Space is for everybody. It's not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That's our new frontier out there, and it's everybody's business to know about space.

It's not the Olympics. It's Concord, New Hampshire, and a homecoming should reflect the community I'm part of.

You have to dream. We all have to dream. Dreaming is OK. Imagine me teaching from space, all over the world, touching so many peoples lives. Thats a teachers dream! I have a vision of the world as a global village, a world without boundaries. Imagine a history teacher making history!

It was hard telling those kids...that I wasn't going to be there this year. And I knew I was going to miss them. I won't have an opportunity to see them again, unless they stop by the house. Now during the summer, I got lots of notes; kids would stop by the house. I'd be pulling weeds or something and they would come up and give me a hug and say, 'Oh, I can't believe it, this is so wonderful!' and just get very excited about it. It was hard not being in school. I would have loved to have gone back to school.

Just as the pioneer travelers of the Conestoga wagon days kept personal journals, I, as a pioneer space traveler, would do the same.

If I can get some student interested in science, if I can show members of the general public what's going on up there in the space program, then my job's been done.

I have the LIFE magazine of the men walking on the moon.