Michael Leinbach - Bringing Columbia Home - The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew

Sabine County’s volunteer searchers performed admirably in maintaining their search lines. They resisted the temptation to extend out the ends of their lines, which might have caused them to miss something in their assigned areas. When one team found crew remains only forty feet outside the area searched the day before, the searchers were naturally impatient to cover more ground. But Greg Cohrs and the team leaders reminded them that it was imperative that they maintain a disciplined, methodical search pattern. [13] Cohrs, “Notes,” 6.

Sowell and his fellow team leaders actively monitored their teams to identify volunteers who might not be up to the task physically or emotionally. The leaders occasionally suggested that some individuals might be better able to help out in some way other than walking the woods. He ensured that people knew that there was no shame in admitting they were not suited to woodland grid searching.

One out-of-towner, dressed in a suit and driving a Mercedes, drove up to the VFW hall and offered his services. He changed into work clothes and gladly helped sweep floors, clean bathrooms, and take out the trash.

Townspeople were still adjusting to the worldwide attention their quiet community was receiving. Residents had a hard time believing that so many astronauts were in their small town. To ease the tension, the astronauts tried their best to be just another part of the family. When they were not involved in the recovery efforts, they went out of their way to talk with schoolchildren and the volunteers.

But the astronauts naturally attracted attention from the media. It was impossible for them to travel from the command center to the VFW hall for a meal without having microphones shoved in their faces. Kennedy’s Pat Adkins, who was working in the Hemphill debris collection center, devised an order and delivery service from the VFW hall to enable the astronauts to eat in peace in the command center.

Housing everyone was becoming a logistical nightmare. Between people participating in a fishing tournament already underway on the nearby Toledo Bend Reservoir and all the searchers pouring into the area, no motel rooms were available within an hour’s drive of town. Even the town’s wastewater treatment facility struggled to keep up with triple the usual town population. Hundreds of National Guard troops were bivouacked in the Hemphill high school gymnasium, trying as best they could to make themselves comfortable and sleep on wall-to-wall cots.

Gerry Schumann was one of the few NASA personnel who was able to find a motel room in Sabine County. However, he slept in his car several nights during the first two weeks of the recovery period rather than make a late-night drive back to Hemphill from Lufkin.

Once again, county citizens came to the rescue. Owners of lakefront vacation houses in the area phoned the VFW hall to offer their properties for searchers’ use. They refused to take any payment, saying that it was the least they could do to help with the recovery. Other people offered searchers free room and board in their homes and to do their laundry.

Simple acts of kindness and words of encouragement comforted the NASA workers who were still grieving over their fallen comrades and the loss of Columbia , and who felt so far from home. Local resident Pat Oden wrote to a friend, “I was making a video of one of the news conferences and started talking to a young NASA man. I asked if I could video him and he said to me, ‘I am not anybody important.’ I replied, ‘To us you are very important.’ As I was taking his photo, I asked him his name and was he from NASA Houston. He replied, ‘No, ma’am, I am from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.’ With that remark, I quit taking photos and walked over to him and hugged him and told him I knew how hard this must be on him. He started crying, as I did. Very emotional. Makes me feel good that I retired to this small community.” [14] Pete Churlon, “Space Shuttle Columbia Tragedy Photo Gallery,” Beaumont Enterprise (Beaumont, TX), January 28, 2011, www.beaumontenterprise.com/photos/article/photo-548688 ; Pat Oden emails reprinted on www.hemphilltexas.com .

The first of many memorial services for the Columbia crew was held at Johnson Space Center at noon on February 4. It was a private ceremony for family members, friends of the crew, invited guests, and NASA employees and contractors. President and Mrs. Bush attended, as did Sean O’Keefe. [15] NASA, “Johnson Space Center Memorial Time Updated,” news release H03-042, February 3, 2003. At the ceremony, the president remarked that although NASA was being tested at this time, “America’s space program will go on.” [16] NASA, “NASA Provides Update About Columbia Investigation,” news release H03-051, February 4, 2003.

In the skies above Russia, about an hour before the ceremony started, an unmanned Progress spacecraft docked with the International Space Station, bringing one ton of food and supplies to the crewmen—two Americans and one Russian. They could now survive at least until July without a space shuttle resupply mission. That was critical, because no one knew when a space shuttle might visit the ISS again. [17] NASA, “Columbia Investigation.”

Admiral Gehman and other members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board toured the three areas in the debris field and the collection area in the hangar at Nacogdoches airport. Gehman insisted the board see the debris in the field, to make the accident more personal to his investigation team and prevent it from becoming “an abstract event.” He said that the board had two main responsibilities. The first was to future astronauts, who needed to feel that everything possible has been done to make it safe for them to fly. The second responsibility was to the three astronauts aboard the ISS, who needed the shuttle to fly again as soon as possible. [18] NASA, “Space Shuttle Accident Investigation Board Chair Tours Recovery Area,” news release H03-047, February 4, 2003.

Jan Amen from the Texas Forest Service was pressed into service as a photographer for NASA during Gehman’s tour. Many of the photographs she took that day and over the next several months became part of the official record of the recovery operations. As a resident of a small town in rural Texas, she never dreamed she would be exposed to an event at the center of the world’s attention. She wrote an email that evening describing her first day working with NASA as “one of the most incredible experiences of my life.” [19] Jan Amen email, February 4, 2003.

Jim Wetherbee called upon Dr. Jim Bagian, a former astronaut who had helped with the Challenger crew recovery, for consultation on crew recovery procedures. Among Wetherbee’s concerns was keeping any news about the status and condition of crew remains out of the press. Bagian helped him by developing a two-letter random code array to match the recovered remains to the appropriate crew member. Wetherbee was the only person in Lufkin with the full key to that code. This code enabled discussions about operations to be conducted over nonsecure channels without revealing sensitive information about which astronauts had been recovered and where. [20] Interview with Jim Wetherbee; Stepaniak, Loss of Signal , 78.

By February 4, it appeared that at least some portion of each Columbia crew member’s remains had been recovered. Dr. Philip Stepaniak and his medical team in the temporary morgue at Barksdale received, studied, and prepared the remains of Columbia ’s astronauts that had been gathered so far.