La Jolla Teacher Out of Race to Space

A La Jolla High School teacher’s lofty dreams of becoming the first private citizen in space thudded to Earth Monday when she learned she was not among 10 semifinalists still in the running for the honor.

“I cried and moped and took two hours to get my head back in shape,” Gloria McMillan said after hearing the disappointing news. “Then I asked myself, ‘Why are you crying? What is the tragedy in this? Nobody has died. A fantastic person will be chosen to represent teachers in space and if you’re not that person, well that’s just too bad.’ ”

English teacher McMillan, 41, had another source of consolation. She leaves today for a six-week tour of India, where she will study that country’s literary traditions under a prestigious Fulbright scholarship. It’s not space but it’s not exactly a routine excursion, either.

“I’m about to embark on a quest to study one of the oldest cultures in the world, and that helped soothe the disappointment considerably,” McMillan said Monday in a telephone interview from New York. She called the competition among teachers hoping to blast into orbit aboard the space shuttle Challenger next year “an exhilarating and exhausting experience, the greatest honor of my lifetime.”

A stargazer since youth, McMillan had hoped to establish an “interactive classroom” aboard the shuttle--teaching classes via satellite to kids watching on television, and using special telephone hookups to answer questions from her pupils.

In April, McMillan was chosen from among 930 applicants statewide to be one of California’s two candidates for the highly coveted mission. William Dillon, 47, who teaches problem children at a San Bruno high school, was the other state finalist. Dillon, a pilot, also was cut from the competition.

Last week, the 113 candidates were in Washington for workshops and interviews by a judging panel composed of astronauts, politicians, educators, a physicist and a NASA official.

McMillan described the week as “action-packed” and “a great opportunity to get to know some exceptional people who were tough competitors.”

Would she do anything differently if given another shot at the competition?

“I probably could have been a bit more assertive in the interviews, but who knows?” she said. “Before the decision, all of us agreed that if we weren’t one of the lucky 10, we would definitely be No. 11. I was probably No. 11, and I’m sure there are a lot of other No. 11s out there right now.”

In any event, McMillan isn’t one to fret about what might have been. When she returns from India, she will dig into “the 80 pounds of books, films, slides, computer programs” and other materials provided to each candidate by NASA. Also planned are articles on a favorite theme--”space as an extension of man’s historic quest to explore the unknown.”

The 10 finalists will travel next week to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for testing and further evaluation, said Barbara Selby, a NASA spokeswoman in Washington. Then the candidates return to the Capitol for further interviews. The lucky teacher and an alternate will be named by the end of the month, Selby said, then begin training for the Jan. 22 flight.

The finalists are Kathleen Beres, representing Maryland; Robert Foerster, from Indiana; Judith Garcia from Virginia; Peggy Lathlaen from Texas; David Marquart and Barbara Morgan from Idaho; Sharon McAuliffe from New Hampshire; Michael Metcalf from Vermont; Richard Methia from Massachusetts, and Niki Wenger from West Virginia.