Sunday, February 2, 2003
Disbelief gives way to sadness for local community
By IVONA LERMAN and SANDRA FREDERICK
NEWS-JOURNAL STAFF WRITERS
DAYTONA BEACH — Scott Krammer was filling in at a New Smyrna Beach fruit stand Saturday morning when he got a call he didn´t expect.
“‘Scott, we lost Columbia,’” Krammer said his father told him. His father called from Kennedy Space Center, where he works as an information technologist.
“He said the Space Center is very solemn and he´s shutting down the computer system.”
Krammer, 17, who was born 12 days before the Challenger explosion, was one of many locals distraught by the Columbia tragedy. Jews and Indians mourned fallen heroes. A teacher recalled an astronaut´s visit to her fourth-grade class. The father of two astronaut sons spoke of meeting Columbia crew members.
“Living in Florida,” Krammer said, “I guess we take the Space Center for granted and that nothing can go wrong. This is the kind of thing when it happens, you remember it. I will for the rest of my life.”
So will Connie Langston, a fourth-grade teacher at Walter A. Hurst Elementary School. Langston met astronaut Scott Horowitz when he came to her first-grade class in 2000. The class signed a shirt and astronauts took it with them into space. The shirt now hangs in her office. Horowitz was not on Columbia´s ill-fated mission.
Langston said she couldn´t believe what happened Saturday, especially after all the precautions NASA took.
“My heart feels like ice,” she said. “You feel like the whole bottom drops out of your life. I didn´t even know them, but I feel like I did.”
In the local Jewish community, emotions ran strong, for both the loss of American astronauts and Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut in space.
“When I first heard it, all the blood drained out of my body,” said Marylin Negrea of Ormond Beach. “It´s a horrible thing.”
For many members of the Jewish community, news of the tragedy came during Saturday Sabbath service. Rabbi Gary Perras of Temple Israel in Daytona Beach said one of his first thoughts was the hope that it´s not terrorist-related. Officials said later that no connection with terrorists had been found, but the notion itself disturbed Perras.
“Isn´t it a shame we live in the world where that´s our first response?” he asked. “But (in Israel) it´s always that way. There are so many tragedies. We´re averaging about 20 would-be terrorist attacks a day.”
Local residents with ties to India, home of astronaut Kalpana Chawla, were shocked by the news, too. At the Seven-Star Market on Mason Avenue in Daytona Beach, manager Tejash Patel said his parents called him Saturday from Gujarat district in northwest India.
“We are all very sad,” Patel said. “We were all very proud of the fact that an Indian and a woman from our country had gone up in space.“
The tragedy was even more personal for Richard Kelly, a father of twin astronauts Scott and Mark, who were both scheduled to go on shuttle missions later this year.
“Mark is in the search party in a helicopter,” Kelly said. “He knew them. Three of the astronauts on board were in his graduating class. I met them also.”
“We all know the young astronauts are at risk every time they go up in the shuttle,” said Kelly, with emotion in his voice. “It´s the price we pay to explore space and make things better on Earth.”
Staff Writer Lyda Longa contributed to this report.
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