December 2012


www.hamptonroadsmessenger.com


First African-American Astronaut in Space Refused to Let 'Misstep' Keep Him from Dream


FORT GEORGE G.


MEADE, Md. (AFNS) -- When a person is trying to reach for the stars, any misstep could keep them just out of reach.


Retired Air Force


Col. Guion Bluford, however, didn't let a less-than-stellar start in college stop him from becoming one of the most prominent figures in aerospace engineering as well as the first African American in space.


The Hampton Roads Messenger 11 "NASA hadn't hired astronauts


since '66," Bluford said in his Penn State interview. "So they were looking for astronauts to fly this thing called the space shuttle."


Out of his class of 35 people,


there were six women and two other African American men, U.S. Air Force Col. Frederick Gregory and physicist Ron McNair. The classmates were all cognizant of the fact that one person would be first woman in space and one would be the first African American in space. As fate would have it, Bluford took the latter honor.


"My goal was really to just make


Now Retired Air Force Col. Guion Bluford, first African-American astronaut in space


Born in Nov. 22, 1942, Bluford


grew up in middle-class neighborhood in Philadelphia. His father was a mechanical engineer and his mother was a teacher. Being that both his parents and grandparents were college graduates, he didn't see not going to college as an option.


Luckily, he had already decided


what he wanted to do with his life by the time he was in middle school: aerospace engineering.


Though he graduated from


Penn State in 1964 with a bachelor's in aerospace engineering, he had a rough time his freshman year trying to get acclimated to the university environment. Unfortunately, Bluford failed freshman English, bringing his GPA to below 2.0. Instead of giving up, however, he used that experience to push himself to succeed.


"My best year at Penn State was


my senior year because it took me four years to figure out how to study," Bluford said in an interview at Penn State. "It was a challenging experience, and I thought in the end it gave me a lot


of grit. That helped me throughout my career."


ROTC was mandatory at Penn


State while he was attending, which was the catalyst for his joining the Air Force after college. Bluford received a commission and attended pilot training at Williams Air Force Base, Ariz., receiving his pilot wings in 1966. He received further training in Arizona and Florida on the F-4C. Eventually, he was sent to Vietnam and flew 144 combat missions during his tour there.


After he left Vietnam in 1967,


he served in a variety of positions at Sheppard AFB, Texas,


pilot;


including as a T-38A instructor standardization/evaluation


officer; and executive support officer. After attending the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, from 1972 to 1974, Bluford was assigned to the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory.


In 1978, he applied for and was


accepted to the NASA astronaut program, becoming an astronaut in August 1979.


Scholarship Watch 2013 Scholarships for Military Children BY TAMMY REED FORT LEE, Va. (AFNS) -- In


2012, the Scholarships for Military Children Program celebrated a major milestone as it reached more than $10 million in scholarships awarded to 6,742 students from around the globe.


Applications for the 2013


Scholarships for Military Children Program will be available starting Dec. 3 at commissaries worldwide. You can also find them online through a link at www.commissaries.com and directly at www.militaryscholar.org.


Scholarship awards will be based


on funds available, but the scholarship program awards at least $1,500 at each commissary. If there are no eligible applicants from a particular commissary, the funds designated for that commissary will be awarded as an additional scholarship at another store.


The scholarship program was


created to recognize military families' contributions to the readiness of U.S. armed forces and to celebrate the


commissary's role in the military community.


"The Defense


C o m m i s s a r y Agency is focused on supporting a good quality of life for our military and their families," said Joseph H. Jeu, DeCA director and CEO. "We do that by delivering a great commissary benefit, while our industry partners and public donations help the scholarship program provide money for higher education to many worthwhile students."


To apply for a scholarship,


the student must be a dependent, unmarried child, younger than 21 -- or 23, if enrolled as a full-time student at a college or university -- of a service member on active duty, reservist, guardsman, retiree or survivor of a


military member who died while on active duty or survivor of a retiree. Eligibility is


determined


using the Defense E n r o l l m e n t E l i g i b i l i t y Reporting System database.


should


Ap p l i c a n t s ensure


that they, as well as their sponsor, are


enrolled


in the DEERS database and have


a current military identification card. The applicant must also be planning to attend or already attending an accredited college or university, full time, in the fall of 2013 or be enrolled in a program of studies designed to transfer directly into a four-year program.


Applicants must submit an essay on a topic chosen by the Fisher House.


The essay topic will be available Dec. 3 on www.militaryscholar.org. Applications must be turned in to a commissary by close of business Feb. 22, 2013.


The scholarship program is


administered by the Fisher House Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides assistance to service members and their families. Scholarship Managers, a national, nonprofit, scholarship-management services organization, manages and awards these military scholarships. If students have questions about the scholarship program application, they can call Scholarship Managers at 856-616-9311 or email them at mili- taryscholar@scholarshipmanagers. com.


No government funds are used to


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Visit hamptonroadsmessenger.com for a list of 50 scholarships


a contribution," Bluford said in the Penn State interview. "I really didn't anticipate being the first African American in space. I didn't push for that, but I was pleasantly surprised by it."


That first flight was on mission


STS-8, which launched from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., Aug. 30, 1983, aboard the Orbiter Challenger. Bluford made three other flights after that, in 1985, 1991 and 1992. In those missions he did everything from laboratory experiments to satellite deployments to a classified military mission.


With all of that time spent in space, the awe began to wear off.


"I would kid the rookies and I


would say, 'Hey, don't get too excited; this is just a business trip,'" Bluford said


Traffic Cameras FROM PAGE 3


ticket-generating cameras. “This worked well, but now that


red-light camera systems are being used, the requirement that right-turning drivers be stopped by the time the signal turns red is resulting in rear-end crashes and profit-motivated citations,” Bahen charged.


Critics of the high-tech crackdown on rolling right turns say zero-tolerance


in the Penn State interview. "'We're only going to be out of town eight days.' ... I recognized from my point of view that I had seen it all. So the awe was still there, but it wasn't as strong as it was on the first flight."


And no wonder: By the time his


final flight touched down at Edwards AFB, Calif., Dec. 9, 1992, he had logged more than 688 hours in space.


Bluford left NASA and retired from


the Air Force in July 1993, but he has continued to lead the field of aerospace engineering, taking on leadership roles in a number of research and consulting organizations. He realizes, however, that his experiences have also thrust him into the position of a role model for minorities looking to get into a science and engineering career. In his Penn State interview, Bluford said that even though he grew up with an engineer father and teacher mother, his road to success was not easy. It took persistence and focus ... and having a clear goal in mind.


"I was very fortunate in the sense


that I knew who I was," he said. "And I kid people all the time about the fact that they pay me to have a good time. I've been having a good time for the last thirty to forty years doing things that I enjoy."


In other words, he reached for the stars ... and caught them.


enforcement is like smashing a gnat with a hammer. And they suspect that the camera-generated fines, which run around $50, will only go up over time.


“People are going ballistic on


this,” Morrissey said. “It’s an incentive to raise revenues without calling it a tax.”


Los Angeles last year shut off its


red-light cameras because the pho- to-enforcement program was losing $1.5 million a year. Councilman Bill Rosendahl said a growing number of ticketed motorists simply ignored the citations.


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