Rod & Sues Endeavor Flight Blog

One full week at our new home location....Lowes Creek Texas. This past week found us busy with visiting a local museum, helping Uncle Jerry build a deck around his trailer, getting in the routine of morning walks (trying to get some excercise) and working in some occasional fishing.

High Life.......

This past Thursday found us in Hemphill visiting the "Patricia Huffman Smith NASA Museum". In February 2003, Hemphill and its vicinity were one of the key search areas for wreckage from the Space Shuttle Columbia after it broke up over Texas. Search teams recovered some of the remains of the shuttle and crew members and the Orbiter Experiment Support System recorder (OEX) was found nearby.
A memorial has been erected in Hemphill commemorating the deceased Columbia astronauts. The memorial is located at the intersection of Hwy 87 North and Hwy 83 East.

The Museum opened February 1, 2011 commemorating the 8 year anniverssary of the disaster. The museum features the permanent "NASA Remembering Columbia" exhibit.
Patricia Huffman Smith was key in the location and construction of the facility. The museum shows a video that is post incident interviews with various community members. It captures the emotional effects of the tragedy to each individual. Even after these several years the video makes one realize how the community came together and supported each other and more importantly the strangers that were also now a part of their day to day activities and for a short time, members of the community.
The evening after the museum visit, we were setting around a camp fire with Larry and Sheila. These 2 folks are to be thanked for their many efforts in keeping the park neat and tidy. They have been in the area for 30+ years. We were talking about our visit and asking about their experiences. The morning of the incident (shortly after 8am) there was a loud sound that went on forever. It is hard to describe but Larry was very clear with the verbal reproduction of what he heard and the only thing that he could figure had happened was that the local natural gas high pressure pipe line had ruptured and had a continuous leak. He got very emotional and had to take a couple of minutes as he recalled his feelings about the fact that those astronauts lost their lives at that moment of break up. Sheila shared the bread making story which is a good example of how the locals came together to house and feed the thousands that were in the area carrying on the wreckage search that went on for several days. She was consistently mixing bread dough in her fifth wheel, after raising, the hundersds of loafs were spread through out the park to various campers ovens to be baked. The flour from the process had spread through out their home and took forever to cleanup. Very moving.