Carolina Quotes
I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, and at the time, a congressional appointment was out of the question. So, I wrote my congressman, my senators; yes, my two state senators, my congressman, and the Vice President of the United States, who at the time was Lyndon B. Johnson, every year from ninth grade, saying that I wanted to go to the Naval Academy. I would get letters back, very kindly, from each of them each year, saying, “Well, it’s not until your senior year that you’re eligible, so just kind of relax and enjoy life.” I would write them back and say I just wanted them to know who I was, because I was serious about it.
Charles Bolden Carolinian
Source
Oral history interview by Sandra Johnson, Houston, Texas, 6 January 2004; NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project
- form
- interview
- work
- NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project
- year
- 2004
Cite this record
“I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, and at the time, a co…” Charles Bolden. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-9639813AB1. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/9639813ab1
More from Charles Bolden
Technically, we were fully qualified, fully ready, and everything. Emotionally, I wasn’t even close. I started crying. Not bawling or anything, but just kind of tears rolling down my cheek when I looked out the window and saw the continent of Africa coming up. It looked like a big island. Just awesome, unlike anything I’d ever imagined.
I just don’t remember being afraid. Apprehensive is something different. Before every single flight—and I flew four times—before every single flight I would lay there in my seat, just with stuff in your stomach, because there was so much to do that you just didn’t want to do something wrong and put the crew in jeopardy. So, that bothered me. You work your way through it, but to say that it was a piece of cake—for some people it was, or for some people it may have been, but never for me. I worked really hard every flight.
I knew what astronauts were, but again, because I had grown up in South Carolina and I had seen the things that I had seen, I knew who astronauts were, I knew what they did, but not in my wildest imagination could somebody like me become an astronaut, because they were all white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, all test pilots, all about five-feet-ten. They all looked alike. And I was none of those.