by June Scobee Rodgers

Dick Scobee “flying” toy airplane

Dick’s dream to fly, to touch the sky with “laughter-silvered wings,” began as early as the time he could talk and ask his mother for a wind-up toy airplane he saw in the Sears and Roebuck catalog. By age three, he was ready to fly solo. At Christmas, his Aunt Tene gave him a toy riding plane with pedals much like a tricycle. It was his favorite toy, his parents told me, and it brought him hours of joy and merriment until he wore out the wheels from use. Then his dad made the plane into a swing and hung it from a tall cherry tree in their backyard. Soaring higher, he was a little closer to the sky where his child-sized hand could reach toward his star, but this small-town country boy was still far from ever flying the real thing.

During his teenage years, Dick’s sights were still turned toward the heavens, to the stars. The love of airplanes and dreams of flying were his strongest motivation throughout his school years. Whether it was sketching airplanes on his notebook paper during class time, or building plastic and wooden models after school to hang on string from his bedroom ceiling, it was his favorite pastime. When he took me (his young bride) to his home to introduce me to his parents, he wanted me to see first his collection of airplane models, even before any prized high school trophies.

Dick’s dream to fly airplanes went unfulfilled for years. He met obstacles at every turn. When he graduated from high school, he wanted to attend a military academy, but that dream was beyond his reach. A high school counselor told him he didn’t have what it took to apply for an academy, meaning that he didn’t know a senator personally who could recommend him. He joined the Air Force as an airplane mechanic, but his dream to fly went undaunted.

Dick Scobee with NASA F-111

His persistence paid off. His dream was finally realized when, after graduating from night school at San Antonio Community College and receiving a degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Arizona, he was accepted to pilot training at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, in 1965. In the next twenty years, he flew over forty-five types of aircraft and logged more than 6,500 hours of flying time as an Air Force officer, a combat pilot, a test pilot, and a NASA astronaut pilot.

Dick’s dream to fly extended even into space. He flew the small experimental X-24B aircraft and the giant 747 shuttle carrier that ferried the spacecraft across the country. As pilot of the Challenger in 1984, he guided the spacecraft into orbit so the crew members could repair a broken Solar Max satellite. A mechanic at heart, he encouraged his fellow crew members to show up at an in-flight press conference in T-shirts that read “ACE SATELLITE REPAIR CO.”
When he mailed his application to NASA to apply for the position of astronaut pilot, he wrote the following paragraph in response to a question about why he wanted to be selected:

Why do I want to become an astronaut? Probably, my most compelling reasons for wanting to become an astronaut are a desire to extend and use the engineering and test pilot experience I’ve gained, to hopefully aid in the success of the space program, and for my own satisfaction in realizing a very longstanding personal ambition. I thoroughly enjoy being a test pilot and performing flight related tasks, and the astronaut program is, to me, a logical extension of that function into new frontiers. It is my belief that by the manned exploration and exploitation of the potentials of space and the planets, we satisfy a basic need of mankind to explore and probe the unknown, and I simply want to be an integral part of that exploration.

McCall art of Research Flight Center at Edwards AFB, California. Dick Scobee flew several of these planes.

Years earlier, as teenagers on a date (we didn’t have much spending money), we parked at the end of airport runways to watch planes take off and land. Dick taught me about aerodynamics, all about wings and airfoils and how they provided lift. We studied the stars and talked about astronomy, and together we dreamed of the day when he would fly and I would teach school. All we had were our dreams . . . poor country kids with big dreams.
Later when those dreams became a reality and I was teaching high school and college, Dick traveled on field trips with me or helped me to create a simulation to aid my students’ understanding of science. Once we created homemade rockets to teach a physics principle.
That cold January morning in 1986, we watched and waited for the scientific principles to be carried out, but this time it was for real with people I knew and loved, sitting atop a real rocket-powered space shuttle. The ultimate dream had come true: Dick Scobee was the commander of flight 51-L, the educational mission.

June Scobee Rodgers is the author of "Silver Linings." To order, go to the online bookpage or call 1-800-747-3016.

 

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