From the Wright Brothers — one of them, anyway — to the International Space Station: Two families that popped up in recent Columbian stories are linked to opposite ends of the history of manned flight.
Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger is a former Hudson’s Bay High School teacher who now is an astronaut. She returned to town a few days ago, with her husband Jason and their 3-year-old daughter, Cambria, to present Hudson’s Bay with a school pennant that had flown on the International Space Station.
They also visited McLoughlin Middle School, where Jason taught before they moved to Houston for Dottie’s astronaut training.
The other story involved Hudson’s Bay grad Jere Van Dyk, whose book — “Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban” — recounts the 45 days he was imprisoned in Pakistan in February and March of 2008.
There’s no place in the book for aviation milestones, but the story does reflect a sense of adventure that Van Dyk once said seems to be part of the family’s legacy.
A few years ago, he told a Columbian reporter how he grew up hearing about the exotic East. His dad, Bill, was a former U.S. Marine who’d watched a Mongolian camel caravan travel along the Great Wall of China.
He heard stories from an uncle who was the first U.S. pilot shot down by the Japanese in the run-up to World War II. Hugh Woods was flying for a Chinese air service in 1938 when his transport was shot down and most of the crash survivors were machine-gunned.
Van Dyk said a treasured family keepsake was Woods’ aviator’s certificate, dated Jan. 11, 1930, and signed by Orville Wright.
Relative level of fame
While enjoying the warm welcome his wife was getting in Vancouver, Jason Metcalf-Lindenburger said it’s been interesting to see how people respond to astronauts.
He said his father will get together with friends and discuss what’s going on in their families. The guys will be bragging on their children, Jason said, and his dad has been known to own the conversation with this update: “Well, my daughter-in-law just got back from space.”
But the job doesn’t get quite as much attention in Houston. Three or four other astronauts live in their subdivision, he said.
And as she did at Bay, Dottie went to Cambria’s preschool to give the kids a pennant that had been on the International Space Station.
It went up on the classroom wall, Jason said. Right next to the other two pennants brought back by astronauts whose kids were in the preschool.
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
