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At NASA, grief and duty intersect Shuttle workers personalize loss By Tatsha Robertson, Globe Staff, 2/9/2003
''As long as we are together, as long as we are trying to solve problems, we can stay focused,'' Ron Dittemore said after taking a deep breath. ''We can keep our energies directed in the right direction. But when we are alone and in our own homes, many have commented that that's the worst environment. That has been our most difficult moment.'' Through daily news briefings since the Columbia was lost, Dittemore, 50, has become the public face of the NASA's astronauts, scientists, and engineers, men and women who are ruled by an instinct to sift the data for answers but privately grieving over lost friends and colleagues. That split reaction can be seen within the NASA offices, where workers have insisted on spending extra hours analyzing the tragedy, even when their help isn't needed. It was evident at last week's memorial, when employees mourning the death of their seven co-workers insisted they must put their energies to finding answers.
Standing outside a makeshift memorial in front of the space center, NASA employee Randy Armstrong, 38, stared at photographs of the seven astronauts who died last week. Dealing with the deaths has been painful, he said, but ''strangely, it makes you determined to go back to work and make sure it doesn't happen in the future.'' Psychologists say this response to the tragedy may result from the highly technical and collaborative nature of the work done at the space center. There are 15,000 workers, including contractors and civilians, who play important roles in a shuttle mission. Only 1 percent of space center employees are astronauts. Muriel Meicler, a Houston psychologist who is married to a former NASA employee, said all space center workers feel a sense of ownership after every launch and every landing. She said they also feel a sense of responsibility when something goes wrong. ''There are layers of loss here,'' said Meicler. ''The people who died were intimately known by the women and men in Mission Control. And the people in Mission Control are intimately sensitive that those missions contain human beings.'' Still, Meicler and others said ''intellectualizing'' grief can be unhealthy if it goes on too long. ''Intellectualization deals with facts and with the nitty gritty of problems,'' said Meicler ''That helps to soften the pain but that doesn't always mean it is healthy to do.'' The Rev. Charles Anderson, a minister who presides over a congregation of astronauts and NASA employees, tried to explain to his congregation last week that they must seek healing as well as answers. ''Scientists are always seeking answers,'' he said in his office after giving the second of three memorial sermons last week. ''There is nothing wrong with trying to find answers. There is comfort in answers, and it helps to prevent future accidents.'' But, Anderson asked, are answers really enough? Kenneth J. Doka, a senior consultant to Hospice Foundation of America in Washington, D.C., and professor of gerontology at the College of New Rochelle in New York, said it is not unusual for people to ask questions or want to put their energies into their work after a tragedy. But Doka said what is different in the case of the NASA employees is that the traditional rhetorical question of why a death occurred is also a scientific question that NASA workers are under heavy pressure to answer. ''What is normal grieving is pushed right up front into their faces,'' said Doka. Since the tragedy, Dittemore and an army of aerospace engineers have combed through evidence to determine why the shuttle broke apart. While he is seen as the NASA leader who has been able to clearly explain the complexity of NASA's tasks, Dittemore has also come to symbolize NASA's management team, whose decisions are coming under scrutiny in the wake of the crash. Under pressure from Congress last week, NASA transferred leadership of the investigation to an independent panel. Dittemore, tall and slim, occassionally seemed worn and tired at NASA's briefings. But he promised that the agency's investigation will be thorough. ''You can only imagine how it felt when someone comes up to tell you that you've lost the vehicle and the crew,'' he said. ''I don't think you can imagine that. For us to sit there and work with these individuals, it's not something I would want you to go through. It's not something I want my team to go through ever again.'' Moments later, Dittemore wagged his finger and spoke for all of NASA's employees who are pulling together to learn what brought down the Columbia and to put the space program back on track. ''We will recover from this,'' he said. ''We are going to fix it. We are going to get back to space flight, human space flight, and we are going to have tremendous successes in the years ahead.'' Born in Cooperstown, N.Y., but raised on the Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Dittemore, the son of a staff sergeant, was a high school wrestler and a Boy Scout. He grew up surrounded by KC-135 tankers and dreamed of flying into the horizon and beyond. Dittemore was an elementary school classmate of Michael Anderson, one of Columbia's crew members. Less than perfect eyesight kept Dittemore from becoming an astronaut. Four years after graduating from high school in 1970, he received a bachelor's degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the University of Washington. Master's degrees and work in Arizona followed. He married Shirley Ann Seibolts, who is also from Washington. The couple have two children. Dittemore began his career at NASA 22 years ago, rising from a propulsion engineer to the archetypal pull-up-your-sleeves flight manager of Mission Control. He was tapped to head the shuttle program in 1999. As the space station's manager, he is often in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center for launches, and in Houston at Mission Control during landings. His quest for NASA to ''rise from the ashes'' again comes from his years as the behind-the-scenes manager of a number of dangerous missions, according to Michael McCulley, the former shuttle pilot of the Atlantis whom Dittemore safely guided back to earth in 1989. ''This is a badgeless society,'' said McCulley, now the chief operating officer to United Space Alliance, which manages the shuttle fleet. ''Whatever you are - from the mom and pop vendors who make little pieces that go on the shuttle to the huge contractors like Boeing, or whether you are with United Space Alliance or NASA - we all are working together, and we all are answering to Dittemore.''
This story ran on page A6 of the Boston Globe on 2/9/2003.
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OUSTON - The manager of NASA's space shuttle program was working through the technical details of what could have caused the Columbia to disintegrate in the atmosphere, when he paused to reflect on the comforts of returning to work after a wretched night.
