By KEITH GRANT and KIMBERLY ACEVEDO
Before a moment of silence at Tuesday night's City Council meeting, council President Joel Crystal said of the astronauts, "They carried with them the hopes of a nation."
Nearby, at Starbucks, a number of residents offered their thoughts on the nation's newest tragedy. "It's a huge loss, and it's also very frightening," said Ken Zarecor, a retired special-education teacher. "Unfortunately, we have to go [into space]. I really do think they should probably work more with unmanned satellites so they can get a better hold of safety.
"It's like anything else," he added. "It's dangerous."
For one customer, Judy, who didn't want to give her last name, such tragedies hit particularly close to home. She works as a flight attendant, traveling four times a week. "I feel awful," she said. "I'm in aviation, so whenever something like this happens, I take it a little more personal."
Many people reacted with some anger toward NASA officials, believing the loss of the Columbia could have been prevented. Cindy Woodinsky, of Cedarhurst, hopes NASA continues space travel, but said, "It seems to me that the engineers make a lot of assumptions that may not necessarily be true. I hope they spend more time focusing on safety and mechanical issues. Why design something that is so easily damaged?"
Nieisha Allision was only 4 when the shuttle Challenger exploded, but after this tragedy she said she doesn't believe space travel should be hindered. "How will technology advance?" she asked. She believes the information gathered in space will help develop the future.
In class, a lesson of sadness
Students of all ages had strong reactions when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center a year and a half ago, local teachers said. Their reactions to this disaster, more than a thousand miles away, weren't quite the same, but they're paying close attention to the event.
Shortly after the shuttle's loss first made news, Long Beach City School District Superintendent Ronald Friedman notified each school that a moment of silence would be observed on Monday morning in remembrance of the fallen astronauts. Flags were lowered to half-staff, and each school began dealing with the tragedy.
At East Elementary School, teachers led a discussion of the accident with the students. While some were too young to understand exactly what had happened, others drew pictures or wrote about the event. Ultimately, teachers let the students lead the discussions.
"If the kids didn't get upset or talk about it, we let it go," Principal Ronni Funk-Reimel said. "We let the kids lead."
At West School, the student council will be coordinating efforts to create a wall of remembrance for the astronauts after the winter recess, Principal Sandy Schneider said. Students will research the biographies of each astronaut to be included on the wall.
Unlike the students' distressed reactions to Sept. 11, Schneider said this time they didn't display such emotional extremes. She believes the geographic distance may have lessened the impact.
Long Beach Middle School teachers handled the discussions on their own, Principal Joane Tom said. "It was nothing like the effects of Sept. 11 on them," she said. "[The discussions were] more about how and when it happened."
Classes that handle current events addressed the tragedy, along with the science classes, she said. Eighth-grade social studies teacher Greg Cody said that while his students weren't affected as emotionally as they were by Sept. 11, they were curious about the tragedy. On Monday and Tuesday, Cody said, his class read all the newspapers and kept up with hourly news updates on the Internet.
After absorbing all the information, Cody said, the class discussed the latest findings. Students asked many "What if?" questions, he said. Especially, though, they wanted to know what would have been done if NASA had known the shuttle was damaged.
While the eighth-graders weren't born when the Challenger was lost, Cody said they had studied it only a few months ago.
An Israeli hero lost
One school that has known tragedy too well is the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach, which 18 months ago mourned one of its own teachers, Judith Hayman Greenbaum, who was killed by a suicide bomber in Israel. For the past two years, Assistant Principal Rabbi Rabbi Kalman Fogel said there have been constant tragedies for the Jewish community.
"As a Jewish school, we have been consistently dealing with tragedy," he said. "Sept. 11 and this, both of which we take very seriously."
The Columbia tragedy is being mourned among Jews around the world, since the crew included the first Israeli astronaut, Col. Ilan Ramon. "Clearly it's a tragedy, especially in view of the fact that he was a very symbolic astronaut for Jews all over the world," said Rabbi Chaim Wakslak of Young Israel of Long Beach. "He was representing more than himself."
Specifically, Wakslak noted Ramon's desire to connect to the Holocaust. The astronaut carried with him into space a Torah scroll that had survived the Holocaust, and a drawing of Earth as imagined by a 14-year-old in a concentration camp. His trip into space thus took on added significance, the rabbi said.
"Sometimes a person rises to an occasion," Wakslak added. "Certainly he was an inspiration. We're very saddened by this tragedy."
Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum, of Temple Israel of Lawrence, said, "It's heartbreaking, it really is. They have provided us with a new definition of heroism. It just goes to show how precious and precarious human life really is."
He added that the tragedy "affects us doubly as Jews. Americans and Israelis share common values and hopes. Our people are united. This reminds us of the connection with one another."
