wfn.org | Small Texas town remembers Columbia disaster

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Jan. 27, 2004	News media contact: Kathy Gilbert7(615)742-54707Nashville,
Tenn. 7 E-mail: newsdesk@umcom.org 7 ALL{026}

HEMPHILL, Texas (UMNS) - The quiet skies over this small Texas town exploded
one year ago when the space shuttle Columbia crashed, killing all seven
astronauts on board.

A committee is planning a $5 million memorial on the site where a 500-pound
chunk of the shuttle's nose cone was found. The people of Hemphill feel a
special tie to the tragedy because most of the astronauts' remains were found
in that area.

Bob Morgan, chief of the Six Mile Volunteer Fire Department, was sitting in
his living room when he heard the crash on Feb. 1, 2003.

"Suddenly the house starting shaking," he says, "and there was a tremendous
roaring noise."

Morgan, a retired criminal investigator for the Internal Revenue Service and
a member of First (Hemphill) United Methodist Church, says when he and other
firefighters initially began searching, they did not know it was the space
shuttle that had crashed.

Columbia fell apart just moments before its scheduled landing at Cape
Canaveral, Fla. The flight that began 16 days earlier ended in tragedy
because a small piece of foam breached the left wing of the shuttle in the
last seconds after liftoff. A 248-page report released by NASA said politics,
budgets, schedule pressure and managerial complacency all played roles in the
disaster.

Morgan remembers the search was exhausting and encompassed days of combing
through briars, dense woods and swamps in rain and sleet.

"I remember the second evening I came in and told my wife I'd never been that
tired since I played high-school football," he says. "It was almost an
excruciating pain by the time you got through with it."

Other members of First United Methodist Church came together to walk the
search lines and support the searchers.

"In doing that, they got to know each other in a different way that brought
them closer together," says the Rev. Sherry Crenshaw, pastor.

"I believe God calls us to live and work in community," she says. "And our
society is losing that. We live in little isolated houses rather than the
community as a whole."

No one on the ground was injured by falling parts of the shuttle because the
area is sparsely populated, she says.

"There were parts of the shuttle that were embedded in the soil, that hit
with such an impact they left little craters," she says. "Had this hit
someplace where there were cars or children playing or people laughing, there
would have been a horrific loss of life."

Sabine County Judge Jack Leath, a member of the memorial planning committee,
says graduate architect students from Texas A&M University are working on a
design. The black box data recorder that provided clues about the last
minutes of the flight was also found in Hemphill.

"This is where the mission ended for those astronauts," he says. "The
memorial committee sort of has a slogan: 'Their mission became our mission.'"

Crenshaw sees the experience as "the Lord's redemption" because something
tragic was turned into something that pulled a community together.

"We don't want our country to forget," she says. "Sometimes we take things
for granted. I think the shuttle falling apart means we won't take it for
granted the next time people risk their lives."

Morgan says he and his neighbors are working to bring closure to the
astronauts' families.

"Honoring life is what the community did," he says. "Those who walked the
lines or got up early in the morning to cook breakfast for the hundreds of
searchers developed a special bond."

His faith gave him strength during those days.

"It took a request of the Lord to give me the strength. You had to rely on
your faith almost constantly.

"Personally, I wasn't looking for parts of a crashed aircraft. I was looking
for human remains of heroes."
# # #
United Methodist News Service writer Kathy Gilbert wrote this report with
information provided by UMTV freelance producer John Gordon in Texas.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
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