Resnik: Called to ‘Touch the Sky’

Judith A. Resnik was a successful scientist who was called to “touch the sky” and followed that call, a rabbi who knew her as a child said Friday at a memorial service here.

Sally Ride and Kathleen Sullivan, the two other American women who have flown on shuttles, joined about 1,000 people at Temple Israel to honor Resnik, who died Tuesday with six crew mates when the shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff.

“Judy heard an inner voice challenging her to climb higher,” Rabbi Abraham Feffer said. “She heard a call to fly--to touch the sky. In that, she excelled.”

In the second row, Dr. Marvin Resnik, the astronaut’s father, nodded. Her brother, Charles, sat next to his father. Sarah Belfer, her mother, was consoled in a sixth row seat by relatives. Both parents are remarried.

Resnik, 36, was a classical pianist who held bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering.

And, speaking here by telephone Friday with the Israeli Armed Forces Radio, Marvin Resnik descried the horror that he and the families of the six other shuttle crew members experienced as they watched the Challenger explode over Cape Canaveral, Fla., Tuesday.

“I was there (with the families) on the roof of the Vehicle Assembly Building Operations Control,” he said. “I was taking pictures at the time . . . and the solid fuel rockets exploded.

“We saw them fall into the water, but nothing else came down. I saw how she died . . . . Oh, my God. A little girl said: ‘Daddy, daddy, you promised you would never get hurt.’

“They screamed, the children, screamed and cried. It was so hard for the astronauts’ families,” Resnik said.