LI to Outer Space: One Cadet’s Journey
By Bryn Nelson, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.
Jul. 15–Mark Kelly was only 2 when the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy’s first NASA astronaut died in a plane crash a few months before his scheduled mission.
Academy graduate Elliot See Jr. never fulfilled his dream as a command pilot for the Gemini IX spacecraft in 1966. But 40 years later, the pride and joy of the Kings Point academy is soaring as former midshipman Kelly wraps up his second stint as a NASA space shuttle pilot, this time aboard the Discovery.
Cmdr. Robert Safarik, who retired last year as the academy’s commandant of midshipmen, described Kelly as “the strong, silent type — just a natural inclination toward leadership and you knew he was going someplace.”
A balding and mustached father of two who calls West Orange, N.J., home, Kelly graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy in 1986 and was later deployed twice to the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, flying 39 combat missions. In 1994, he received his master’s in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Two years later, both he and his twin, Scott, were selected as NASA astronauts — a first for the space agency.
(History was likely made again last Saturday, when Kelly and Discovery crewmates awoke to ABBA’s “I Have A Dream,” chosen by the pilot’s two preteen daughters.)
Kelly has returned several times to his alma mater, where he delivered a very well-received lecture last year.
“Everybody kind of fell in love with the guy,” Safarik said. “He’s somebody you’re just so proud to have as a graduate.”
Capt. Eric Wallischeck was a first classman, or senior, when Kelly was a plebe, or freshman. Now the academy’s director of waterfront activities, Wallischeck got to know his fellow midshipman after Kelly was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1996.
“I’ve always been a space buff,” said Wallischeck in a telephone interview from his office, with sounds of NASA TV in the background. He admitted that he had been listening to coverage of the Discovery mission “pretty much every day.”
For Kelly’s first mission, on the Endeavour shuttle in December 2001, Wallischeck led a delegation from the academy to view the launch at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and to lay a wreath in honor of academy alumnus See at the center’s astronaut memorial.
During a landing attempt on Feb. 28, 1966, a T-38 training jet See was piloting crashed into the Gemini IX assembly building at the McDonnell Aircraft plant in St. Louis, killing him and fellow astronaut Charlie Bassett, and reshuffling crew assignments for all subsequent Gemini missions.
Bad weather and a glitch on the space station delayed the Endeavour’s 2001 liftoff, preventing the academy delegation from seeing it in person. Even so, Kelly became the first midshipman in space and Wallischeck proudly cited his 1986 yearbook quote: “Destiny is not a matter of chance, but a matter of choice.”
“He certainly has lived up to that,” Wallischeck said, as the sounds of Discovery’s mission continued to fill his office.
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Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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