I thought that was the end of it. I was wrong.

The contest had been announced months before. NASA, JPL, Caltech had combined to create and promote an essay contest for high school students. The idea was to look at Mars and the space program, years back, years ahead. The gimmick was to have two students work together to research and produce a collaborative report. “That’s our new angle,” they said.

I talked to the leader from Caltech, a personal friend, who assumed control of the project, shared locally with JPL. I talked turkey. I said, “Many good things about this contest, the challenge, the chance to dig deeply and think openly, to engage the enthusiasm of youth in a direction we both agree on. But there’s a problem of miscalculation. Your deadline is November. The students who will enter the contest, the most capable, are High School Seniors. But they are already frantic, overwhelmed by the process of College Applications, writing their college essays, taking tests. They can’t take on one more thing. The timing is all wrong. But it’s too late now to change. I’ll see what I can do. Maybe I can come up with a team to take the challenge.”

We wound up with four teams who submitted essays. They were in competition with students all across California, and, if I remember correctly, even from adjacent states. There were overall four team final winners, two from our own high school, my students.

There was a big celebration, a Big Deal, at a fancy restaurant at the beach, I think Marina Del Rey. The details are a little hazy, it was almost thirty years ago. It was to cap a conference of World Space Agencies, and International representation including, if I remember, Canada and Japan and Europe. The press was there, photographers, interviewing journalists. They were ready to spread the word.

My wife and I drove down and parked. We were stopped at the door by an officious list checker. He said, “You can go in, but your wife’s not on the list, she’ll have to wait for you at the bar. Maybe you can buy her a snack if she gets hungry.”

Our friend from Caltech who was the Lord Over All, rushed to us, chastised the over officious official, and ushered us to a table down front. The lunch was good, as expected.

There were speeches from the Conference, International presence, and then came our part of the agenda. Four girls, two teams of two each, were winners from a private school up north. Our two teams, two boys each, received equal awards, their parents proud. All winners, none singled out.

Photographs of winners posed with awards, reporters taking notes. A good day, a great day, a triumph.

I thought that was the end of it.

Then later, I think months later, I got a call in my classroom from the office secretary. She said, “You need to come down to the office. You have a phone call we can’t transfer. You’re going to like it.”

I chuckled. “Are you censoring my phone calls now?”

I went down to the office. They were calling from Washington, D.C. They said, “The essay from two of your students is making waves in Washington. We’d like to invite them to a conference with Carl Sagan and others to represent the Youth of America. We’ll pay their airfare and food and hotel.”

I said, “I’ll have them check their schedules.”

They said, “We also want to invite their teacher, same coverage of air fare and hotel.”

I said, “I’ll check my schedule.”

The details were worked out. My wife could come, but I’d have to pay her airfare. They didn’t want to defraud the government. She could sleep with me and share my hotel room, no extra cost, a double bed. My food would be by voucher but the helpings were pretty generous, she could share mine and probably get enough to eat. We’d be in Washington for several days, so we could see sights.

It was all set. We made arrangements. Then we four flew to Washington, my wife, Luke, Jason, and me. I had hardly ever been anywhere, flying was still new, and I tried not to be like a little kid. I was expected to be the chaperone, and my wife would be chaperoness.

It was all the excitement of visiting dignitaries, we were briefed and debriefed, escorted to our hotel, and turned loose on the town. The conference would not be for a few days, so we had time to fill and spend. They recommended that we might probably want to see the current recent movie still playing, Independence Day, where the whole world and Washington D.C. was threatened and destroyed by aliens. They chuckled familiarly remembering the shadow sliding over the Washington monuments. They said, “You’ll love it.”

We settled in as tourists, ate the voucher food, wandered around from monument to monument. I was always afraid of spending money, clutched what little I had. The boys must have come with some money of their own, but we all had shoes and walked around a lot.

We walked by the Supreme Court building and thought about it. We went by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian’s many buildings and went inside. We went to the Lincoln Monument, climbed the steps, looked up to the statue sitting on his chair like a throne, and thought deep thoughts. We stood where Marian Anderson had stood and sang to the nation. We stood where Martin Luther King Jr. had announced his dream to the world. I wanted to stay looking longer, but you know how young people are, full of energy, wanting to see and do everything at once.

We rode on the subway. I don’t remember where we went or if we really went anywhere, the subway itself was enough.

We did go to see the movie as recommended. We liked it. Well made, action film, aliens and destruction. We didn’t have the close daily intimacy with the iconic places destroyed in order, so we didn’t feel the gleeful enthusiasm of our Washington advisors, but we understood them and forgave them.

We walked across grass in front of a Congress building and saw Senators and Representatives walking back and forth and along corridors. We had seen them on television, and here they were in person close enough to come up to and talk to and introduce ourselves and let them know why we were there, we were sure they’d be interested. The two boys betrayed their political backgrounds by which congress people they recognized. We saw a camera being set up right by where we were standing, and then a congressman came out and stood on a spot and a newscaster journalist began asking questions and we were witnessing news in the making, adjacent to the source. If we were foolishly brave, we could have got in the picture, but we showed restraint. We had all seen those fools who walk by in the background and wave at the camera. We were all better than that, more mature, but we thought about it. Later that night we saw the interview on television and said in unison, “We were there!”

We saw a lot, did a lot, and the few full days blurred as we approached the final day of Conference. The students were expected to make a presentation. I left Shirley sleeping in our room and came down to the other room to offer assistance to my students as needed. They had asked, and it was needed, even if only for moral support. We stayed up too late, dressed comfortably for sleep, as they tried to hammer out what they might want to say. I withheld advice, prefacing my peripheral presence, being honest about my own reservations, going on too long because, as you know by now, once you get me started…

Apparently I couldn’t help myself from giving my own ambivalent context about Caltech, NASA, JPL and the space program.
I said something like: “I’m probably not the one to advise you, because I have mixed feelings. As early as high school, long before I moved to the area, Shirley and I went to a recruiting event where colleges made presentations to graduating high school seniors, trying to lure us, pitching opportunities, what they had to offer, why we should choose them. Shirley went to the presentation from Caltech, partly because she was interested, partly because her father was pushing her toward science, chemistry was acceptable, where a good steady income was a sure thing.

After the presentation, Shirley wanted to ask a question. The recruiter said, “We saw you there, little lady, but, honey, we don’t know why you came to us, you know Caltech doesn’t take women.” She was almost in tears from the way she was treated. I took it personally.

Evolution at Caltech has been slow. There are some women now. I don’t judge the whole by its parts, but I can’t forget those instances where Caltech stalwarts said in confidential aside whispers, “We have a few women now, but they’re dogs.”

My students looked at me. I thought, “Why am I telling them this?” But I went on.

I’m not sure if it was Caltech or JPL, but I think Caltech. Again, a staff member, because we had friends at both institutions so it could have been either, told us about the way enforced integration was implemented. They had been required by law to hire a percentage of “minorities” which meant mostly “black.” But they didn’t want them in the labs even to empty the trash because they didn’t trust “them” near the equipment. So they had them sit together in chairs in a large room under supervision until five o’clock, when the work day was over and they were released. If that’s true, I have no idea how long it lasted, but it was told to us as a revelation of the inner workings of the system, and we were expected to join in the laughter. We did not.

A friend from the Caltech hierarchy answered my concern about the military influence on research projects. We had read about it in the newspaper. “Oh, no,” he said, “we had a faculty meeting where we voted against military influence.” Only weeks later, when military presence influenced the leadership and joined the administrative ranks and the paper reported it, our friend apologized to me. “You were right. I’m sorry.”

My students looked at me. I felt the desperation of the teacher needing to say one more thing before turning his students loose on the world. I shifted to NASA and JPL.

“I’m not the one to talk about this either, because I can’t forget. I remember how the whole world was glued to television sets as we landed a man on the moon, planting a flag to claim first place and ownership, but it seemed frighteningly certain that we couldn’t get the lander back up off the lunar surface, couldn’t get the astronauts back home. We were being conditioned to accept the inevitable, that they would die, thrown away as expendable pawns in a game of space race for a cheap “win.” The media were preparing us for the acceptable loss, to ignore the crass, to forget the American words of the sacredness and value of human life. Orwell again, and we all saw through it as people talked about the need for rubber bands and band aids and scotch tape and paper clips, and then by miracle and blind luck the astronauts came back and splashed down on earth and the rhetoric shifted to celebration and triumph and they tried to make us forget, but so many of us remember, I remember.

And my students looked at me. And I tried to end my remember. I referenced my reaction to the JPL employee, after seven astronauts lost their lives when the rocket blew up on the launch pad, victims of the push before ready when human life is kept out of the equation. And the joke going around at JPL, the new acronym, NASA means “Need Another Seven Astronauts,” and NASA thought that was so funny.

So I said to my two students, wide-eyed, patient, needing to get on with writing their statements, “So I’m not really the one to advise you because I have mixed feelings…”

And I left them to finish writing.

The next day, we all assembled for the Conference Coda. Carl Sagan was to have been the Honored Guest, beloved, revered. It was announced that he was unable to attend because of his failing health… We didn’t know it at the time, but he only had weeks to live. I mourn him to this day.

But we had luminaries, the illustrious Kip Thorne, and Donna Shirley, Manager of the Mars Exploration Program at JPL. We knew her as local from California prominence. And Daniel Goldin, the new young NASA Administrator, announced his mantra of “faster, better, cheaper.” I crossed my fingers. There were speeches, as there always are summarizing and concluding every conference.

Then, for us, the highlight. Our students were introduced. Applause. Luke had written an eloquent poetic response to the excitement of space exploration. Next year he would be going to Harvard as an English major on a full scholarship.

He and Jason had asked the directors, “Are you sure you want us? We’re going to major in English and Political Science, not astrophysics.” The Contest Organizers said, “We want you for what you said and wrote and for your vision of the future.”

Jason, who would be going to UCLA on a full scholarship, said he would be majoring in Political Science, “So when I run for office, vote for me. I’ve got your back.”

Thunderous applause. He was a hit. A reporter asked, “Who are you remarkable kids? Do you come from an expensive fancy private exclusive school where you can afford your obviously superior education?”

Jason answered for both of them, “No, we’re from a regular public high school in Pasadena, and there’s our teacher to prove it.”
So I stood and bowed. That’s just what teachers do.