By DR. SCOTT M. LIEBERMAN
EAST TEXAS (TYLER MORNING TELEGRAPH) - It was a cool East Texas winter morning with blue skies from horizon to horizon, typical of a February day.
On
Feb. 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia was expected to re-enter the
Earth's atmosphere, completing a 16-day mission and returning seven
Astronauts back to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I grew up as a
dedicated fan of our country's space program, and of the various manned
programs leading to the moon shots. I even took my daughter, Deandra, to
Space Camp in Alabama to participate in an interesting father-daughter
activity, built around the shuttle program. I continued to follow the
events of NASA even when the news coverage of the flights had long since
become routine and minimal.
The night before Columbia's
return, I looked at predicted flight tracks and was excited to note that
it could fly over East Texas, just to the south of Tyler itself. This
was uncommon. The shuttles often flew to Florida over Panama or Mexico
and then the Gulf of Mexico on their return, so this approach was rare.
As a cardiologist, I was on coverage that weekend with my
partner, Dr. Alex Petrakian, and our task was to take emergency calls
and make rounds at Tyler hospitals.
By 6 a.m., it appeared
Columbia was going to try to return on the first available orbit, and I
was happy because it meant that it would pass by Tyler by 8 a.m. and I
would still be able to see it before work.
Shortly before 7 a.m.,
Columbia turned tail first and fired her main engines for a short burn
that would decelerate her enough to fall out of orbit. After that, she
was committed to re-entry and a pass over East Texas.
But the
crew was unaware of a launch incident: A piece of insulating foam from
the external fuel tank had broken off and damaged the left wing, damage
that likely had sealed the crew's fate.
Six months earlier, I
had acquired a Canon digital single lens reflex camera, which had a huge
sensor (for the time), of 6 megapixels. It is important to note that at
that time, there was a significant debate in the blogosphere about
using digital cameras for news at all. While digital images were being
used to some extent in photojournalism for newspapers, film images still
were the preferred standard, especially for the glossy news magazines
like TIME or Newsweek. Other than listening to the debate, I never
thought it mattered much to me. Publishing images in the news media was
not something I had done since I was a section editor of our college
newspaper. But I enjoyed getting into making images with this new
technology.
Several years earlier we had seen a re-entry of a
shuttle over East Texas in the evening and it was spectacular. It was a
greenish, glowing fireball, streaking across the sky. I was really
looking forward to the chance to get some images this time around. I was
not, however, thinking about the news business at the time. I assumed
that the images I was hoping to take would be a treasure for my family.
You never know what turn life is going to take. A little before 8 a.m.,
my wife Robyn, son, Mason, and I went out to our back yard to wait for
Columbia, with the still camera, a small video camera and binoculars.
Shortly
afterward and right on time, I saw the streak of light, with the
contrail behind it rising in the sky, as if coming from Dallas and
heading to the Southeast. I started the video camera, which my wife then
held, and I started taking still photos, with both a wide-angle lens
and a zoom lens. While I was busy taking pictures and changing lenses,
my wife, who was looking at the screen on the video camera said, "Is it
supposed to look like it is breaking up?" I could make out a parallel
contrail, which is what I thought she was referring to. Initially, it
looked fairly normal. The path came out of the west and moved east as
expected. After it passed, we went inside with only a quick look at the
images. I was pleased that they looked in-focus and was turning my
attention to going to work.
The TV was on the network news, and
they were still talking about the upcoming landing. About four minutes
later, after the fly over, the sonic booms hit. Normally it would have
been two loud discrete sounds. However, what we heard was a long
increasing rumble getting louder for about a minute and then quieter. It
was not what I expected, and I put together what my wife had said with
that sound and ran back to the camera, this time looking closer at the
images. After zooming in, I could clearly see multiple contrails and
falling debris. On TV, the announcers were starting to say that Columbia
was "running a little late." It cannot run late. Even landing is timed
to the second. It was then that I was certain that we had witnessed the
breakup of the spacecraft, and I felt my throat drop as into my stomach.
Having
gone to Edward R Murrow High School in New York City, it might only be
natural that I had an interest in journalism, too. I had been on the
newspaper staff there, as I had in college as well. My first instinct
was that these images needed to be shared, so I reached out to all the
media outlets here in town. Within moments I contacted the folks at the
Tyler Morning Telegraph, who asked me to bring the images in. I checked
with my medical partner, and learned that all was quiet at the
hospitals; and my life's unexpected shift had begun.
I soon
headed over to the Morning Telegraph. After they reviewed the pictures, I
got to meet Jim Giametta, editor. He suggested letting the Associated
Press see the images, and I agreed that was a good idea. Shortly after
the AP moved the images on its wire, the Morning Telegraph began
receiving phone calls from TIME magazine and others. Through a series of
calls, they expressed a strong interest in buying the images, but they
wanted exclusivity for their use. I was concerned because I felt the
images needed distribution. By this point I had met on the phone with
Ron Heflin of the Dallas bureau of the AP and Bob Daugherty, then
director of the AP State Photo Center in Washington, D.C. They helped
manage these images. Bob assured me that the AP was the way to go for
widest distribution, and I agreed to the revenue share arrangement they
offered. Some years later Bob told me that our deal was one of the
easiest he had in his career at AP. Over the years they have become
great friends of ours. Ron and his wife Sue are extended family now, and
I went to D.C. for the celebration when Bob retired. It really was an
easy decision and I opted to let the AP keep the images and let them
handle TIME.
They ended up using the image on its cover anyway,
even without the exclusive. The rest of Feb. 1, 2003, was such a blur. I
gave many interviews over the phone and to TV news teams from Louisiana
and Oklahoma that came to East Texas to cover the story.
I
made it to the hospitals and got my rounds done, and got home after one
last interview that day in the hospital lobby for a TV crew. My wife
had told me that she saw the images on the web pages of Yahoo and AOL.
But we had not understood yet the reach that those images were to have. I
got a call from my partner, Alex, who told me that he had family
members who had seen the picture in their local newspaper. Apparently
the New York Times had started a print run with images from a TV video
from Dallas, but the presses were stopped and the front page was redone
with our photos. Extra editions of newspapers featuring that image came
out that afternoon in Florida and Houston. Some of the Florida papers
ran it on their banner for a week.
By Sunday morning, as we
would later learn, more than 1,400 newspapers worldwide ran those images
on their front pages. By Monday, doctors I work with at the hospitals
who had family members worldwide were calling in to see if they knew me.
They had all seen the picture, my name and the city of Tyler's name.
The AP later estimated that 2.4 billion people saw them in the first 24
hours after the accident. By Sunday afternoon, a crew from LA's "Inside
Edition" TV show was at the house for an interview. I don't think I
could ever have anticipated the impact those images had before this
happened.
There were a few fairly emotional moments when it
really hit. Early Monday morning, my nurse, Denise, brought me a copy of
the TIME, and seeing the image as large as it was on the cover really
hit home. The magnitude of the image's impact and the sense of loss for
the crew were a little overwhelming. Another moment occurred a few
months later while in Washington, D.C., for a meeting. A nurse at the
hospital, who had been there the week before had told me that the
picture was in the Library of Congress, so I went to go look for myself.
Seeing the front page of the Tyler paper on display, and my name on the
information card in a museum-like gallery, next to the classic image of
the Wright Brothers' first flight, was not something for which you can
prepare.
The picture won a few awards. The Texas AP Managing
Editors gave it an award for Spot News Photography. The AP submitted the
images to the Pulitzer Prize committee, but it did not win that year;
it's hard for a single image to beat a team's coverage of the Iraq
invasion. But perhaps more important than awards are the fact of the
unique record that the images likely hold. According to Daugherty, it
was "the single widest-used image to illustrate a breaking news event of
all time." In an article about the picture, The Poynter Institute
called it "the digital image that played around the World."In some ways
it was a touchstone point in the news business. It ended the debate
about the role of digital cameras for getting published in magazines, as
it was among the first digital images on the cover of TIME and across
two pages inside of Newsweek. By the end of 2003, there were almost no
dark rooms to develop pictures in newsrooms anymore.
Poynter called it the "Digital Icon." It likely marked the end of film as well.
That
image began my now 10-year relationship with the Tyler Morning
Telegraph and the AP. I studied press images, learned to caption,
developed better photographic techniques, got better cameras and studied
the AP style. I had learned the power of sharing images. Having been
bitten by the bug, I started to contribute images to the AP. I have
continued a relationship with AP as a freelancer and independent
photographic contributor, and now have thousands of images in the
archives. One of the requests I made with Daugherty when I gave them the
images was my desire to cover the return to flight of the shuttle
program. While I missed that first return to fight launch of the shuttle
Discovery, I was at the Cape in Florida for its landing, which
unfortunately had to occur in California instead. Nevertheless, I did
make it to two launches and was on the shuttle landing facility for the
final touchdown of Atlantis to close out the shuttle era. I can't tell
you how many mixed emotions that created. Along the way I have gotten to
know and shoot images alongside some great people from the press.
Several have been mentors to me, and I appreciate their time and their
skill.
Over the years I have had the privilege to photograph many
celebrities, politicians and events. I have had other front-page images
that ran in papers all over the world, but nothing like that first one.
I might never win a Pulitzer or have an image of that kind of impact
again, but I enjoy contributing images that tell stories or show our
world to people.
Debris from the space shuttle Columbia streaks across the sky over Tyler on Feb. 1, 2003. The Columbia broke apart in flames 200,000 feet over Texas killing all seven astronauts just minutes before they were to glide to a landing in Florida.
