Saturday, March 1, 2003
Man in running for space trip
By PATRICK WRIGHT
NEWS-JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
PALM COAST — NASA could select few more patriotic people for its first teacher in space than Palm Coast resident Jack Howell.
Howell, 59, talks while wearing a tribute shirt to the recent Columbia shuttle tragedy. He has an autographed picture of Secretary of State Colin Powell to go with a Purple Heart he earned in Vietnam. He even graduated from the Navy´s famed Top Gun fighter pilot school.
Howell said he had one desire if he ever flew in a space shuttle. “To visually see the sunset and sunrise on earth from space,” Howell said.
Howell, a retired colonel in the United States Marine Corps. and ROTC teacher at Jean Ribault High School in Jacksonville, is one of 4,000 people nominated to be NASA´s first educator in space. The contest is open to anyone who teaches kindergarten through grade 12 in the United States.
Christa McAuliffe was selected to be the first educator in space. McAuliffe, and six other astronauts, died when the Challenger shuttle exploded after take off in 1986.
Howell´s nomination comes from his work in aerospace education. He runs aviation classes at Jean Ribault that help students get their pilot´s license and introduce them to careers in aviation. His work earned Howell the 2002 Christa McAuliffe Award, the highest national award in aviation education, from the Aerospace Education Foundation.
He also won an aviation education award from the Air Force.
He said the reason his classes are successful is because he gets good students.
“These are for kids who are serious,” Howell said.
In Howell´s class, students combine classroom work with time behind the wheel of a Cessna 172. The student flight time is paid for through local aviation grants. His main goal is to introduce students to possible careers in aviation.
Howell said commercial airline pilots sometimes make as much as $250,000 for as little as 120 hours of work per year. But he has another purpose in teaching the classes.
“I´m there to help them make the right choices for the right reasons and make them better citizens,” Howell said.
Howell spent 25 years in the military before becoming a teacher 12 years ago. He said teaching could be tough, but it was the best choice for him.
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