“I’m on the phone talking to my daughter who’s in Cape Cod (Orlando) saying, Willie’s on his way he just passed over the house,” Willie’s Father Barry McCool said as he watched his son fly in from outer space. “It was beautiful, he should be there in a few minutes.”

From their Las Vegas home at the time, Barry and his wife Audrey were excited and proud of their son Willie, the NASA astronaut from Lubbock, as he flies in from space on the Space Shuttle Columbia on February 1, 2003. 

Barry said little did they know, they were taking pictures of the shuttle as it was disintegrating. 

“I’m listening to the transmission and I hear in the background, ‘Houston this is x235 I no longer have inferred or visual on the space shuttle,’ and instantaneously in my mind I pick up on that, that there’s a problem,” Barry said.

Seven U.S. astronauts, including Willie, lost communication in Houston that day.

“You hear Cape Cod [on the radio] saying, ‘This is Houston how you copy,’ and you hear static and about that time on the TV the star burst to the shuttle that was on the video that someone took that was coming a part,” Barry said. “I looked over at Audrey and I said, Willie’s gone.”
 
As the country remembers this day 14 years later, Barry and Audrey say their proud of their hero.
 
“Today, Audrey and I got up and we had a moment of silence remembering the significance of today,” Barry said. “I went to Willie’s statue over on 82nd Street and I took down all of the Christmas decorations that we had for Willie.”
 
He added that this day not only shows their sacrifice but as a launching pad for positive things to come. 
 
“We do a lot to keep Willie and Columbia’s memory going,” Barry said. “We feel that these are seven astronauts who became heroes. America, with all the turmoil that we have going on today in our society with our protests, the borders, immigration and you need to have some positive things. There have been a lot of positive things that have come out of loss of those seven astronauts all over the world.”