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| COLLECTING REMNANTS: Astronauts Greg Johnson (left) and Mark Kelly leave a home Saturday near Nacogdoches with what is presumed to be a piece of debris from the space shuttle Columbia. (Staff Photo By D.J. Peters) |
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| COLLECTING REMNANTS: Astronauts Greg Johnson (left) and Mark Kelly leave a home Saturday near Nacogdoches with what is presumed to be a piece of debris from the space shuttle Columbia. (Staff Photo By D.J. Peters) |
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LOST SHUTTLE MEMBER |
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| Like most in Eastern Texas, Tylerite Billie Ruether tried to phone her son after hearing of the space shuttle explosion. Only her call was more desperate than others. Her child is a NASA astronaut. Ruether had no luck reaching son James Reilly II in Houston, realizing he must be a part of the team searching for colleague and friend Michael Anderson. Instead, she sat and watched the television news, finding out the explosion she heard during her early morning walk signaled the death of people so close to Reilly. "It was just a real shock, something that you really don't expect to happen," Ruether said. "Things have been going so well." In fact, such a tragedy hadn't struck the program since 1986, some nine years before Reilly fulfilled his dream of becoming a part of the space program. Reilly got a bachelor's, master's and doctorate from the University of Texas at Dallas in geosciences before being recruited by NASA. He made his first adventure into space with Anderson in 1998 on the Endeavor mission with Space Station Mir, Ruether said. She holds dear the memories from that trip, when she and Anderson met before take-off. Ruether described Anderson as an enlightened man, outgoing and easy to talk to. She still has a videotape of him playing with Jell-O bubbles on the shuttle, she said. "Like Jim they had pursued a career and had managed to get what they were after," Ruether said. "It was something they had longed for and tried for and achieved." The elite group of men and women fulfilling the desire to go up in space is small and very close knit. And, they understand well the danger of pursuing space travel, she said. Reilly never talked to his parents specifically about those hazards, but Ruether recalls him speaking before an audience of students about the chance of an astronaut being involved in an accident as about 1 in 248 versus 1 in 2,000 for the average person. He was scheduled for another mission in October, a trip likely not to occur now because of the tragedy, Ruether said. When Reilly gets ready to go up again, his mother won't allow the dangers to overly concern her, she said. "I will be concerned, but I won't be negative about it," Ruether said. "Accidents happen everywhere and we just never know when or why." Angela Macias covers federal courts and state politics. She can be reached at 903.596.6291. e-mail: news@tylerpaper.com |
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