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celebrating a family christmas between earth and space

Story by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

Be anything you want to be. That’s what parents, and especially the late Dick Hall of Belleville, told his children as they grew up. How about being an astronaut? His daughter, Sandy, believed her father, Dick, when he encouraged his children.

Now an astronaut, Dr. Sandy Hall Magnus has completed two missions at the international space station.

Dec. 25, 2008, Sandy shared Christmas with her family from outer space, specifically on the international space station as part of Expedition 18 orbiting the earth.
Her father, Dick, died before she left the earth’s atmosphere for the second time, Nov. 14, 2008, to spend four and a half months at the space station as the Flight Engineer 2 and Science Officer.

Sandy blasted out of the earth’s atmosphere on the spaceship Endeavour Nov. 14 while her family and friends watched. Her mother, Rose, saw her daughter rocket off the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and counted the minutes until she would be “safe.”

The first eight minutes of the launch are critical, Rose said recently, reminiscing about Sandy’s journey into space that began before Thanksgiving and lasted well past Christmas.

This year, the family is preparing to spend Christmas with Sandy at her home in Houston, Texas, much closer to home than she was last year.

During Christmas 2008, NASA set up a direct audio and video feed to the space station so that the family could spend Christmas “together,” Rose said.

Sandy saw and spoke with her relatives on earth via teleconferencing. Because their family has a tradition of gathering the week before Christmas, “we had her for almost two hours,” Rose said.

During that time, Sandy opened a few gifts she was permitted to take with her into space while the family opened her gifts to them at Rose’s home in Belleville.“She was floating and doing somersaults for the grandkids,” Rose said.
The family also opened some of Sandy’s gifts and “showed” them to her.

During the season, many family members — aunts, uncles and cousins — had “flat Sandy” (a cardboard cutout of life-sized Sandy in her astronaut uniform) visit their homes for pictures and fun.

Family emails to Sandy were loaded with the pictures so she could keep up with her extended family, Rose said.
Rose remembers the launch and spoke of all of the people who prayed for Sandy as she journeyed into and through space.

“Thoughts are like prayers,” Rose said. “I can’t thank people enough for their thoughts and prayers.”

Rose holds a degree in nursing and also teaches on-line medical classes at Southwestern Illinois College. To say she stays busy is an understatement as she stays in contact with siblings, children, grandchildren, other relatives and friends. An upbeat person, thoughts of her late husband, Dick, are never far from her mind.

Admittedly proud of all four of her children — two attorneys and one in law enforcement along with the astronaut — Rose said Dick would be proud as well.

He believed they should follow their dreams. Sandy’s dream took her out of this world. “This was always something she wanted to do,” Rose said.

During her time at the space station, Sandy communicated with young people on terra firma. When she returned in March, she went to some of their schools to meet them and answer their questions.

It was important to Sandy to return to the community and meet with some of the young people she spoke with from space, Rose said.

“She wanted to make sure all the children would take the idea and go forward and do things themselves,” Rose said.
While Rose acknowledges the role parents play in the development of their children’s values and attitudes, she also credits her mother, the late Rose Prindable, as influencing Sandy and the other children as well.

“Sandy is so giving, but all of the children are like that,” Rose said. “It’s grandma’s influence.”

Currently, Sandy’s coordinating training for other astronauts to live on the space station, Rose said.
For their family Christmas this year will be so different from last year, and so much more like other Christmases.
The journey continues.

To learn more about Astronaut Sandy Magnus’ space flights and about NASA, please go to www.nasa.gov and type her name in the search area.