SANDY -- In 1985, when Don Lind piloted the space shuttle Challenger, he wanted to bring along his high school. But he couldn't. Not nearly enough room.
So he did the next thing. He took along a Jordan High School banner.Everybody's got loves of their life. For astronaut Lind, it's his alma mater, from which he graduated in 1948 as every science teacher's favorite student.
The faculty still talks about him in whispers in the halls. He actually understood physics.
When the people at NASA told him he could take a few lightweight things that meant a lot to him on his flight, he chose a memento from old Jordan High.
It probably had a lot to do with the fact he spent all those years defending being a Beetdigger.
A hundred and ten times that Beetdigger banner went around the earth. About 3 million miles. They always said Don Lind would go far.
It was difficult pinpointing the exact moments the shuttle passed over the high school steps in Sandy, since the earth was 255 miles below and the shuttle was traveling at 17,500 miles per hour.
When Lind came back to earth he marched straight to the high school and gave them the banner that had flown through space.
You don't forget something like that, and this past Friday, when the 93-year-old high school inaugurated a new honor called the Beetdigger Harvest Award, designed to annually recognize a distinguished alumni, the first recipient was the astronaut.
When you've been around as long as Jordan High, you have a lot of distinguished alumni to choose from, so Lind nosed out, among others, a long line of famous Jordan High graduates, among them a number of congressmen, star athletes, speed-reading guru Evelyn Wood and middleweight boxing champion Gene Fullmer, who may have been waiting for Lind out in the parking lot.
An auditorium full of Beetdiggers watched astronaut Lind receive his award at an assembly at the new Jordan High School this past Friday morning. Actually, two auditoriums full, due to the fact the school has so many students they can't all cram into the auditorium at once.
The farms have been replaced by teenagers.
So Lind got his award twice.
"I'm proud to be a Beetdigger," said a man old enough to remember when they actually used to recess school to dig up the beets.
The students, none of them old enough to remember when they even used to eat beets, roared their approval.
Don Lind gave the students the usual sage advice: study hard, get good grades, don't mess with drugs and alcohol, at all costs avoid police records, and hang in their and have faith.
Because you never know what's coming.
No way, he told them, could anyone have come to Jordan High when he was a student there and told him how to be an astronaut. Because in 1948 there were no astronauts. There wasn't even a space program. Just Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.
No way could anyone have told him that NASA would check his grades -- including his high school grades -- or that the FBI would check his past, or that he'd have to pass a 10-hour fitness physical just to qualify for outer space.
"You cannot even imagine the exciting things about to happen in your life," Lind told his fellow Beetdiggers.
Such as orbit the earth with a Beetdigger banner and live to tell about it.
Go anywhere, do anything, that's what Dr. Don Lind's message was to the classes of 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003, and be sure to take along "the seeds of education planted here at Jordan High."
For Beetdigger astronauts, the farm metaphors run deep.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.