Flying High in the Face of Terror.
By Kim Sisk
Copy Editor
I suppose in the months and years to come we will ask each other: Where were you? Where were you when you heard about the terrorist attacks?
I was finishing breakfast in the cafeteria at U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville,
Ala., along with 17 other adults. We'd come to live our dream of being
astronauts for a week (Sept. 9-14), running space shuttle missions, experiencingweightlessness, having lessons in solar physics and generally immersing ourselves in the space program. Space Camp is a fantasy camp, so when someone said a plane had hit the World Trade Center, we didn't believe it. It had to be part of the dream, a dream which was rapidly turning into a nightmare.
We were just sitting down to build multi-stage model rockets when a staff
member came in and told us we could watch TV in the counselors' ward room. We never did finish the rockets. We crowded in front of the TV for about 2 hours, arriving just in time to see the first tower crumble. I couldn't believe it, no matter how hard I tried. Campers wandered in and out of the ward room at all hours for the rest of the day, but for the most part we stayed on schedule.
Having such a tight schedule was strangely comforting, because we were kept so busy we couldn't think. We generally agreed that we were glad to be at camp. It felt like a very safe environment, filled with people whose job was making sure of our safety. My only real moments of fear came upon hearing that the Army's nearby Redstone arsenal was a potential target for further attacks. The Space and Rocket Center and Space Camp are on land leased from the Army, so that included us in the target area.
The staff were wonderful about letting us use camp phones and computers to get in touch with friends in the New York and Washington, D.C. areas. People with canceled flights were welcome to stay in the dormitory and eat in the cafeteria as long as they needed to at no extra cost. "We won't just kick you out on the curb,"
counselors told us.
The week went on with simulated missions, SCUBA diving and plenty of team building. We really got to know one another as friends, brought even closer by tragedy. I think we all wanted to do something to help, to remember the events of that week. After some discussion, we created our team patch as a memorial. Each team creates a patch, in the same way shuttle astronauts do, to represent themselves and their mission.
Our patch is based on a black mourning ribbon with our team name, Kennedy, along one side with the date of our graduation, Sept. 14, at the top. The other side has 18 stars for each member of the team and 9-11, the date of the terrorist attacks. Inside the ribbon, the shuttle lifts off from
Huntsville, Ala. We wanted this to show how, at graduation, we were leaving the fantasy of Space Camp and going out into the world again. Creating the patch was very moving, and everyone had a sense that this was something we needed to do.
We also sent a copy of the patch with one of our team members, Tony, who will be traveling to New York as part of a firefighter honor guard. He'll
leave it at one of the memorials in the city, as a little something from all
of us. It's not much, but it is a reminder that Space Camp is a place where
you can still dream.
I remember the Challenger disaster of 1986. Seven astronauts were lost while we watched in horror. No one thought the space program would recover from such a blow, but it did. And we will recover from this too, remembering those who also "slipped the surly bounds of earth to touch the face of God."
This article was previously published in the Rockdale Citizen.
