Last month, Iain and Jonathan Clark were flying to Washington for another memorial for Laurel.

On the plane, Iain asked why.

You promised I wouldn't have to go to any more funerals, he told his dad.

For Laurel Clark's family, Willie McCool's parents, Dave Brown's former sweetheart, Ilan Ramon's friends, and the astronauts who knew Kalpana Chawla, Rick Husband and Mike Anderson, the reminders are relentless.

Laurel -- Visceral memory

At the last minute, Jonathan Clark decided Iain didn't have to go to the dedication of the National Naval Medical Center auditorium outside Washington. Later, he was glad.

"They unveiled a very lifelike portrait that I think would have made him sad," he said.

A neurologist, Clark has been a flight surgeon and worked in mission control at Johnson Space Center. While most of the astronauts' spouses and loved ones have withdrawn from talking about the disaster, he has become their reluctant voice. "It's kind of my job at NASA now," he said.

"I think, like all of the families, we all feel very strongly about our spouses' sacrifice and would like to see that legacy carried on."

He's reprioritizing his life, putting aside the adrenalin fix of working with the shuttle. "I just feel like my whole full-time job is really my son," Clark said.

His Houston back yard was bleak during the winter of Columbia. But with spring and summer, the colorful flowers his wife planted are blooming, and he laments that Laurel can't enjoy them.

"Those things almost trigger a visceral memory of that presence," he said. "They're not painful. They're just poignant reminders of how much you miss somebody."

Iain has tried to put the disaster out of his mind. His friends told him terrorist Osama bin Laden shot down the shuttle. Then he saw ABC's TV special on the mission.

"He doesn't like to be reminded of the stuff that's painful," Jonathan Clark said.

"He was very, very close to Laurel, and he didn't even want her to go," said Laurel's mother, Marge Brown, who lives in New Mexico. "... An 8-year-old is still in the stage of life where they don't want to lose the protection of the adult who's taking care of them."

Laurel and Iain decorated the Christmas tree at Brown's house last year. For the Clarks and the Saltons, Laurel's memory will always be wrapped up in Christmas.

Laurel, her sister Lynne Salton and her mother exchanged carefully chosen ornaments every year. Last year, Laurel gave Lynne a space shuttle ornament.

The day the shuttle disintegrated over Texas, Laurel's brother Jon Salton and his wife flew to Houston from their home in New Mexico, where Jon works for Sandia National Laboratories.

When he entered the house where he had once lived with his sister's family, what he saw made him smile. Laurel had been so frantic preparing for her flight, she had left the family's Christmas tree fully decorated.

Believing the tree might upset his mother, Jon asked a neighbor to take it down. He climbed into the attic to find boxes for the ornaments. There, he discovered a notebook in which his sister had kept a record of every ornament she had received since the early 1970s.

"I kind of laughed, and I kind of cried," he said.

Earlier that day, beside the runway at Kennedy Space Center, Lynne waited for her sister.

They had always been close. A grade apart, they backed each other up on the playground. They fought over books. They were friendly competitors on the swimming team.

But unlike the astronauts' spouses, who were ushered to crew quarters and then to Houston when it became clear the shuttle wouldn't return, Lynne Salton was simply dropped off at the KSC Visitor Complex.

There, she and other relatives of the astronauts saw the flag at half-staff.

"We took one look at that, and it was just so emotional. It really hit us, my God, this has really happened," she said. They couldn't get anyone to give them information. Two employees argued over whether she was "family."

Laurel's siblings remember her best at the beach house at Kennedy Space Center, where the crew and family gathered for dinner two days before the launch. She was happy and relaxed.

Her brother Jon said they talked about seeing each other in a few weeks. "We smiled at each other and walked away," he said.

Laurel's mother was at the beach house, too. She was always apprehensive about her daughter's entry into the astronaut corps after stints as a Navy submarine doctor and flight surgeon.

"Risk was a not a factor they were mentally dealing with," she said of Laurel and her colleagues.

She has made the loss a part of her life. As other families have done, she established memorial funds in her daughter's honor.

"I don't know if I really want to recover from it," she said. "I want to remember her as she was. I like to think of her as still very much a part of my life, in a different way."

Willie -- Ready for risk

The letters, poems and sympathy cards arrive by the hundreds. Handmade gifts. E-mail. Invitations to memorials and tree-plantings.

The letters tell Audrey and Barry McCool that they were good parents, that their strength was visible in their son, the astronaut.

"You don't want to throw it away," Audrey said. Instead, she's trying to answer the outpouring of sympathy from around the world.

She and Barry saw Columbia on its way in, a bright star in the pre-dawn sky over their Las Vegas home.

It was the culmination of years of hopes and dreams. A military family, they hardened themselves to risk, and they celebrated the achievements of their children.

Willie McCool became a Navy pilot like his father. Barry was serving at sea when he heard Willie had been accepted into the astronaut program.

"It was just very, very gratifying that Willie's career was doing as well as it was, and he was probably going to outdo me," he said.

"He never wore being an astronaut on his sleeve. He was extremely humble."

Willie also was a great father, McCool said, who always made time for wife Lani and their boys.

Of Willie's three sons, two took a break from college when the accident happened. The third is in high school. They are doing well, Audrey McCool said, though her husband acknowledges it won't be easy facing Willie's September birthday and Christmas after that.

Audrey and Barry teach in the hotel college at the University of Nevada.

Willie wanted to be a teacher when he left the astronaut corps, Barry McCool said, so they try to respond when schools want him and Audrey to visit and speak.

"These astronauts were really normal people that studied hard in school, that really were not that much different from anybody else," Barry McCool tells children. "They had a lot of drive and initiative to work hard to get where they're at. My message is, don't let anybody tell you no if you really want something."

He remembers how joyful the crew was in orbit. He sees Willie doing somersaults, unfettered by gravity.

"You remember the good things," he said. "That's what makes it worthwhile."

Dave -- On the runway

For Ann Micklos of Cocoa, working with Columbia's debris was more than piecing together the remains of a ship she had helped launch 20 times. It was more than something to do after attending three memorial services in three cities in one terrible week.

It was the end of a long story.

On Feb. 1, she was waiting for the shuttle on the runway at Kennedy Space Center. As lead airframe engineer for Columbia, she was charged with inspecting the orbiter's tiles when it arrived.

The runway was where Dave Brown had first asked her out, when Columbia landed there in 1999. Micklos and Brown dated for more than three years, broke up, but remained good friends.

Brown was a Navy pilot and a medical doctor, what colleagues called a "Renaissance astronaut." He worked at Kennedy Space Center while he was in training for what would be his first and last mission.

When Micklos worked in Palmdale, Calif., during Columbia's most recent overhaul, Brown would fly in from Houston to visit. One weekend, they decided to meet in San Diego and ended up staying with a friend of Brown's offshore on the USS Constellation, where they watched the "cat and trap" drills -- catapult takeoff and trap landings. "It was just an incredible experience," she said, and not at all what she thought she'd be doing that weekend. "I'm thinking, 'And I thought I was going to the zoo.'"

While adventurous, Brown was also humble and considerate. "Everyone was always equal in Dave's eyes, without a doubt," Micklos said.

His gymnastics coach at the College of William and Mary, longtime friend Cliff Gauthier, called Brown an "everyday hero."

Brown took a snapshot of Gauthier and wife Linda into orbit, then sent the Gauthiers an e-mail from Columbia with a photo attached. It showed the snapshot floating in front of the orbiter windows, with Earth in the background. Brown called it "Gauthiers in space."

"Those are just the kinds of things he did in the course of everyday life," Gauthier said.

Micklos, like others at the space center, knew early on that a piece of foam had fallen off Columbia's external tank during its Jan. 16 ascent and hit the ship.

She hesitates when asked if she was worried on the runway that day. "There's always a concern," she said.

"When we had gotten word over the radios that there had been loss of signal of the orbiter, my first reaction was to call Dave's parents," she said. She used her cellular phone to reach Dorothy Brown, gently telling her that Columbia might be lost.

The landing support convoy then had to make the distressing drive back down the runway. Employees gathered for a quick prayer.

"I got up and asked if I could speak," she said. She wanted to convey what Brown had told her to say in case he did not return.

"He told me that he wanted me to let everybody know that he holds no animosity for what has happened," Micklos said. "He died doing what he loved and holds no regrets."

K.C., Rick and Mike -- Always a smile

Former astronaut Winston Scott, now executive director of the Florida Space Authority, knew the crew well, especially Kalpana Chawla. She was his crewmate on another Columbia science mission in 1997.

K.C., an India-born American citizen, "was our crew 'fun officer,' for lack of a better term," Scott said. When they were in orbit, she always insisted the astronauts play games before they went to sleep.

Their mission took place during the Olympics in Nagano, Japan, so K.C. organized an Olympics in space. She did a midair figure-skating routine.

One night, Scott and K.C. were flying into Houston on a T-38 astronaut training jet. Bad weather diverted them to New Orleans. They were low on fuel. It was dark.

"You don't have much room for error," Scott said.

K.C. came through with her usual aplomb, flying the plane while Scott perused information they needed to land. "I was really glad to have her along that night," he said.

The astronaut corps is close. Classmates within the corps are even closer.

Jim Reilly, who's in training for an upcoming shuttle mission, was in the class of 1995 with Chawla, Michael Anderson and Rick Husband.

Rick was "solid," said Reilly. "You could depend on him for anything. He was another guy that was always smiling. In our class, it was always fun to get him going. He had a really sharp mind and a really good sense of humor."

Every once in a while, Husband made friends laugh with phrases he'd picked up. He'd imitate a salsa commercial, exclaiming, "Boy, howdy, New York City!"

"The feeling is like we lost a family member," said Garrett Booth, executive pastor for Grace Community Church in Clear Lake, Texas, to which Husband and Anderson belonged.

Since the accident, Rick's wife, Evelyn, has been speaking publicly at Christian conferences. She is working on a book, "High Calling: The Courageous Life and Faith of Space Shuttle Commander Rick Husband."

The men's families "are just incredibly strong in their faith in God, and that's providing them a real strength to move forward," Booth said.

Husband sang in the church choir, continuing a lifelong love of music.

"He would sing, and out from this guy would come this unbelievable voice," said fellow astronaut Jim Reilly. "It was just the most amazing thing."

Reilly and Anderson flew together on a shuttle mission to the Russian space station Mir. He, Anderson and crewmate Joe Edwards teased each other mercilessly. When Anderson tried to stick the nickname "Spuds" on Idaho-born Reilly, they turned it around and made Anderson "Spuds" from then on.

"Whenever he was around and you could get him to smile and laugh, he had a truly infectious laugh and grin," Reilly said of Anderson.

All three of them liked hot cars. Reilly was into American sports cars. Edwards dug Ferraris. Anderson was partial to Porsches.

One day, Anderson volunteered to give Reilly a ride on a steamy Houston day. Instead of turning on the air-conditioning, Anderson had the windows of his Porsche rolled down. It was excruciatingly hot.

"'Yeah, the heater solenoid is stuck on, and I can't turn it off,'" Anderson told Reilly. "It must have been 120 degrees."

The astronauts are looking forward to flying again, with their fallen friends in mind.

"I think it's harder on the families in many ways," Reilly said. "They have to deal with an awful lot, the news that's constantly popping up, and just the fact that their loved one is gone. It's not easy for any of us to bury our friends, but it's just the kind of thing you have to do when something like that happens."

Ilan -- Despite darkness

Thrust into the spotlight as Ilan Ramon's advisor, Rabbi Zvi Konikov said he's learned a lesson from the first Israeli astronaut. Although he was a secular Jew, Ramon wanted to know how to keep the Sabbath when there's an orbital sunset every 90 minutes.

"Regardless of what you're involved in, no matter how important, everyone needs to pause and remember why we're here," said Konikov, rabbi of Chabad Jewish Community Center of the Space Coast.

The Satellite Beach rabbi went to Israel for Ramon's funeral and returned for a memorial service in July. Even months after the disaster, thousands of people paid homage.

There, the rabbi saw Ilan's wife, Rona. She is infusing their four children with strength and courage. "She's a remarkable person, and you could see it in the eyes of the children," he said.

Ramon's mother survived a Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Her fortitude was reflected in her son. "That was something really great in his character: Despite darkness, we will prevail," the rabbi said.

"When he was happy, that's what Ilan was all about at that moment," said John Kanengieter, who helped lead the Columbia crew on a wilderness expedition for the National Outdoor Leadership School.

"He lived life in the moment, in the sense that while all this was going on, he could feel very quickly and had a great sense of humor. He had a marvelous twinkle in his eyes, always. He loved his life intensely and his family, I know. He felt a great responsibility, I know, for his country, and at the same time, he was excited to bear it."

He was also a good listener. As a leader, he could crystallize a group discussion and transform it into action, Kanengieter said.

The 2001 expedition in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains was a turning point for the crew, which trained longer than most because of persistent delays in its 16-day science mission.

Living together 24 hours a day for 12 days, seeing one another at their worst and best, they became more like a family than ever before.

Kanengieter, director of the school's Professional Training Institute, and fellow guide Andy Cline were part of that temporary family.

Kanengieter had lost climbing partners and friends before, but losing seven was beyond his experience.

"It's really been a black spring," he said.

"You wake up really happy one morning, and three hours later, you feel like you're at the pit of despair," Kanengieter said, "and I think part of that despair is just the despair for the families, the kind of empathetic response we all have."

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