Only the heartless would not grieve with the families and relatives of those who lost their lives in the Columbia Shuttle disaster Saturday. We mourn with the families and with this nation. Those brave souls are examples of the cost of truth and discovery.

As an instructor of young minds, I view this tragic Columbia disaster as a very painful and costly lesson. It is a lesson for all of us, teaching the great cost of discovery, knowledge, and learning.

These brave men and women from India, Israel, the USA, of black and white races, were on a mission of discovery to advance the boundaries of human understanding on this earth and beyond. The mission was, as much as we know, a scientific mission to explore certain principles of plant growth and human reactions.

These men and women were not in space to colonize, spy, or get advantage of one people over another. They were not there as some rich man's fancy to see and feel space merely for the hedonistic pleasure of saying, "I was there." They were not interlopers with wealth in search of hedonistic pleasures.

Instead, they were there in a positive battle that would enhance all humanity. Their battle was to push back the boundaries of ignorance and to understand the things that are not known; their battle to expand the boundaries of human understanding summons to mind Tenneyson's words, mouthed by Ulysses:

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move....

And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This disaster represents the extreme cost of learning; a cost they were aware existed and were willing to chance and ultimately to pay its price that we all could expand beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

But how tragic it is that men of small notions but large wealth would expend their wealth and even hazard their lives for such vanity as a momentary sensation of sight, sound, inner feelings, and boasting rights to merely say, "I've been there and done that."

These international astronauts were larger individuals than pleasure seekers. They represented the world and the concerns of others; they were their brother's keepers because their actions were for others and not themselves.

Gibbs salutes these brave men and women who gave their lives without fanfare and wide recognition, other than in their deaths. And these are those silent black and white Americans and people of the world who work daily without recognition and are, as Jesus described his disciples, "The salt of the earth."

They were the world, and they made this world a better place for you and me.[]

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