Heroes.

• Author: kinney, David
• Position: Up Front

Two groups of people, three days apart, died on the job, one in the sky over Texas, the other in a Kinston factory. I know little about the lives of the latter but, like many since, have learned a lot about each of the astronauts who perished when the space shuttle shattered. All were heroes, we're told. Far more tragic, I believe, were the deaths of that woman and those three men in the West Pharmaceutical Services explosion.

Perhaps tragic is not the right word. To the ancient Greeks, tragedy befell only those of high noble birth whose flaws laid them low, and these were working folk. Astronauts, on the other hand, are the aristocracy of our meritocracy: Seven of Homo sapiens' smartest, toughest specimens, highly educated and superbly trained, were on the Columbia that day, returning from a mission few of their fellows across the face of Earth are fit to perform. They died doing a job that they and millions more aspired to, one which most mortals can do no more than admire. Nobody aspires to a career making rubber plungers for syringes.

Death, as he has been on every space mission, was a member of the shuttle crew, hovering in the background, and the seven men and women, ever mindful of his presence, knew their fate were he to take command. But Faye Wilkins, William Gray, James Byrd and Kevin Cruiess, who died later in the hospital, never expected to find him, lunch bucket in hand, when they walked through the plant gates.

"The disaster took everyone by surprise," an editorial in the Greenville Daily Reflector notes. "It took the peace of mind of every worker that punches in at a manufacturing...