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

Second, they explored developing a commemorative glade at the “nose cone site” west of town. The community solicited site design concepts from architecture students at Texas A&M University. Hemphill’s memorial committee then spent several years working to persuade legislators to designate the site as a national landmark or a national park. Their proposal made it to Washington, DC. However, the National Park Service determined in 2014 that despite the historical significance of the Columbia accident, the site did not meet the suitability standards to become part of the national park system. [2] National Park Service, Columbia Memorial Resource Study , 9.

For the third planned memorial, Gay, Cooper, Mills, and other citizens of Sabine County envisioned a museum in the town that would serve as a visitor center, a repository for artifacts and information related to the STS-107 crew and the community’s role in the recovery, and an educational center that would eventually include a space shuttle cockpit simulator. Generous donations from many people around the country—including a major grant from Mr. Albert Smith in memory of his wife, Patricia Huffman Smith—funded the museum.

NASA provided educational materials. Lockheed donated unused shuttle wing RCC panels and a shuttle nose cap. The families of Columbia ’s crew shared personal mementoes from their loved ones. Evelyn Husband donated Rick’s contact lens case—the one that Marsha Ivins and Jim Comer had examined in the reconstruction hangar. Laurel Clark’s husband Jon donated her collection of science and aviation books, filling the shelves in the museum’s education center.

The night before the museum’s dedication, Willie McCool’s father approached Marsha Cooper and asked if she could open the display case containing his son’s memorabilia. The senior McCool removed from his pocket a pair of gold astronaut wings—which would have been presented to Columbia ’s pilot upon completion of his first space mission—and placed them in the case. “This is where they belong,” he told her.

The Museum opened on the eighth anniversary of the accident—February 1, 2011. Sabine County’s commemoration committee produced a video, Of Good Courage , on the tenth anniversary of the accident. Both the museum and the video provide heartfelt evidence of the determination of the people of Sabine County to ensure that Columbia , her crew, and the remarkable accomplishments of the citizens of East Texas will not be forgotten.

In NASA’s Apollo, Challenger , and Columbia Lessons Learned Program, Mike Ciannilli sought opportunities to educate the broader public on the sacrifices made by astronauts and their families on behalf of the country’s space program. As part of his educational mandate, he worked quietly behind the scenes with the families of the Challenger and Columbia crews to obtain their consent to present representative debris from the two vehicles in an educational display at KSC, along with personal memorabilia from the fallen astronauts. Thanks to his efforts, part of Challenger ’s fuselage sidewall and Columbia ’s cockpit window frames were enshrined in 2015 in the “Forever Remembered” exhibit in the Atlantis building at the KSC Visitor Complex. They are the only artifacts from either vehicle viewable by the general public. [3] A few other pieces of Columbia debris are in display cases in administrative buildings at NASA Centers. For example, the crew hatch window is in the KSC Headquarters Building, and the OEX recorder is at JSC. These locations are not typically accessible to the general public, however. Mike Ciannilli was instrumental in obtaining approval to exhibit the hatch and hatch cover from the Apollo 1 spacecraft, which can be seen at KSC’s Apollo/Saturn V Visitors Center.

Pat Adkins now volunteers as a docent in the Atlantis building. When the exhibit opened, Adkins was somewhat startled to see the frames on display, still bearing embedded bits of the dried mud and grass from when he retrieved one of them in Sabine County.

In quiet times, he finds himself at the exhibit, reflecting on his experiences in East Texas after the accident. “It’s not a tourist attraction. It’s a memorial. People need to understand that there is a cost of doing what we did and what we’re going to continue to do. The public needs to see that there are people out there doing these things—not only for themselves, but also for their country—and it’s a good thing. This is a reminder that sometimes it’s hard.”

What did the participants throughout this mammoth undertaking learn about themselves, their communities, and their country as a result of their role in bringing Columbia home? And what should Americans in general take from this moment in our history?

Astronaut Jerry Ross said, “First and foremost, people need to understand the greatness of the United States of America and its citizens. The outpouring of support and prayers we received was tremendous. Second, the United States has an incredible wealth of capabilities. To see the energy and expertise and materials and technical capabilities that descended on Lufkin within hours of the accident was so reassuring. Finally, there were no ulterior motives. Every individual was there to do what they could to get the country’s space program flying again.”

Local communities proved the usefulness of the incident command system. I suspect that most Americans are not aware their community leaders have been trained in this powerful process for dealing with disasters, both natural and man-made. In Texas, every county judge is required to attend a three-day class on the system, as are most firefighters and law enforcement personnel.

Mark Allen was the logistics lead on the ICS team headquartered in Hemphill during the recovery. He is now county judge of Jasper County. He said, “The training’s important, but it’s more than just checking off that box. It’s the network you build through exercising and training and working together. All of us from the local counties have banded together on different incidents, and we’ve learned to trust each other’s judgment. That’s real important in a critical situation where it’s high stress, no sleep, and lots of coffee, and you’re making it up as you go along. You’ve got a structure and a whole bunch of other people that you know that can do this.”

The disaster provided the local communities an opportunity to be their best—to demonstrate how their leaders and citizens could step up when their country needed them most. “If people couldn’t do one thing, they’d find something else to do that would help out. Everybody did it as a team, and that was the reason for success,” said Greg Cohrs.

FEMA’s Scott Wells said, “The shuttle disaster is a great case study on how the whole community works together to accomplish something. The president’s 2010 national security strategy was that the Government can’t do it all alone anymore. The threats that face the nation are so big that it’s going to take the whole community—local, individuals, volunteer organizations, states, Federal government—everybody. That is starting to take traction now.”

As Jerry Ross said, another key to success was that everyone operated without personal agendas. More than 130 agencies and more than 300 volunteer groups and private organizations worked together on the recovery. While we may think of agencies as faceless entities, they are in fact composed of everyday people who are trying to do their best. Rather than carving out their own professional turf, personnel in the Columbia aftermath concentrated on how they could bring their agencies’ resources and expertise to bear to help solve problems and get things done.