Chasing Space Read online

  “I will never give up on you,” Goldin wrote on the yellow legal pad, and he handed me a photo of the Eagle’s Nest Nebula, perhaps the most iconic image showing the beauty of space. A young cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, it derives its name from its resemblance to an eagle. The Pillars of Creation remains one of the most recognizable regions of space. The Hubble Space Telescope captured the cluster of stars and gas in a memorable photograph that features three mounds that resemble stalagmites. Estimated to be more than five million years old, these stars have inspired countless astronauts to go to space.

  I was not one of them. While I had a passion for doing many things, my goals hadn’t included exploring the cosmos. The universe pulled me there. I somewhat serendipitously ended up at NASA because of a tenacious recruiter. I never imagined space travel until the possibility was presented to me. Just hearing the words that I would make a good astronaut changed me. Getting to my ultimate goal of orbiting the Earth involved a process of mastering many challenges, which now included recovering as fast as I could.

  • • •

  One of the first things an astronaut trainee does is select a classmate to function as crew support in the event of a medical emergency such as mine, and I had chosen Garrett Reisman for the job. Garrett would eventually clock 107 days in space over one shuttle mission and one long-duration flight on the International Space Station. But for the time being, he was my link to NASA and the rest of the world. The moment I was pulled from the pool, Garrett sprang into action. He kept in touch with my folks in Lynchburg, stood at the ready to make sure I understood the tests being administered, and brought me clothes and supplies from my house.

  Before long an inquiry was in full swing, led by astronaut and flight surgeon David Brown, who was now in charge of my “mishap” investigation. Dr. Jon Clark was the liaison for the Flight Medicine Clinic. NASA protocol ensures at least one astronaut takes part when there are any problems involving another astronaut, and I was happy the two of them were assigned to my case. Both men were considered examples of NASA’s finest flight surgeons. From my hospital bed that day I would never have believed that only two years later, on February 1, 2003, David and six other friends would lose their lives when space shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas.

  Jon was particularly dedicated to seeing me fly again and had researched new procedures for restoring sudden hearing loss. One promising experiment involved injecting a steroid into the middle ear. Jon said the Army was having success using this method to treat sudden hearing loss from acoustic trauma on the target range and battlefield, and he thought I should consider being part of the trial. But Dr. Alford would have none of it. Intent on ensuring no further harm was done to my hearing, he would not approve any experimental procedures.

  Despite my doctors’ reservations, I received a steady stream of visitors over the next few weeks as I endured countless procedures and prayed for a miracle. One man who stopped by was Willie McCool, the shuttle pilot who would eventually perish at the helm of the Columbia. I still have a drawing from one of his sons, Cameron, that shows me flying out of the hospital with praying hands. To this day that picture serves as a reminder of my old friend.

  Many of my visitors spoke optimistically, but I had become a skilled reader of faces. I could tell that most of my fellow astronauts had little hope that I would ever fly in space.

  The most notable example was a decorated Navy fighter pilot and NASA astronaut who flew on three shuttle flights and was commander on one. He was an exceptional flyer who graduated first in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy and received nearly every award possible. He knew how the agency worked. Angry that NASA had injured one of its own, he wrote his words out carefully but with brutal honesty. He told me he saw no chance I would ever fly in space. His advice? File a lawsuit against the agency and try to get paid for the time I had already invested. Then, he said, write a tell-all book about it. I told him I would think about it, but I knew I wouldn’t. I was far from ready to give up.

  It wasn’t until much later that I learned all the rumors that circulated throughout NASA about what had happened that day at the pool. Despite the abundance of advanced degrees and even Nobel laureates who work at NASA, the agency’s rumor mill isn’t always accurate. Some people surmised that I had simply passed out. Woodrow Whitlow, a buddy from NASA Langley who had gone on to be the director of NASA Glenn Research Center and later associate administrator for Mission Support at NASA headquarters, was at a technology convention in Las Vegas at the time of the accident. “Right away there were rumors about what might have happened,” he told me much later. He believed I had had a stroke, which was a prevalent scenario making the rounds. The craziest rumor floating around after the incident claimed I had died underwater but mysteriously came back to life when I was brought to the surface.

  • • •

  From the time I was accepted into the Astronaut Corps three years before, everybody seemed convinced that I had what it would take. I was athletic and muscular, and had a graduate degree in engineering. I was smart and good in school but not great, though when faced with certain tasks that provided just the right kind of challenge, I mastered them. I was a quick study, agile, and unflappable—some would say fearless. But would that be enough? Now I was laid up in a hospital bed unable to hear a bomb drop.

  I remember one evening watching Good Will Hunting. Matt Damon plays the title character, a brilliant night janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who solves a nearly impossible equation on a blackboard in the math department. The soundtrack is a melodically beautiful instrumental piece by Danny Elfman that to this day I associate with the gratifying sense of the janitor’s accomplishment. The scene has inspired me in the past, but now I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t hear the music. I slammed the laptop shut and started to cry. What upset me the most was the possibility that I might never again hear Prince’s “Purple Rain,” Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” or Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” Space travel was an anticipated thrill, but music had always been an important part of my life. I didn’t want to imagine living without it.

  Still, this was not the first challenge I had encountered in my journey to space. In the thirty-four years before I was selected to become an astronaut, I experienced my share of setbacks and failure. Each time I stumbled, I got back up and tried again. I never gave up, and through each challenge I became better equipped for the next. So, with all the faith and prayers I could muster, I remained optimistic that I would someday hear a concerto while floating in space.

  2

  Vision, Grit, and Lynchburg

  I grew up wanting to be Arthur Ashe. His triumphs on the tennis court were the stuff of sports legend. The first black player ever selected for the U.S. Davis Cup team (he eventually became captain), the first black man to win the U.S. Open, and the first to win Wimbledon, he paved the way for subsequent grand slam champions such as Yannick Noah and the Williams sisters. But he wasn’t just one of the greatest athletes of his era. He was also an author, scholar, and activist. On and off the court, Ashe was celebrated for his brilliance, toughness, and strength of character.

  The trajectory of Ashe’s budding reputation as a tennis player got a considerable boost in the summer of 1953, when he left his home in Richmond to stay in Lynchburg, Virginia. He moved into the Pierce Street home of Dr. Robert Walter “Whirlwind” Johnson, a renowned tennis coach and also the first African American physician to work at Lynchburg General Hospital, where I was born. Five years before, Dr. Johnson had coached the legendary Althea Gibson on Pierce Street after hearing about her victories at the American Tennis Association championships.

  Ashe practiced with Johnson every summer until 1960. His mentor taught him much more than the fundamentals of the game, infusing in him the sportsmanship, composure, and grace that would earn Ashe the respect and admiration of millions of tennis fans, including my dad. Ashe was a gentleman and a champion, and I wanted to be just like him.
r />   My family lived on Pierce Street for a few years in the late 1960s, having moved there from an apartment owned by Dr. Johnson on Fifth Street. I never got to meet Arthur Ashe when I was a kid growing up in the neighborhood. By that time, Ashe was far from Lynchburg and well on his way to becoming a tennis icon. In fact, it would be many decades later when I realized the powerful legacy of Pierce Street and its role not just in creating great tennis players, but also in shaping some of the most influential African American voices of the last century.

  Just a few blocks from Dr. Johnson’s was the home of Anne Spencer. She was a poet and a civil rights activist at the vanguard of the Harlem Renaissance exploding up north in the early part of the twentieth century. Over the years, George Washington Carver, W. E. B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and other political and literary personalities all visited her Pierce Street home to help further the cause. The Lynchburg chapter of the NAACP was founded in her living room.

  Anne raised three children in that house—Bethel, Alroy, and Chauncey, who grew up to become a black pilot who helped create opportunities for generations of black airmen. In 1939, he and his buddy, Dale White, climbed into an aging Lincoln-Page biplane they dubbed Old Faithful and made a ten-city tour that ended in Washington, DC, gaining the attention of the media. Their newsworthy encounter with then senator Harry S. Truman on the steps of the Capitol prompted Truman to convince Congress to permit the training of black civilian airmen. He secured $3 million in public funds, the seed investment for the Tuskegee Airmen and the first step in opening aviation to African Americans.

  It wasn’t until I returned home after my shuttle missions that I learned how meaningful Chauncey Spencer and the other Pierce Street legends were to my life. Their accomplishments in sports, the arts, medicine, and aviation created a legacy that cleared a path for my success and that of many others. They changed the course of history by opening the skies to anyone with the determination to explore the unknown and advance our knowledge of the universe. In so many ways, they helped shape my future as a space explorer.

  But what was it about Dr. Johnson, Arthur Ashe, and Chauncey Spencer and his mother, Anne, that led them to persevere in the face of such long odds? And why do some people reach their potential despite the obstacles in their path while others just as talented do not?

  One school of thought maintains that success in the face of staggering odds requires a potent combination of self-control and “grit.” University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth describes it as the ability to sustain focus on a long-term goal, to keep at it. “Woody Allen once quipped that 80 percent of success in life is just showing up,” Dr. Duckworth said. “Well, it looks like grit is one thing that determines who shows up.” I would begin to hear a lot about this essential quality when I became head of NASA Education, but I was familiar with it before I knew it had a name. It’s the ability to keep working, day after day, toward some goal way out on the horizon. Summoning my own grit helped me rise from my Houston hospital bed, when it seemed I would never fly again, to see the vast reaches of the cosmos via the International Space Station. The roots of my determination extend all the way back to Pierce Street.

  From Pierce Street to Hilltop Drive

  Before I started elementary school, my parents decided to leave Pierce Street, moving across town to buy their first home in a community filled with educators, like them. For Deems and Gracie Melvin, the move to Hilltop Drive in Lynchburg’s Fort Hill neighborhood was no surprise. My parents were “strivers” in every sense of the word. They believed in discipline, hard work, and the Golden Rule. They treated people as they wanted to be treated. They lent a helping hand to their friends and neighbors and, as Christians, they understood the power of prayer and knew that it could change things for the good.

  Our family moved into a brick Cape Cod house across from Fire Station No. 3. The houses in the neighborhood had yards with lots of space, and our neighbors had each others’ backs. Being new to the area, my sister and I needed that support. At the time, school officials in Lynchburg were under pressure to integrate the public schools, and busing kids in and out of their respective neighborhoods to achieve racial parity was the controversial answer to decades of Jim Crow laws that locked blacks and whites into racially segregated schools. Fortunately, Cathy and I were able to stay at our local school, and our new friends and neighbors eventually felt like family.

  Many years passed before I understood what impact those neighbors had on my life. No matter where I went I was seldom far from someone who would discipline me if I stepped out of line. My parents were well known in the neighborhood and respected throughout town. As a result my sister and I never got away with anything. The parents shared an unspoken agreement. They understood they all had a stake in the successes and failures of the community’s most valuable asset: its kids.

  When I was in Mrs. Martin’s fourth-grade class, Brandon Miller and I were roughhousing in the classroom and knocked over a desk. Mrs. Martin was furious and dragged us to the principal’s office by our ears. She turned us over to Mrs. Carwile who gave both of us the kind of paddling I still remember to this day. But I knew that wasn’t the end of it. Mrs. Jones, the mother of my best friend, Butch, and also a teacher in the Lynchburg City Schools, had heard about it before I even walked through her door that afternoon. “Leland, come over here,” she said calmly from the kitchen. When I got there she sat me down and started in. “What in the world were you thinking, behaving like that in school? You know better.” Mrs. Jones was a second mother to me and I hated to disappoint her. The scolding I got from her that day hurt more than Mrs. Carwile’s spanking.

  But I knew the worst was yet to come—my father’s reaction. That evening I happened to answer the phone when Mrs. Carwile called to talk to my folks. Before my dad picked up the receiver, I made sure I was up in my room, far from the conversation. A few minutes later I heard his footsteps on the stairs. I imagined the size of the switch in his hand. I now realize how many people back then felt they had a stake in my future. Dad handed out the heavy discipline that day. However, in our house, my mother and father were a unified team—if we were in trouble with one, we were in trouble with both.

  My mother, Gracie, grew up on a farm in Halifax County, Virginia. As the oldest child, she had her share of chores, from feeding the chickens to milking the cows—doing whatever needed to be done. Her parents simply expected that she work hard to help the family, and she embodied that as my mother with her own family.

  My mother’s faith fueled her convictions. She was deeply involved in our church, Jackson Street United Methodist, and she made sure my sister, Cathy, and I were there every Sunday. At home, she was the supreme nurturer, sewing our clothes and cooking. In the spring and summer we grew our own vegetables, and in the fall we canned fruit in our kitchen. She made clothes for me and my sister that rivaled anything purchased off the rack. By example, she instilled in us the value not only of doing a job but of doing it well.

  Learning was also important to my mother. She would read to my sister and me every night. Books like The Little Engine That Could and Curious George were transformative and unlocked possibilities in my young mind. Curiosity and the “I think I can, I think I can” refrain from The Little Engine were instilled in me early and helped inspire my desire to achieve.

  My mother taught home economics at Linkhorne Middle School, the same place where my father taught language arts. Her students learned to sew and cook and to adopt the manners and etiquette that would prepare them for life in the South in the 1970s. For many of her female students, my mother was the only adult they trusted. Some of them were being raised by single mothers who were barely adults themselves.

  I don’t recall my parents ever telling us to study or pressuring us to get good grades; they simply expected us to be good and to work hard. Our parents had their lives, and Cathy and I had ours. Everyone was expected to carry their own load. They didn’t hover over us or badge
r us to make sure we got our homework in or studied for a big test. I didn’t always get A’s, but I always worked hard because that was the unspoken expectation.

  When I was about eight years old, my parents bought me a chemistry set—one of those age-inappropriate models that had the potential to do some real damage. The kind that was soon taken off the market. One afternoon I had mixed a concoction that burned a hole in the carpet and sent smoke throughout the house. My mother rushed into the room expecting to find me injured. Instead she found me sitting on the couch with a dumb grin on my face. Somehow, I had used the power of those clear liquids to unleash fire and brimstone in my house. How could that much power be contained in such a small amount of liquid? I had to find out.

  I had heard of people becoming scientists. My mom experimented with different ingredients every time she prepared a meal, but I never made the connection to a possible career—until that moment. Thanks to the explosive power of that concoction, my young mind was awash in imagination. I’m sure I got a spanking, and while I understand attitudes toward corporal punishment have changed since my childhood, I understood my mother had only my best interests in mind.

  Unfortunately, some people weren’t raised with those “Golden Rules” values my sister and I learned in our home. There were two boys in particular whom I will never forget. They were older than me. I thought they were good people. I was five years old, a naive, trusting youngster who thought he had found friends. So, when they coaxed me into their garage one afternoon I went willingly. I didn’t know their plans were to take advantage of me—sexually.

  I try to forget, to sweep the incident into the deep recesses of my mind. There’s a level of guilt and shame. Feeling like a sucker for allowing it to happen and regret for not fighting back hard enough to stop it. As much as I’d like to forget, there are always little reminders that bring those painful memories rushing back—a certain glance, white flaky paint, the smells of gasoline and fresh-cut grass.