Episcopal churches nationwide observed memorial services for the seven Columbia space shuttle astronauts. One of the most poignant occurred at St. Thomas the Apostle Church, across from the Houston space center. The church is also home to a school, where astronaut Laurel Clark’s son Iain is a second grader.

‘Deep Person’

Astronaut David Brown was a life-long Episcopalian who was “not overtly religious while he was with NASA,” said his father, retired circuit Judge Paul Brown. “But [one] can’t be in the program without thinking about it.”

Judge Brown said his son often attended a little church in Fallon, Nevada, while stationed in the area. “He was not one to speak about deep feelings — but he was a deep person.”

The astronaut’s father and mother, “neophytes on computers,” hold his last, precious e-mail message from space, in which he wrote of fellow crew member Ilan Ramon’s letter from a holocaust survivor. The man’s 7-year-old daughter had not lived, and David was “stunned that such a beautiful planet could harbor such bad things.”

David Brown grew up in Arlington, Va., where he was an acolyte at St. Michael’s Church. Alan Wilber, a member there since 1958, recalls him from the Sunday school class Mr. Wilber taught. “We had a good-sized group of young people in those days,” he said. “He was faithful in attending.”

David had brought his parents his computer, so they could e-mail back and forth while he was on Columbia. They have many messages yet to read. “We have gotten a warm view of David from everyone he touched,” Judge Brown said.

Baptized an Episcopalian

The aunt and uncle of another member of the Columbia crew, the Rev. Douglas Haviland and his wife, Elizabeth, are grievously experienced in private reactions to public disasters. As they watched the World Trade Center fall in New York on 9/11 they realized that their son Timothy was on the 96th floor of the north tower. Now they had watched Columbia disintegrate into fiery fragments, knowing their niece was aboard.

Astronaut Laurel Blair Salton Clark was baptized an Episcopalian. She later became a Unitarian, a member of Olympia Brown Unitarian Church in Racine, Wis. She and her husband, Jonathan, were married in St. John’s Chapel at the De Koven Center by the Rev. Tony Larson, pastor of Olympia Brown, and her uncle, the retired rector of St. John’s-by-the-Campus in Ames, Iowa. On the Monday following the space shuttle disaster, as Fr. Haviland packed for their trip to Houston to attend the memorial service at Johnson Space Center, Mrs. Haviland recalled her niece.

“Laurel achieved in a man’s world, yet she was very feminine,” Mrs. Haviland said.” She learned some Hebrew from [Col. Ramon].” When the astronauts were asked what they wanted to say as a group to the world, “she led the chorus in ‘Shalom.’”

Patricia Nakamura