"She said that the people on TV were saying that it had broken up over 'north east Texas.' My immediate reaction was that I was certainly glad that I hadn't been any closer. I couldn't imagine it being that bad here and our being a couple of hundred miles away.
"I did call my children in North Carolina to tell them that we were all right and that they probably wouldn't be able to reach us by phone later in the day.
"Then the word came that they were finding parts of the wreckage in Nacogdoches, Texas. This is 18 miles to the north; so much for 'north east Texas.' More to the point, our middle daughter, Teresa, is living in Nacogdoches. I called and woke her up and told her what had happened.
"'Thanks for letting me know, and I'll be sure not to pick up anything in the yard,' she said, then rolled over and went back to sleep.
"Steve and I got dressed and after watching some of the news with Mother, left the house about 10 o'clock. We had decided to spend our day checking on my sister's land in Tenaha - part of our ongoing 'checking' to make sure that the people cutting the timber on the land next to hers don't 'accidentally' take some of the trees on her property. (Tree rustling is alive and well in East Texas.)
"Anyway, to do this, we had to go through Nacogdoches. Among the military personnel we saw guarding pieces of the shuttle was one standing by a box within five blocks of Teresa's apartment.
"When we got back after a day of seeing military vehicles and news vehicles and TV people, we turned on the news and saw that one of the people they were interviewing on the local news about finding body parts was named White, which means that her husband is probably one of my cousins. Another one of my cousins is part of the emergency management team in Nacogdoches. Needless to say, we haven't heard from him yet.
"One of the women I spoke to said that she was in her home in Alto talking to her sister in Jasper when it happened. She said that her sister had said, 'My house is shaking; something is wrong.' And just as she finished the sentence, she felt her own house begin to shake.
"'At that point, I got scared," she said. 'I thought we were having an tornado. But I never heard of a tornado that could make it from Jasper to Alto in seconds. So then I thought about earthquakes.'
"All in all, it was a very strange day, very nearly surreal. Among the stranger things we have learned is that CNN apparently needs a Texas map. They kept confusing things. My favorite is that Lufkin is 'just outside of Dallas.' I suppose that some comic relief is a good thing.
"Sunday morning I went over to Mother's house and when we were looking at papers my sister said, 'I want you to save this for my collection.'
"I had not been thinking about papers until that point, but I realized that we were in a unique position to help out our daughter who teaches journalism in Brevard. We went out and got newspapers from Lufkin and Dallas and Houston. Then we went to Nacogdoches. We went by Wal-Mart to get a Texas Atlas and Gazetteer so that we could find the quickest way to the smaller towns like Hemphill. But they didn't have any. I think they must have sold them to all the news people who arrived to cover the event.
"I bought a regular map and on the way back through town I took pictures of the news crews, which seemed to have converged on one piece of shuttle debris surrounded by nearly a block of yellow police crime scene tape. We saw several places marked off in this manner with no film crews. Why they all felt compelled to go to the same one downtown, I have no idea.
"I heard later that they had identified at least 12,000 pieces of shuttle debris in Nacogdoches County - 8,000 of which were in the city. This is not particularly surprising when you consider that it is much easier to find pieces, which look out of place on concrete or asphalt, or even on the old brick streets of downtown Nacogdoches, than it is to find things on the grass and in the woods.
"One lady we spoke to told us that she had gone out for donuts and when she came back, she saw a rock in her driveway. She kicked it out of the way and went in the house. When she turned on the news and heard what had happened, she put on her gloves and went back out to take a closer look at the 'rock.' It turned out to be some of the debris.
"Most of the identified pieces have been on easily accessible roadways and farms and fairly heavily traveled roads. What is not going to be easy is finding things in the woods, rivers, lakes and swamps.
"The ground around here is comparatively soft. Unlike the mountains of Jackson County, the ground here is dirt, sand and clay. Rock is so rare that when you find something which looks like rock, it is usually petrified wood or something imported from somewhere else.
"Consequently, the heavier pieces that have fallen and buried into the soft ground may never be found. Added to that are the pieces lodged in tree tops or caught in the Spanish moss. The chance of finding even half of all the pieces seems slim.
"As we were leaving Hemphill after discovering that their paper is a weekly, we stopped for food. People there told us that there was debris 'all over town.' We were kind of surprised as we hadn't seen any indication of yellow tape and guards like they had in Nacogdoches.
"I'm not sure what the population of Hemphill is, but I suspect that it is smaller than Sylva. I was hoping to find something interesting to take a picture of, but had just about decided that wasn't going to happen. We were headed home when we noticed a road sign with yellow police tape tied near the top.
"We discussed the possibility of this being an indication of a road where debris had been found. So we began to look for signs with yellow tape. Then we saw about a foot of tape tied to a twig stuck in the ground by the side of the road. We stopped. When we looked in the edge of the woods, we could see more of the tape surrounding a rather large chunk of something round which looked like a double boat propeller with a ring around it.
"Unlike the wide areas marked off in Nacogdoches, there was a rather small area marked and there was no one around. We took pictures. Then as we went down the road, we discovered that there were many small markers.
"Once we knew what to look for, we found lots of pieces which were easy to get to and to take pictures of. Among other things, we found a circuit board, material which could have been from a seat or a uniform, and part of a seat restraint which had been ripped apart.
"Near where we found the seat restraint and the cloth, we found search parties walking through the woods. We presumed they were looking for remains. People seemed to be about 5 feet apart slogging through dense undergrowth and a creek, which looked like it was probably a home to snakes.
"Shortly before we got back to Lake Sam Rayburn, we saw a wide spot marked off with lots of yellow tape. There were a couple of highway patrol cars parked there. We stopped to see if there was anything to take pictures of.
"After taking some shots of a piece of white material which looked like it might have come from the outside of the shuttle, I spoke to the patrolmen. I asked if they had heard anything on Saturday morning. They both laughed and said, 'No, they pulled us in here from soooo far away.' He told me where they were from, but I didn't recognize the name. Somebody later told me that they thought it was in West Texas.
"I heard on the local news that they had found part of the fuel cells on the runway at the Nacogdoches airport. They closed it down. But they weren't rushing to get the stuff out immediately because they also declared a 'no fly' zone over the area. There are constantly airplanes going over here as it is on several major air routes out of Houston.
"It seems strangely quiet, except for the occasional search helicopters. And the governor has said that there will be no school in any of the affected area until the buildings and grounds have been thoroughly checked out. I think this may have been because they found 25 or 30 pieces of debris in one of the schools in Nacogdoches.
"We'll probably go back to Hemphill on Wednesday to get the paper that comes out weekly like The Sylva Herald. I suspect the big media trucks will have moved on to another story by then. But the people in this area will never forget."
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Immediately following Saturday's space shuttle explosion, Barbara Eberly found scattered debris, presumably from the Columbia, throughout Nacogdoches County, Texas. The Caney Fork resident, temporarily living in Lufkin, Texas, reported that "some objects hit the ground so forcefully, all you see are deep holes. Other pieces have been on easily accessible roadways and farms and fairly heavily traveled roads. What is not going to be easy is finding things in the woods, rivers, lakes and swamps."