Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew

by Michael D. Leinbach

Ann Micklos spoke up, sharing something that Dave Brown had told her before the mission. “Dave said, ‘I want you to find the person that caused the accident and tell them I hold no animosity. I died doing what I loved.’”

The strength of the astronauts’ religious convictions also surprised Lane at first. Then he realized that if these people “strap a million pounds of dynamite to their butts for someone else to light, they’d better have mighty deep faith.”

His experience showed that the best way to get a team to embrace you in a disaster situation was to make yourself as helpful as possible. “Figure out who’s in charge by observing the scene. Then go up to that person and say, ‘What three things are biting you on the ass?’ And then you make it your goal to fix those three things. Then you’re part of the team.”

As the recovery team went into the woods from the road to find the astronaut’s remains, a white dog followed them, staying thirty or forty feet away. Sheriff Maddox assumed the dog belonged to the owner of the property. He worried about keeping the dog away from the crew members’ remains, but this turned out not to be an issue. The dog stopped and lay down near Maddox while Brother Fred Raney read his words beside the fallen astronaut. To Maddox’s surprise, the dog covered its head with its paws while Brother Fred led the prayer service. At the end of the service, the dog led the team out to the road. Then the dog went back into the woods and was not seen again. It did not belong to the property owner. No one knew whose it was or where it came from.

Wetherbee instructed the astronauts to be guided by an “Eight, Eight, Eight Rule” in recoveries: “Eight days from now, eight months from now, and eight years from now, we must be able to live with the consequences of the decisions that we will make in the field. Every decision must be based on our highest judgment using our greatest professionalism and human values.”

These really rough, hard-core, no-nonsense, work-hard people on the Native American fire crews would treat every piece they found with such reverence. It wasn’t an inanimate object; it was a very animate, very personal thing. They understand that everything around us is a living, breathing being that we cooperate with. It made me appreciate my heritage, what these people sacrifice, and how special this experience was to them. —John Herrington, the first Native American astronaut