Monday, February 3, 2003
Tragedy hits home in Brevard County
By RAY WEISS
NEWS-JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
MERRITT ISLAND — Ken Kalata´s tavern is a shrine to America´s space shuttle program.
Autographed photographs from astronauts and commemorative patches honoring their successful flights fill the walls inside the bar and grill appropriately named Shuttles. Located a mile from the South Gate, it is a popular place to grab a beer and a Columbia burger, named for what was the oldest of the four spacecraft.
Sunday at noon, Shuttles was empty.
“We usually have 10, 12 people in here by now,” Kalata said. “I think it will be very slow today. The mood yesterday was very somber. No one could believe what happened.”
That emotional hangover lingered Sunday throughout Brevard County, the home of the Kennedy Space Center, as residents tried to come to terms with the mysterious explosion of the Columbia that killed all seven astronauts.
Signs outside local businesses read: God Bless Our Seven Heroes; Our Prayers Are With Our Lost Friends; and You Will Never Be Forgotten.
Local reaction |
Charles and Laura Vrooman, who keep a boat at Cape Marina in nearby Port Canaveral, will always remember Feb. 1. Her birthday will never be the same.
“I had a feeling early in the morning that something was not going to be right,” she said.
A regular shuttle watcher, her husband also sensed something had gone wrong when he didn´t hear the shuttle´s signature sonic boom.
“If a shuttle doesn´t come in on time, there´s a problem, a serious problem,” he said.
Within an hour, the message on the marina´s outdoor sign had been changed and the flag was flying at half-staff. Gone was the happy birthday wish for his wife, replaced by a more somber: God Bless the Crew of Columbia.
“Yeah, it´s real solemn around here,” Vrooman said. “This is a space community. We have many friends assigned to the Columbia. We wonder what will happen to them now.”
Bill Parker, another boater at the marina, has worked in the space industry since 1963, currently overseeing the launches of Delta rockets. He said 17 years between shuttle crashes is an “enviable record,” given the complexity and the risky nature of space exploration.
“(NASA) should press ahead with their launch schedule, after making sure it´s not a generic problem. They don´t gain anything by waiting,” he said. “When airplanes crash, they investigate. If the problem is not specific to all, they don´t ground the entire fleet.”
Ray Gant, of Port Orange, is the field office manager for Johns Hopkins University´s applied physics laboratory, which does evaluations for naval space projects. He has worked on projects at the Cape since 1962, including the Apollo landings.
The Columbia crash for Gant brought back memories of the 1986 Challenger explosion at takeoff that he saw from his office and the 1967 Apollo 1 flash fire that killed three astronauts during a preflight test that occurred while he was inside the control center.
As much as anyone, Gant knows about the unpredictability and danger of space travel. Still, he is concerned about the potential economic impact the Columbia crash could have on the Cape Canaveral area, since so many jobs are tied to the space program.
“I think we´re going to see some people who won´t have jobs to do,” he said if the shuttle program is suspended for any length of time. “If people are laid off, they can´t afford to buy cars or go out to restaurants. There´s a domino effect. I hope things can be resolved quickly.”
An avid fisherman, John Krysiuk, 82, has vacationed in the Cape Canaveral area for 50 years. This year, he arrived the day after the Columbia crash.
He parked his station wagon on a bank overlooking Indian River Lagoon in Titusville. Out in the distance, directly across the calm water, loomed the shuttle´s landing strip and giant hanger.
“I saw the first one that landed,” he said of the Columbia´s maiden trip in 1981. “I was out there fishing.”
As the Connecticut visitor reminisced, other passersby stopped to take photographs or quietly gazed out at the place where the Columbia was supposed to land.
“It´s such a tragedy,” Krysiuk said, shaking his head. “Such a tragedy.”
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