Michael Smith 1945-1986

Growing up on his family's 14-acre farm outside Beaufort, N.C., across the road from the local airport, Michael Smith fell in love with flying. When he was nine or ten, he built a large model airplane of wood and hung it in the yard to use as a swing. Later he earned money for flying lessons by selling chickens and eggs, and soloed in a single-engine Aeronca on his 16th birthday.

By his senior year in high school, Smith had grown into a darkly handsome, athletic six-footer with a quick smile and a head that sometimes failed to come down from the clouds. He was a tackle and later quarterback and captain of the Beaufort High football team, which won a state championship--despite Smith's tendency during practice sessions to let his eyes wander to any aircraft that might be cruising above the field.

After the U.S. put its first astronaut into space in 1961, Smith decided that was where he wanted to be. His first step was to gain admission to a service academy. "In high school he paid a lot of attention to academics because he knew that was the best way to get in," recalled his older brother Pat. Said Curtis Lancaster, Smith's football coach at Beaufort: "He always worked particularly hard at science and math because he knew he needed that for what he wanted to do." Smith graduated with honors, was voted Most Outstanding Senior by his classmates and won appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He became a pilot and won a chestful of medals during the Viet Nam War. Smith flew 225 combat missions but was never injured, even though his plane was hit by ground fire several times. He later became a test pilot-instructor, did two carrier tours in the Mediterranean and in 1980 was picked for the space program.

Like a number of other astronauts, Smith had to wait a while for his turn in the launch rotation. As part of his preparation for last week's flight, Smith had brought along a replica of the Beaufort town flag for his fellow crew members to sign. He planned to present it during commencement exercises next June at his old school, now called Carteret High, where he was to be the featured speaker. Said Senator Jake Garn, who trained with Smith for a 1985 shuttle mission: "He was my mother hen. They assigned him to me." One thing the two never discussed, says Garn, was the possibility of a disaster: "We always assumed that if it happened, it would happen to somebody else."

Smith lived in a suburb of Houston with his wife and three children, but he was used to pulling up roots and resettling whenever necessary. "He never turned down a challenge and always did whatever the Navy asked him to do," said Florence Noe, an aunt. Nor did he dwell much on the danger of his work. "Everybody looks at flying the shuttle as something dangerous. But it's not," he commented before Challenger's lift-off last week. "It's a good program, and something the country should be proud of." Said his brother Pat: "I hope everybody realizes that Mike was doing just exactly what he wanted to do. Not many people in their lives get to do exactly what they want to do." Much less what they have wanted to do for so long.