Local service held for shuttle victims

Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2003 | 9:54 a.m.

About 20 people attended an interdenominational service on Monday in memory of the seven astronauts who perished Saturday aboard the space shuttle Columbia.

The Jewish Federation of Las Vegas opened its doors to the community for praying, reflecting and lighting candles in a ceremony that echoed hundreds of services nationwide.

Leonard Stone, introducing the participants, said the memorial service honored the astronauts' bravery.

"This loss was an American loss, a Jewish loss, an international loss, a human loss," he said.

"We all mourn," said David Rowberry, director of the Las Vegas Institute of Religion on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus. "Death is not the end of life, but a continuation."

Memorial services are important to share grief with families who have lost loved ones, he said.

"While it is a memorial, it is also a celebration of life."

Local religious leaders read a short biography of each astronaut, including pilot William McCool, 41, whose parents Barent and Audrey McCool live in Las Vegas and teach at UNLV.

At Saturday's Rebel basketball game against Wyoming at the Thomas & Mack Center, the crowd of 16,700 observed a moment of silence in honor of the McCools and the astronauts, including Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, 48, a payload specialist.

The Rev. Steven Kalas of Christ Church Episcopal remembered Capt. David Brown, 46, a Navy pilot and doctor, who was making his first space flight.

"He understood the risk he was taking," Kalas said. "Before the flight he said, 'I made a decision that risk was part of my job.' "

Faye Steinberg, the Jewish Federation Women's Division president, recalled Columbia's physician, Cmdr. Dr. Laurel Clark, 41, of Racine, Wis.

Steinberg read Clark's words: "There are a lot of things that can harm us and I choose not to quit doing those things,"

Edythe Katz Yarchever, chairman of the Governor's Council on Holocaust Education, remembered Columbia engineer Kalpana Chawla, an Indian who became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

She described how Chawla expressed her experience as part of the manned space program that made her feel "part of the whole universe."

After each biography was read, the speaker lit a candle, six with U.S. flags and the seventh with an Israeli flag.

Florence Bolatin, who attended the service that lasted about half an hour, said it was important for people to come together and share the national sorrow for the astronauts and their families.

"This is so important that we get together as a community," Bolatin said.