Space Shuttle Commander's Widow Celebrates Husband's Faith, Courage
by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
January 16, 2004
(AgapePress) - Almost a year since the Columbia disaster, the wife of the deceased commander of the Space Shuttle says writing a book about him was the hardest thing she has ever done.Columbia broke up over Texas last February 1, killing Rick Husband along with six other astronauts. Evelyn Husband, his widow, says she and their two children have made it through the past year with God's strength, and the assurance that they will see Rick in heaven someday.
However, Evelyn admits that the interim has been painful, especially as she worked on writing her new book, titled High Calling: the Courageous Life and Faith of Space Shuttle Columbia Commander Rick Husband (Thomas Nelson, 2004).
"I've had people ask me if [writing the book] helped me along this journey of grief, and it didn't help me at all. I thought it was incredibly hard," Evelyn says. "I felt like I just revisited all these different times in our lives that we knew each other, and just grieved [over] so many different areas -- and it just made it much more gigantic in my mind how much I'd actually lost."
Still, in the book, Evelyn talks about how God has been with her amid the grief since the disaster, and how she has been changed by the experience. "I think I've aged a lot this year. It's just been very difficult," she says. "It's a very hard process -- mourning is not easy, and God knows that."
But Evelyn says she has found insight and encouragement through reading the scriptures. "One of my favorite verses of the Bible is that [Christ] is 'a man of sorrows' acquainted with our grief, so He is very familiar with and empathizes with the pain I'm going through," she says, "and it is very devastating, but through all of that I've never lost hope."
In High Calling, co-written with novelist Donna VanLiere, Evelyn details how Rick Husband realized his lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut -- a dream that ended with his death in the tragic February 2003 explosion. Combining Evelyn's memories of her life with Rick, his own writings, and interviews with others who knew him, the book provides a moving memorial to a man of faith who would record in the last day of his journal, "Lord, I want to do Your will, and I want to be a godly man."
