Tragedy rains down on East Texas Alumni

Nacogdoches, or “Naco-Nowhere,” as one Alum says it is known, is one of the towns in East Texas where debris from the space shuttle Columbia fell. It also is home to a number of A&M-Commerce Alumni, many of whom work at Stephen F. Austin State University.

Rev. Ned Chipley (BS ’60) was in his study when he heard an explosive noise. “I saw the contrail and noticed the zigzag pattern. I thought it was highly unusual.” The next day would be Sunday, and Ned said the service at his church, New Hope Congregational Methodist, would take a different turn.
“We had planned sort of a fun day, Ugly Tie Day,” he said. “Men may still wear ties, but it won’t be a fun day.”
At right are a few of the photos that Ned took for the benefit of his fellow A&M-Commerce Alumni.

Following the rain of debris, Nacogdoches Alumni
experienced a deluge of media attention

Alumnus Ned Chipley, who took all the above photos,
points out a bit of shuttle debris.

Dr. Thomas Edward Caffery (Ed.D ’99) teaches in the Department of Human Services at SFA. That morning he heard what at first sounded like rolling thunder. “But it lasted a lot longer and was much more intense,” he said. “It shook our house for a good 20 seconds. I was thinking earthquake.
“We all walked out front. The youngest, our four year old, was crying. A lot of our neighbors were outside trying to figure out what was going on. Then we saw that trail in the sky. I knew it wasn’t normal, so I turned on the TV. They were just broadcasting that they had lost contact with the shuttle and then showed the flight path right over us. I just had this sinking feeling that it was the shuttle, and I thought, ‘Oh no, not again.’”
Dr. Caffery was 19 when the Challenger exploded in 1986. Now he wonders what lasting impression the Columbia disaster will leave with his 4- and 6-year-old children.
“I don’t know how much the six year old understands,” he said. “After I drove around town to see some of the debris and got home, he asked me, ‘Did you see it?’” Apparently his son expected him to find the shuttle somewhere still intact.

Janice & Kenneth (BS ’70) Beck were at ET until 1970. When Janice heard about the shuttle and that there was debris downtown, Janice drove to see. As she went by SFA she saw a group of young people standing in the middle of University Drive. “I parked at the Dairy Queen and walked across the street. There was a piece of circuit board, it looked like, probably five by six inches. We were standing there talking about it—nobody was touching it—while they were waiting for someone from the city’s emergency management team to come and take charge of it. While we were talking, some lady in a blue Volkswagen drove up and stopped in the street. She had a couple of kids in the car with her, it looked like. She had a plastic bag over one hand, and she ran up to the piece and picked it up with that plastic bag, then whipped the bag inside out to cover the piece and ran back to her car. We just stood there wondering what in the world … and finally asked who she was. She said ‘None of your business!’ One of the students had a digital camera and took a picture of her license plate. Sure enough, that night we saw on eBay that people were selling shuttle debris. EBay had disconnected the link, thank goodness, but somebody trying to make money off of this really makes me mad.” (Janice would later learn the rest of the story: A local woman was arrested and later indicted on federal charges after officials followed the lead provided by the photo.) The day of the Columbia breakup, Janice also learned that a manager at the Nacogdoches airport had his own run-in with debris. “He had heard about the shuttle exploding and that NASA people were coming in, so he went to the airport to wait for them. When he got there, he was disturbed to see something on the runway. Without even thinking about what it was, he went down there and moved it out of the way!”

It was a few minutes after 8 and the Bowmans, James (MBA ’63) and Brenda Polson Bowman (MS ’67), were watching for the shuttle landing on CNN when they felt their brick home tremble and heard a rumble that made them think: tornado. James said, “I bet it’s the shuttle.” They ran outside where in the west they saw the vapor trail coming in fairly straight but becoming twisted and fractured in the east. “We knew that spiraling didn’t look good,” James said, “and a few minutes later CNN said they’d lost contact.”

After a morning of practice on their Easter musical, music minister David Lloyd Campbell (BMEd ’65) dismissed his choir for a lunch break. As they emerged onto the church parking lot, they noticed it was covered with police officers. It turns out that the church lot was littered with bits of debris. The piece he saw, David said, was “about four inches square with what looked like hard rubber insulation.” One of his choir members had told him that her husband had gone outside that morning for the newspaper and had picked it debris before he heard not to.

Joe Edward Adams, who last attended ET in 1978, was walking his dog that morning. “It was a real odd roar—like a bunch of small sonic booms. I looked up in the sky and saw a vapor trail, but it didn’t look like it should. The roar went on, and I could feel it vibrating through my shoes. I had no idea what had happened for 15 or 20 minutes. …Later I saw a piece of [the shuttle]. It was kind of like a large bolt with no threads. It looked odd, just laying out there in the street.”

Distinguished Alumnus Gary McCollum (BS ‘62, MS ‘63) works at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Pride asked him to offer a few words.

Photo courtesy of Johnson Space Center/jsc2003e04037

It’s March 6—a full month since the crew of STS-107 perished in an extraordinary catastrophe during their landing attempt from Earth’s orbit over the skies of East Texas.
The flags here at the Johnson Space Center are still at half-staff; the remembrances, such as flowers, the personal signs to the crewmembers, the Teddy bears, the multi-colored balloons, and the flags that were placed at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center entrance outside the main gate are still there. An emotional outpouring of sympathy has been evident towards the families and friends, both by NASA’s efforts to provide counseling to their employees and an opportunity to express themselves in the otherwise “Hall of Fame” which is the hallway from our parking lot to the main elevators in Bldg 4 South where the astronauts and most International Space Station employees have their

offices. Instead of the standard happy cartoons and return greetings with favorite memories of the air-to-ground quips from the crew, there are messages from employees and schoolchildren from the NASA/Clear Lake community expressing their feelings in this time of sorrow.
I knew two of the crew, Laurel Clark and David Brown, both medical doctors, for whom I had the utmost respect, as well as their dedicated profession. Both had been crew representatives at many of our payload meetings, and all of the crew were doing what they enjoyed the most out of life besides family—space exploration.
We have experienced loss of lives before with the Apollo 1 fire at the Kennedy Space Center during prelaunch testing, and the Challenger during launch, but none before now during landing. We shall miss them…

Gary McCollum, Operations Manager Mission Integration & Operations Office International Space Station