California services honor astronauts

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press Monday, February 3, 2003.
By RACHEL KONRAD
Associated Press Writer

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SUNNYVALE - About 100 people gathered Sunday at a local temple in business suits and saris to remember one of their own - the first Indian-born woman in space.
Kalpana Chawla, 41, was one of seven astronauts killed Saturday when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas, scattering debris across hundreds of square miles.

Mourners chanted, sang and burned candles and incense at the memorial, one of several across California on Sunday to remember Chawla, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Laurel Clark, Rick Husband, William McCool and Ilan Ramon.

Atulya Sarin, now a Santa Clara University professor of finance, was Chawla's high school classmate in Karnal, India, a small, industrial town near Delhi.

"The thing that strikes me is every conversation with her was fairly stimulating, not just which movie did you see lately," he said outside the strip mall temple, which doubles as a community center. "Once she explained to me, when I was going through a rough patch, an analogy to rock climbing: 'Focus on the next step, not on the ultimate goal.' That's how she was. She pushed herself every step of the way … For her, every step was a great achievement."

The daughter of a wealthy factory-owning family, Chawla left India in the early 1980s to study engineering in the United States. Chawla married Jean-Pierre Harrison in 1984 and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where they lived and worked for about five years - she as a NASA contractor and he as a flying instructor in Palo Alto.

Chawla left the Bay Area after she was accepted into NASA's space program in 1994.

"These people belong to different countries and religions and ethnicities," center director Raj Bhanot said. "But they all had one goal, one common mission - to be the best."

Vishvaroop Agarwal, 35, of Redwood City didn't know Chawla, but said he also came to the United States to further his education.

"She is a great role model and example for the Indian community, but also for everyone," he said. "For her to have become an astronaut, it was an amazing feat. Hopefully, she will give us all the strength and courage to imitate her, to have a dream and to have confidence in ourselves."

Unity also was a theme at Adat Shalom in West Los Angeles, where about 200 people said prayers, lighted candles and observed a moment of silence for Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon and the six others who perished aboard Columbia.

The memorial service ended with the singing of the Israeli national anthem and "America the Beautiful."

"Black and white, man and woman, Jew and Arab, Hispanic and Indian. Does it matter when we go up in space?" asked Rabbi Michael Resnick. "Suddenly, there, we become colorblind."

Two young men standing in the back of the temple waved two flags - one American, one Israeli.

"We brought them to symbolize unity and to symbolize that we're still standing," said Dov Dalin, 19, an Israeli resident visiting his parents.

He said Ramon was a hero to Israel and the United States because he had bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981.

"If he had not bombed that, where would we be today with Saddam Hussein?" Dalin said.

John Gordon, 66, of Los Angeleslighted a candle in honor of Ramon and described how he met the air force pilot in 2000 at a Los Angeles ceremony celebrating his selection as Israel's first astronaut.

"One of the saddest parts is that he was not the first Jew (in space)," he said after the service. "The first perished in the Challenger disaster. … I think in his heart he was trying to complete something that Judith Resnik could not."

The seven astronauts also were remembered at the Baha'i Center in Los Angeles with songs, prayers and tributes.

"We're here to honor those that were lost and to remember their loved ones who are going through such pain and agony," said Jamie Heath, a church member who led the service for some 300 others.

"We're here to recognize them, remember them," he said.

The service began with a moment of silence, and the mood was sober yet hopeful as church members celebrated the courage of the astronauts and sought to offer hope to their survivors and to their own community.

Readings from the Koran, the Bible, Buddhism and Hinduism were interspersed with songs and prayers. The Baha'i faith teaches that all religions come from God and offer the same truth.

"It is in times like these that we come together to seek the comfort and solace of community prayer," said Randolph Dobbs, secretary of the spiritual assembly of the Baha'is in Los Angeles.