The NASA Connection
In 2016 I made two quilts for the exhibit “Fly Me To The Moon“, organized by Susanne Miller Jones. They premiered that Fall at the Houston Intl Quilt Festival. The quilts traveled 2016 – 2019, but the exhibit I remember most was when a small group were chosen to hang at the NASA JSC Visitor Center, along with artworks by rocket scientists and astronauts.
It was at this venue that I met the quilting astronaut, Karen Nyberg. We had our photo taken together with a couple guys in patchwork astronaut suits.
Later I met NASA seamstress Jean Wright, who has recently published a children’s book about her work. (Which we carry at eQuilter.com)
Before the “Fly Me to the Moon” project, I already had a deep connection at NASA. Our company eQuilter.com was supporting the projects in Rwanda, and then Kenya, with the Johnson Space Center chapter of Engineers Without Borders. These NASA EWB members would travel to Rwanda to build a solar oven for an orphanage and school in Kigali, and later would travel to Maua in Kenya to set up a water system and methane recycling energy system for another orphanage and school for street children. (We also worked with the CU EWB student chapter to send quilts to new mothers in Nepal, after the big earthquake there.)
During these early years, I had several VIP tours of NASA, and ate lots of good Mexican food with the members of the group. During one visit to one of the NASA research labs, I was offered to contribute urine to their fluid recycling research project. I graciously declined.
One of the EWB members was astronaut Ron Garan, who was on the ISS (Intl Space Station) overlapping with Karen Nyberg.
During one of our quilt drives for disaster relief, my EWB contact Dr Jack Bacon discussed with Ron, who was up on the ISS, our project to deliver several thousand donated quilts to tsunami-devastated Japan. Jack was delighted to tell me that my name and eQuilter had been a topic of discussion on the space station that morning. How cool is that?
But, back to the 2 quilts made for the “Fly Me to the Moon” project:
The first quilt was of astronaut /Commander James McDivitt, who was the first and (at the time) only astronaut to have officially reported seeing a UFO. (Eventually he was a Brigadier General)
The second quilt features astronaut/General Tom Stafford, and cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, who was the commander of the Russian side of the joint mission of Apollo 10. I combined 2 photos to make this image of them floating weightless, sharing a tube of vodka in a toast. As my NASA contact Dr Jack Bacon told me, it was their friendship that was the foundation of the American-Russian ISS program. Jack spent six months in Russia helping oversee the building of the Russian ISS module, and also traveled to remote Russia for several rocket launches. These 2 guys were Jack’s heroes.
In 2012 I traveled to Russia to speak at the Moscow Quilt Festival. Then I took a private tour to St Petersburg so I could visit the Hermitage Museum, and see operas in two historic theaters. During that trip one of my translators told me a very interesting story.
She said that decades before, she had been the translator for the Americans who came to Moscow to negotiate to start the ISS collaboration. She listened to the Americans explain and answer questions, but when she translated, the Russian counterparts said “No! We can’t trust anything the Americans say!” She persisted in convincing them that the Americans were sincere in wanting to collaborate, and I guess she was successful because that was the beginning of the planning stage for the International Space Station.
The last time I visited NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, my VIP guide was a tall handsome astronaut in training.
We sent all through the complex and ended up in Mission Control and got to watch and listen to the live communications with the ISS astronauts. Our friend Jack had a twinkle in his eye and said that Victor was being trained for a very special mission. A couple years later I saw in the news that Victor Glover was chosen to be the first black astronaut to travel to the Moon, on Artemis II.
So now I have been privileged to meet and know 3 astronauts due to our connection to Engineers Without Borders. Any of course the delight of getting to know many nerdy enthusiastic rocket scientists who share my love of Star Trek.
Just for fun I will connect one more dot. The founder of EWB is a recently retired Engineering Professor at CU here in Boulder. I became friends with him and his wife. Sadly we lost Robin to a brain tumor in December 2019, but I still have lunch with Bernard every few months. He was responsible for my “Mothers of the World” quilt going to the US Institute of Peace in Washington DC. But that is another story….
You can see more photos about our projects with Engineers Without Borders on this photo album page.
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