
The Morning Call

For families, a mix of emotions

Special to the Tribune

In the countless hours of TV coverage since Saturday's space shuttle tragedy, one of the most often-asked questions has been: "Did the families of the astronauts know the danger their loved ones faced in space travel?"

Know? Most certainly. After the Challenger disaster in 1986, no astronaut family could avoid the knowledge that crewmembers risked their lives each time they climbed aboard that "butterfly strapped to a bullet."

Did they truly comprehend the danger? Probably, in the most abstract of ways. The tremendous rumble and shaking of the earth that the families, with their ringside seats, experience at launch so resembles an explosion that it is impossible not to fear, ever so briefly, disaster in those first moments of flight.

Did the families accept the danger--signing on, in the same way as their offspring, sibling, parent or spouse, for the potential consequences of heroism? Perhaps they did, but never easily, and never publicly.

I know this from personal experience. I watched my brother blast triumphantly into space six times and, then, float almost silently back to Earth for six perfect on-time landings.

Curt--Air Force Col. Curtis Brown--has spent almost 1,400 hours in space. He flew as a shuttle pilot on his first three missions, and commanded the crew on three others. In 1998, he took on his most high-profile role as the commander of the flight that returned Sen. John Glenn to space.

He last flew on the shuttle in December 1999, before retiring to become a pilot for American Airlines.

Only one astronaut has flown more missions than Curt. So, I suppose our family--my mother, nephew, sister and brother--is one of the most experienced astronaut families out there. But, believe me, the sixth time around was as thrilling as the first.

Being in a crew member's family during a shuttle launch is a bit like attending a very special camp, complete with bus trips, tours of the Kennedy Space Center, special briefings and short visits with the crew. The landings were always quieter affairs, less crowded and more relaxed as we gathered at the landing strip with binoculars, straining for the first glimpse of the shuttle drifting home.

For the Browns, the most memorable moments always came a couple of days before the launch, when we attended a private cookout with the crew and the other families. It was an intimate event--each crewmember is allowed just five guests--and the atmosphere was always giddy. The crew talked about the mission ahead and the thousands of hours they had spent preparing. They posed for pictures and took care of the last-minute, mundane details of life that everyone deals with in preparation for a 10-day trip.

These cookouts were not the place to discuss dangers, or to even think of them.

But the shadow was there. In 1992, on a balmy September night after barbecued chicken and ribs, the families of STS-47 said goodbye to our astronauts and boarded buses for the trip back to our hotel.

I found myself seated with a woman I had watched Curt and his commander, Robert "Hoot" Gibson, teasing mercilessly during dinner.

She was so clearly adored by the crew that I had to ask her connection to the flight. She told me her husband had been in the same astronaut class as Gibson. Then she leaned toward me and said, "Please don't tell your mother who I am. My husband was on the Challenger, but I don't want your mother to think about that." I was sitting with Lorna Onizuka, whose husband, Ellison Onizuka, died on the Challenger in 1986. This was the first launch she had attended since that day.

For me, Lorna Onizuka was the embodiment of a guardian angel, and when the launch went off without a hitch two days later, she was there with us cheering it on. A photographer from my hometown also was there, snapping photos for the local newspaper. She later sent me one of the pictures from that day, a shot of me staring upward, eyes shaded from the sun, smiling broadly--with tears pouring down my face.

The mix of emotions that astronauts' families experience is just that complex. It's all there: pride, love, exhilaration, fear. And fear is the weakest emotion of them all.

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