on live television, the loss and grief was felt even more keenly in Akron and in six other towns across the country–the astronauts` hometowns.
In these communities–from Concord, N.H., the home of teacher Christa McAuliffe, 37, the first private citizen to go into space, to tiny Mohawk, N.Y., to Lake City, S.C., to Beaufort, N.C., to Auburn, Wash., to Kealakekua, Hawaii–each astronaut was a friend, a classmate, a neighbor, a nephew, a son or a daughter.
”In a small community you feel like one big family so we feel like we`ve lost somebody from the family,” explained Joyce Fulford, the mayor of Beaufort, N.C., Michael Smith`s hometown of 4,500 people. Smith, 40, was the shuttle`s pilot. ”He made everybody proud,” Fulford said. ”Very definitely he was a hero in everybody`s eyes.”
Each of the seven crew members had, through their individual accomplishments, emerged as a special hometown hero and a personal role model for the children there.
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There was, for example, Resnik, a research engineer, who demonstrated that being a woman was no stumbling block to great dreams and achievements. Ronald McNair, 35, the valedictorian of a segregated 1967 high school class in Lake City, S.C, returned to his hometown after his first mission in space and told black youngsters they could do anything they chose, as long as they worked for it.
Ellison Onizuka, 39, an Air Force major from Hawaii and the first Japanese-American astronaut, flew on the secret Discovery mission to release a spy satellite, his presence perhaps signaling what great steps the nation has taken to combat prejudice since World War II.
And Shuttle Commander Francis Scobee, 46, who grew up 20 miles south of Seattle, entered the Air Force right out of high school and only later finished his education at night, proved that dedication and perseverance pays off.
”We were so proud of him,” said Jeanie Miles, who went to school with Scobee in Auburn, now a community of 35,000 people but then a small town.
”We`ve lost a hero for the town and a good friend.”
”Obviously if you knew Dick Scobee, you had to feel this,” said Jim Fugate, superintendent of schools in Auburn. ”There was so much pride. How many towns in the country have (their own) astronaut?”
Smith, a commander in the U.S. Navy, had left Beaufort to attend the U.S. Naval Academy and later won several medals in Vietnam, but never forgot where his roots were and where much of his family remained.
”They had a big display of Mike at the high school,” said Beaufort Police Chief Marvin Knox.
Mayor Fulford, who knew Smith since he was a small boy fascinated by airplanes, said the town of 4,500 already had asked Smith to speak at the high school`s graduation this June and was planning a big celebration for his return. He even had taken a miniature town flag into space with him, she said, and had promised that all seven astronauts would autograph it.
Patrick Smith, 39, Smith`s brother and a pilot for the fishing industry, said he learned of the explosion as he was driving home from Florida Tuesday, having left before the launch. ”There was a feeling of anger but it was anger directed at life seeing those seven topnotch people go like that. Mike always wanted to be the very best. He knew what he wanted to do. He knew the very best was in space . . . ”
”These things just don`t happen,” said Chief Knox. ”The (space)
program is so reliable.”
Those same sentiments were echoed around the country.
”Some of the classes were watching it on TV. There was total disbelief,” said Lane Floyd, principal of Lake City High School where McNair grew up in the days when blacks and whites attended separate schools.
”He was such a success story–a black man from a small southern town who succeeded at everything he tried.”
”Everybody thought he was the best thing that happened to this city,”
agreed Mildred Brown, a retired Lake City teacher. ”It was something everybody was in accordance with and that doesn`t happen too often.”
In fact, Mrs. Brown said, the celebration for McNair two years ago after his first flight drew the entire town together–whites as well as blacks.
”The kids thought he was terrific,” said T.R. Cooper, an elementary school principal who had the same job at the segregated elementary school when McNair went there. ”He was a role model . . . it`s such a shock.”
”People are coming in here like they`re sleepwalking,” said Jack Vito, who runs the Village Market in Mohawk, N.Y., where payload specialist Gregory Jarvis grew up. ”The whole village is in a trance. You just want to sit down and cry.”
Vito said Jarvis`s mother, Lucille Ladd, had confided that she was
”scared to death” that her son was going up in space but that she, like the rest of this small community 80 miles west of Albany, was very proud of him.
That Jarvis had become an astronaut had been celebrated in Mohawk. The Herkimer County Board declared Sept. 24, 1984, Greg Jarvis day.
”He had the greatest faith in the system. He had no trepidation at all,” said John Ladd, Jarvis` stepfather.
”It just wasn`t on people`s minds that this could happen,” said Edward Burns, who owns the pharmacy in Mohawk and was a cousin of Jarvis.
Ironically, Jarvis, an engineer for Hughes Aircraft Co., had been bumped from two previous missions when NASA assigned first Sen. Jake Garn (R., Utah) and then U.S. Rep. Bill Nelson (D., Fla.) to the flights.
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Just before the ill-fated flight, Jarvis expressed his own excitement
–but no fear. ”You get very comfortable that for any contingency they know what to do, so I feel very, very comfortable,” the 41-year-old engineer had said.
”I feel sad for all of them,” said Vito. ”But (Jarvis) was like one of my sons. You just want to sit down and cry.”
”Mike got what he wanted,” said Smith`s brother, Patrick, who had nothing but praise for NASA. ”He accomplished his goal to be in space. He just never got to look back at Earth.”