PORT ANGELES — Astronaut William “Willie” C. McCool was a backcountry camper who so loved Olympic National Park that he took a piece of it — a baseball-size hunk of basalt rock — with him on space shuttle Columbia.
Today, a plaque and educational display is being prepared for the park’s Port Angeles Visitor Center, 3002 Mount Angeles Road, as a tribute to McCool.
McCool, the Columbia’s pilot, died Saturday with six other astronauts when the shuttle broke apart in the last minutes of the 16-day space mission.
It was the former Whidbey Island Naval Air Station pilot’s first and final trip into space — a journey he worked for all of his life.
“Over the past 15 years, my family and I have enjoyed numerous outings to the Olympic National Park,” McCool wrote in one of several letters to park officials and a park support group.
“We have many fond memories of the Peninsula’s scenic coastlines, forests and mountains.”
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The rest of the story appears in the Tuesday Peninsula Daily News. Click on SUBSCRIBE at the top of this page to get the PDN delivered to your home or office.