NASA Speaker Helps Kids Face Tough Time

Donald M. Scott, a former teacher who earns a living at NASA by speaking to students, is far removed from space missions and the activities of astronauts.

But on Monday, the NASA educator found himself in front of more than two dozen seventh-graders at McPherson Magnet School in Orange who were eager to learn about the international space station, spacesuits and Scott’s reaction to Saturday’s loss of the space shuttle Columbia, which claimed the lives of its seven-member crew.

Twelve-year-old Jennifer Iadevaia asked the first question about the tragedy.

“What was going through your head when you heard about what happened?”

Hard to Fathom

Usually Scott is well-prepared for the full range of questions, eager to be peppered. But for those in the NASA family, even those whose mission is in front of a classroom, tragedies such as Saturday’s are tough to fathom.

“You know, I thought a lot about this since it happened,” said Scott, who’d arranged to visit the school long before the shuttle disaster. “But I have to tell you the truth, I don’t know, honestly.”

But what he did know, at least in his heart, he shared: “They died to get knowledge. They gave their lives so you would have more knowledge when you grew up.”

Then he added: “I hope you remember that, so the least you can do is learn the most you can.”

Iadevaia said she appreciated his answer. “It was the same thing I was thinking.”

Family Discussions

Iadevaia said she and her parents talked during the weekend about the shuttle disaster, hoping it would help them deal with the sorrow of such a public loss.

“It was out of the blue to me. Sometimes, I guess, things just don’t go right,” she said.

Richard Vargas, 13, said the loss of the crew “was horrible. Seven people died on a spaceship.”

But both Vargas and Iadevaia said the astronauts died doing something they believed in. Both said that, given the opportunity, they would be a part of the space program, perhaps astronauts.

Scott spent the day at McPherson, a K-8 school, talking to students during several assemblies.

“He was excellent,” Principal Tara Saraye said. “They just loved it. He gave the students background knowledge on space and flight.”

Scott also shared the importance of science and the fact that NASA astronauts attend a special school to learn laws of physics and understand such principles as orbits, velocity and momentum.

Education Is Utmost

Yet of all the things astronauts are interested in, education is utmost in their minds, Scott told the students. “They love education.”

Scott told a story about astronaut Scott Horowitz, who credits his sixth-grade teacher in Thousand Oaks because the teacher showed an interest in Horowitz’s early science aptitude.

Horowitz, who returned from a mission to fix the international space station in 2000, has kept a note the teacher wrote to him years ago.

“It said someday he would be an astronaut,” Scott said.