Loyola teacher volunteers for spacewalk

By Kathleen Acuff, Town Crier Staff Writer

For weeks, the students of Loyola Elementary School have been journeying through the solar system together. On foot.

Saturday, they made their final orbit around the field at Blach Middle School as the Journey Through Space Walk-a-thon reached the end of its mission. The 402 K-6 students walked 14,500 laps to raise money to help fund library resources, buy instructional materials, and provide continuing support for the computer lab and music and art activities, according to Cheryl Breetwor, Walk-a-thon chairperson.

“They walked so far, we ran out of prizes,” she said, beaming.

Breetwor added, “What made our Walk-a-thon special is that we integrated the theme of this event with the educational curriculum at every grade level. Students couldn’t help but learn and have fun at the same time. And the timing of our space theme couldn’t have been better, what with the Chinese launch, the Galileo and Mars.”

In the past weeks, Loyola students have researched “space factoids” and answered trivia questions for prizes. They’ve made space-related art and looked through telescopes at the night sky. On Thursday, an aerospace engineer from NASA dropped by to talk to them about how they can prepare to be astronauts — and he brought along a real space suit.

Before helping a volunteer into the suit, Donald R. Mendoza gave the students assembled in the Blach auditorium some expert vocational advice.

“If you’re interested in a career in space,” he told them, “there are three very important things you should do. First, read - a lot. Second, follow your curiosity. Third, read some more!”

Mendoza, a former flight test engineer who earned a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, added, “I can’t overemphasize how important it is to read books. There are a lot of tools for research, and the Internet is great for looking stuff up. But a book opens up a world and engages the imagination. It offers a more direct connection with the author. I read books by my heroes when I was younger and that made the most impact on me.”

Ripples of movement ran through the assembly like shifting breezes through rushes as the students anticipated the suiting up of one of their third-grade teachers. When Mendoza helped Leslie Rainforth into the bottom half of the suit, which looked like a white pot-bellied stove, everyone’s attention was riveted on the event. There were whoops as the top part of the suit went over Rainforth’s head, applause and more whoops as her hands emerged from the ends of the sleeves and cries of triumph when Mendoza closed the face glass on the helmet. To demonstrate the suit’s mobility, Rainforth did a slow spacewalk to entirely accurate shouts of “Your pants are falling off!”

Free again, Rainforth reported that the suit was very heavy, and quite warm with its air conditioning unit off; but added, “I’m so glad I did that! It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”