Remembering Columbia Disaster, 10 Years Later

Ten years ago on February 1, at a few minutes before 8, a sonic boom shook East Texas, followed by a series of rumbles. It was a cloudless, spring-like Saturday morning. I was walking out my door in Nacogdoches, headed to the newspaper office. I had heard on NPR that the shuttle Columbia. I looked up into the sky and saw the contrail splitting apart and thought, ‘‘Guess the shuttle just passed over.’’ I’ve seen the shuttle pass over before, and it’s a lovely sight, a quick flash of orange streaking across the sky from west to east. I figured I had missed seeing the shuttle by just seconds...

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