Today is Indigenous Peoples Day, an official city and state holiday in various locations in the United States that celebrates and honors Indigenous American peoples, also referred to as Native Americans, and commemorates their histories and their cultures. So, who was the first Indigenous American to fly to space? Let's find out! [Music] This is T-Minus Deep Space. I'm Maria Varmazis. John Herrington is a member of the Chickasaw Nation and holds the honor of being the first enrolled member of a Native American tribe to fly in space. He is a retired U.S. Naval Aviator and a test pilot and a retired NASA astronaut. Harrington was selected as a mission specialist for STS-113 and flew to the International Space Station on November 23, 2002. Hi, my name is John Herrington. I'm a retired NASA astronaut, a former Naval Aviator and test pilot, and I'm a proud citizen of the Chickasaw Nation in Central Oklahoma. Thank you so much, John, for joining me. You have a really fascinating story, and we're just going to start at the beginning. I'm someone who struggled a lot with college, so when I was reading your bio, I related very strongly, and I would love if -- I'm sure you've told the story a zillion times, but could you indulge me a bit about how rock climbing got you out of school and then back into it? Oh, sure. Yeah. Well, we know all start school with this notion of being something in life, right? And I liked being outdoors. I lived in Colorado at the time, and so I decided I wanted to be a forest ranger. I wanted to work outside. I did not want to work behind a desk. And I spent most of my time outside during my first year of college. I worked in a restaurant. Texas is working full-time at a restaurant in Colorado Springs, and I was out at a place called Garden of the Gods one day with my textbooks. I was going to study, right? I ended up meeting two guys who were climbing, and they asked me if I wanted to learn how, and I said I would love to. And so I did. I started doing that, and I found more interest in rock climbing than I did in sitting in class. I went to class, but I didn't really study. I didn't have the motivation to do it. I ended up having a whopping 1.72 grade point by the end of my second semester. And since I was working full-time and going to school part-time, I actually got suspended right away. They don't put you on probation. They don't say, "Hey, think about it. They just suspend you." And so I found myself out of school a second semester freshman. That's a good start, right? Yeah, well, I don't know. Good, good, good. That's how you look at it. But the fact that I was a rock climber, and I worked with a guy in the restaurant, was also a rock climber. Roundabout kind of way, my restaurant sent me to Texas. I worked in Fort Worth, Texas, for a few months in the summer. And I hated it, not Fort Worth. I just hated, you know, the job was terrible. And I called my friend, and he said, "I've got a job for you." And I said, "Doing what?" And he said, "Rock climbing." And I said, "Oh, really?" You know, so I learned more about it. And I called my dad, and I said, "Hey, I've got this great opportunity to get a job rock climbing in Colorado." He said, "Good. Don't quit. You know, you've got a good job. Don't quit." And I said, "Well, that was on a Thursday. I think I quit on Friday. By Monday morning, I was in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, with my Volkswagen Carme Dia starting to work on a survey crew on Interstate 70 in Glenwood Canyon." And then, so, yeah, yeah, so, and then that ignited the passion. I was reading this in your bios. I'm giving the sort of very summarized version, but that sort of reignited a passion in STEM on your own and sort of brought you back into college in its own way. Well, it's the first time in my life where I saw math in practice. You know, math wasn't on a textbook. Math was on a highway, hanging off of a cliff, working with guys who used these really unique instruments that would measure distances using a beam of light. And so I started asking questions, and I was lucky the guy I worked for convinced me if I wanted to make something myself, I'd better go back to school and become an engineer and not accept being the lowest person on the crew. Smart, smart. So basically, what my obvious question is, what happened next after that? Wow, I went back to, well, actually, he encouraged me to go back to school, so I reapplied to the university and bless her heart. They let me back in. My grades hadn't changed. You know, I think I'd personally changed. I went back in now with a motivation to study something I thought I saw a purpose in. And I was very lucky that I had a great circle of friends I made in the engineering department. We really worked well together. I learned this idea of collaborative learning. It wasn't just me. It was working with other people and being able to solve problems, not on your own, but working with others. So you have this interest and you have motivation and you have a circle of friends. And that made it much easier. I mean, it's still hard. You still have to do the calculus, you have to do the physics and all that. But considering I didn't do well in my first semester, not taking these type of classes, I did much better. I got my grade point up to a 3.2. And by the time I was a senior, I worked for the mathematics department. I was a tutor and grader for an instructor named Nancy Bags. Nancy was a calculus instructor. And bless her heart. I was her grader and she would give me a stack of papers to grade. And then sometimes when she couldn't do a class, I would get the tutor of the class and be a proctor. That was kind of cool. But I was given a student to a tutor who was a retired Navy captain who flew Dauntless dive bombers in World War II. He became my Navy tutor. I was his calculus tutor. And so he encouraged me to join the Navy. I did that in 1983. Oh, that's excellent. And you have a very distinguished Naval career. Really quite a remarkable number of achievements there. And then that also then springboarded you later into a NASA career, which is phenomenal. I was listening to an interview you did a few years ago and something you said I thought was very striking about your experience in space and also flying as an astronaut changed your perspective on working with people in other countries. I thought that was a really, yeah, I would could you expand on that a little bit please? That was fantastic. Well, you know, I'm a naval aviator, right? My job is to hunt Russian submarines. That was my job. I did that for four years, you know, in the western northern Pacific and I hunt the Russians, you know, hey, they weren't enemy, right? Cold war. And by the time I became an astronaut, I was working with Russians. I was living in Russia. I lived in Moscow. I lived in Star City. Two of my crewmates I was going to fly on the space station with were cosmonauts, Russian military officers. One guy was, that guy was a flight doc. But you know, I'm working with the people that my entire professional career as an aviator, I was told to fear. I was told they were the enemy. And the reality is they're not. You know, the political system is different. We know it's going on full force right now. But in terms of the cosmonauts and the astronauts, that wasn't our job. Our job was to work together to do mission and to do it safely. I took a Russian to space on the space shuttle and we brought two Russians home. So very, very strange and a wonderful experience from what I was trained to do early on. [Music] We'll be right back. [Music] That's fantastic. There's so much to learn from that as well. And even in these challenging times, it's a really wonderful thing to be reminded of. I have so many questions. I'm going to be jumping around a little bit. I know you have been very busy since you retired from the Navy and from NASA. You've been, I'm a cyclist, so I saw, I heard about your trip across the country. And I was like, that's amazing. I did my first century last year and I said, wow, I, but what you did is absolutely phenomenal. So I just couldn't see you on that. Which sounds weird saying that to an astronaut, but seriously, I would love to hear about what you've been doing in terms of your work. What you've been doing in terms of mentorship with young people, especially with people encouraging young indigenous students and to STEM careers. I imagine that's a lot of what you're doing now. I'd love to hear a little bit about maybe what you share with the students and what you're hearing back from them. Well, one of the very first speaking engagements I had as an astronaut, you know, if we all get these requests to speak and everything, given the fact that my heritage is Native American, you know, I found myself in a role that I didn't expect to be in. It was a role model to kids that never had one before. And so my very first speaking engagement was to the American Indian Science and Engineering Society in the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas. 3,000 of my closest friends, right? I was scared to death, you know, to walk into this huge audience of Native people and to tell my story. And my story resonated. I mean, I was talking to my brothers, my sisters, my aunties, my uncles, you know, it was, it was a incredible experience and I got really deeply involved now in this notion of, you know, promoting STEM education and the idea that what, you know, what was my background? How did I overcome some challenges and, you know, who helped me along the way? And now I had this opportunity to kind of, to be in that place where I could work with others. And hopefully if they could see what I did, they could see it themselves, not necessarily to be an astronaut, but to be successful, you know, to overcome some really difficult, difficult matter and, and then to, you know, find a career that you're passionate about. And so I was on the board for ACES twice by the time I retired. I worked in the commercial space world for a couple of years and unfortunately I hit my horse the wrong wagon. And, you know, hopping on a bicycle and doing what? You know, talking to Native kids across the country, different reservations and NASA schools about my career as an astronaut. And hopefully I would inspire them. And every, every day I wrote a, I wrote a blog and every blog had a math or science problem in it. And the idea was that when students, you know, it had to be as simple as, you know, for, you know, for say first graders, John's going from, you know, this town to this town. How far is it? Well, look at a map, you know, well, if he did it in five hours and it's 30 miles, how fast did he pedal? So he started getting the math and then circumference of a wheel, blah, blah, blah. The idea is that I want to kids to be engaged and math can be fun. Math can be interesting as long as you have a, if you have a purpose behind it, that type of thing. And you can see it, visualize it. So I was able to talk to kids and, and matter of fact, I, I gave a talk once in Durango, Colorado, Fort Lewis College to a group of Native Navajo kids during a NASA summer program. And, you know, years later, I'm on an elevator in Phoenix and this young lady walks up to me, she says, you know, you're John Harrington. Nobody does that, right? Yeah, I think I am. But, you know, it doesn't happen to me. I'm not, you know, it's not, I'm not Brad Pitt, right? So this young lady said, I met you when I was 11 years old at a summer camp in Fort Lewis College. And I didn't realize I could be an engineer until I met you. And she said, I want to thank you. And I'm now a civil engineer with the city of San Francisco, I believe. And I want to thank you for doing that. She got a big hug, took a selfie, you know, and you don't realize that you can have an impact on somebody's life without any knowledge. You know, just, you just do what you do. And I find that's a very gratifying thing. I did that to the people that encouraged me to go back to school. I called the guy that actually encouraged me to go back to school, that owned the company. I called him and I thanked him for his encouragement. He was probably in his late 80s or 90s when I did that. That's great, Ron. Good to hear. Good for you, you know. But, you know, I think it's, you'd be thankful to the people that encourage you to do things and be thankful that you listen. Very important. Absolutely. And I've often said to, in conversations with friends about how you can see the world best on a bike, you've got the most unique perspective. You've done it on, you've done a lot of the world on the bike, but then you went to space. You saw it from space. Well, you know, I lived, I worked in space. I was in space for two weeks. I lived underwater for 10 days in the Florida Keys, and a thing called NEMO, NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations. And then I rode a bike across the country, you know, the first was space, second was underwater, third was a bike. And I saw the world from three different beautiful perspectives, you know, the macro perspective of seeing it in this grandiose, beautiful, moving out of the atmosphere overview. And I felt the overview effect, how it fundamentally changes you. I lived underwater. I saw a little creel shrimp in the, in the porthole and fish going. You know, big grouper, you know, go outside to dive. It was a big grouper. It was a big manta ray coming at you. Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. And then I got to ride across the country and I met people. I met a Korean veteran. I met people that just sitting on a porch in Arkansas, you know, just wanted to shoot the breeze, you know, pedaling through 100 degree temperatures and hearing the sprinkler system. And how cool it was. I mean, just as a, we were very fortunate to live on this beautiful planet. I've seen it from three different perspectives and I'll never, I will appreciate every one of those for the rest of my life. That's, that's so beautiful. I was so curious what you thought about that and you answered it before I could ask. I just was, I cannot imagine a more unique perspective than that, especially I know that you've done a lot of work. I was looking at Into Nature's Wild, the trailer for that. I know you've done a lot of work on sharing the beauty of our planet with the next generation. It's so important. I know we're coming up on the end of our time. So I just wanted to ask what advice you would give to our listeners, many of whom are working in commercial space, but many of whom are also trying to mentor the next generation as this is something you do a lot of. Like, I'm very curious what you would share with them in terms of how to encourage the next. Yeah, I just think, you know, what you do, you're passionate about. I mean, I love my job in NASA. I thought it was the greatest experience I ever had. You know, being able to, you know, both work on the vehicle, you know, launch people into space, recovery when they come home, being, doing a spacewalk and being hanging on by thumb and a short finger at the end of the space station. And, you know, they're all fabulous things, but I think it's most important. And one of the astronauts told us this early on. He said, in the history of the world, we'd be 108 billion people who lived on this planet. Okay. As of today, I think it's like, I'm a 600 something or so have had the privilege of flying in space. And he said, don't forget how fortunate you are to do something so very few people have ever done. And it'd be who's who to share that story with others. So then, can you think that if you love something and you love it with a passion, you love the job you do, share that passion with kids that may not, you know, understand what you do. You know, I've always told people, there's something you want to do, go meet somebody doing it and talk to them. You know, don't just assume you think you know what it's going to be. I assumed I'd be a forest ranger. I'd never talked to a forest ranger. You know, I joined the Navy because I tutored a met a gentleman who encouraged me to do something exciting, who had done it for his career. And when you can make that connection with somebody that hopefully they'll go down a path that they'll get paid to do something they love to do. I think, gosh, that's what we all aspire to, right? No matter flying in space or being an engineer, you know, being an author, those type of things. Do something, get paid to do something you'd love to do. Everybody has challenges in their life, right? You know, I got kicked out of school early on, figured it out, got back in. I got married, worked a really hard job, got divorced, unfortunately, as one as at NASA. You know, it's a tough job. I found another woman that I got married to on my bike ride who unfortunately passed away from cancer. And I just got remarried again this summer to a remarkable woman. I'm right now. Thank you very much. You know, life has really a lot of challenges. And just because you do something that's fascinating and fun, and there's a day that's going to come to an end, you know, and how else do you surround that? What you do is fun. So I've very fortunate I've had some challenges like everybody, all of us do. How do you overcome those challenges and move on and make the most of your life? Very wise words. Thank you so much for sharing that with me, telling me your story. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining me today, John. My pleasure. Thank you so much. And that's T-minus Deep Space brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. We'd love to know what you think of our podcast. 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Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time. [Music] [Music]
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