THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 28, 1996 TAG: 9601280267
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ESTHER DISKIN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
Ten years ago, she lost her husband in a plume of fire and smoke that shook America's confidence in space travel.
But Jane Smith Wolcott, widow of space shuttle Challenger pilot Mike Smith, still follows all the shuttle launches.
She lives in Virginia Beach now, married to H. Dixon Wolcott, a Norfolk obstetrician who went to the U.S. Naval Academy with Smith. Her three children, who watched the explosion with her at a command center three miles from the Florida launch pad, are grown. The youngest, Erin, is a college freshman.
Today, on the 10th anniversary of ``launch day'' - as she calls it - they'll all probably give her a call and talk awhile. She expects to spend most of the day at home, then board a plane in the evening for New York, where she'll be interviewed on Monday's ``CBS This Morning.''
Over the past few weeks, the perky, 50-year-old has been placed back in the role of the Challenger widow, helping the nation mourn and look ahead to new discoveries in space. She has been on talk shows. She has spoken at public events. A week ago, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin called her on the phone to offer comfort and invite her to a memorial ceremony at Johnson Space Center.
She has had to watch the explosion, over and over. She never turns her head, never shuts her eyes, but she sometimes catches a crazy little part of her imagining that it could have a different end.
``The explosion being shown on television is very difficult for all the family. We wish no one would show that,'' she says. ``I saw it today. I shake my head and look at it, just watch it. Maybe sometimes hoping it wouldn't end that way.''
Wolcott first came to Virginia Beach in the early 1970s, as the wife of a hot-shot Navy pilot Mike Smith, who was based at Oceana Naval Air Station. They had two children then and their third was born at DePaul Medical Center.
Smith - who as a teenager had a license to fly before he had received his driver's license - was already planning to become an astronaut. He took his children, especially his son, Scott, to the playground at Kingston Elementary School to launch rockets, which ended up in neighbors' backyards.
``Scott would go to the neighbor and say, `Can I get my rocket out of your tree?' '' Wolcott remembers.
Smith, she says, was always a bundle of energy, mowing neighbors' yards, bike racing with the kids, strapping on a tool belt to do home repairs. He was a voracious reader and would plop down with a book to relax - anything from poetry, to aviation history, to the Reader's Digest ``How to do it'' books, she recalls.
When they left Virginia Beach for Houston, she went with great reluctance. But they soon settled into a neighborhood near Johnson Space Center, a tight-knit community of people with ties to the space program.
It was that community, and their loving spirit, that helped her carry on after the Challenger disaster. The first few weeks were a blur, as friends and family converged on her house.
NASA offered family counseling. She encouraged her children to use that to heal, but she relied on other things. Faith was one of them.
``There was never a doubt in my mind that God was with me. You know how there are times in life when you don't have any question,'' Wolcott said. ``I know that God did not want to hurt my family or my loved ones. Man did it. Man is not perfect.''
During the five years that she carried on as a single mother, she would sometimes hear her husband's voice cheering her. ``There was a saying that Mike had from the Naval Academy. . . `Okay, mids, fall back and regroup.' That's what he'd say,'' she remembers. ``To me, that means take time out, use good judgment and move on from that point.''
She did not allow the tragedy to push her, or her children, into a shell of fear. She will still hop aboard a four-seater plane with Mike Smith's brother, Pat, piloting.
And she has many other adventures she'd like to try. Which shows she hasn't lost the spirit that once won the heart of an astronaut.
``I wouldn't want to do sky-diving. Or bungee jumping,'' she says. ``But there are many things I'd like to try. A whole list! I'd love to take a ride in a hot air balloon, or ride in a Navy jet.''
She laughs: ``I don't like heights if it doesn't come with an engine. Does that make sense?'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
SUSAN BIDDLE/Washington Post
JANE SMITH WOLCOTT: LOOKING AHEAD
MIKE SMITH
KEYWORDS: SPACE SHUTTLES CHALLENGER EXPLOSION
FATALITIES ANNIVERSARY by CNB