It was twenty years ago, today, that NASA's Columbia Shuttle broke apart while re-entering the earth's atmosphere, claiming the lives of all seven astronauts aboard.  Dave Brown, a 1978 graduate and member of the William & Mary Men's Gymnastics team, was among them. 
 
For me, the moment I got the news was one of those times in life that I will never forget. Sitting in my college apartment in Williamsburg, I watched the footage over and over on cable news.  I was well aware, immediately, that our community had lost a great scientist, explorer, friend, and teammate. 
 
As a student at the time, I had sat in the Wren yard a few months before, listening as Dave addressed the student body on the first day of classes in 2002.  I also had the privilege of meeting Dave when he stopped by practice the day before his speech.  In fact, in one of his Gymnotes, Cliff recorded what Dave, himself, had taught us that day:

 
Dave stopped by the gym and talked to the guys for quite a while. He talked about his gymnastics experiences at William & Mary and how they helped him grow as a person and learn how to function as a true teammate. He showed the gymnasts how important these qualities were in life in general and specifically how important they were to his selection as an astronaut.
 
Dave also went on to mention how applicable these lessons would be when he actually took off on his first space shuttle flight and especially if he were to achieve his dream of going to Mars.

 

What Dave described for us that day was – and is – the mission and philosophy of William & Mary Gymnastics.  Dave not only lived it, but in doing so, he also shaped and formed it.  Our mission – who we are and what we do - is a legacy that Dave helped create.  Here's another quote from Cliff's Gymnotes:

Dave "Dogpound" Brown and the gymnasts on the first teams I coached at William & Mary inspired me by realizing that honesty and integrity in pursuing dreams and goals were as important as the end result. By doing this, you can never truly fail. William & Mary gymnastics is all about trying to grow and learn more about ourselves through the fantastic medium of gymnastics. Beyond this we are all trying to help our teammates and everybody around us do the same without expectation of personal gain in return. This along with the impeccable pursuit of dreams is the William & Mary gymnastics legacy that Dave helped create.

It is a legacy that we carry forward today.  I signed the original W&M Gymnastics flag that Dave took with him on the Columbia.  Of course, it did not make it back.  But a second flag now hangs in the hallway of Kaplan Arena, signed by the 2005 team and framed along with a certificate of authenticity from NASA.  It flew nearly 6 million miles through space on the Discovery Shuttle to honor Dave's wishes. 

To this day, I stop at the flag with every recruit and their families to tell them about who Dave was and who we are.  I want them to know that we tenaciously pursue excellence in the gym, that we have a proud history of NCAA Champions and NCAA All-Americans and championship titles.  But I also need them to know, thanks to the legacy Dave helped create, that we are using the athletic experience to enhance the education and personal growth of our student-athletes. 

I'm quite certain there are any number of ways that Dave Brown's legacy lives on.  No doubt his scientific research continues to influence and enhance discoveries today.  His work as a doctor undoubtedly changed lives.  Thousands of children have competed at the Astronaut Dave Brown Memorial gymnastics meet, the Dave Brown Memorial Endowment continues to support the team, and the David M Brown planetarium in Arlington, VA was just named in his honor.
 
But I hope that one of the most prominent ways that Dave's legacy lives on is in the experience that many of you have had on the team, the ways your lives have been impacted by the mission and philosophy he shaped, and all the lives and communities you've impacted in turn. 
 
I recently reached out to Jacopo Gliozzi, a 2019 graduate now working on his PhD in Condensed Matter Physics, to get his thoughts on how the mission, shaped by Dave's influence, has impacted him.

Growing up, I tried my best to adhere to the Latin maxim "mens sana in corpore sano." At the time, that meant academics in the morning and gymnastics practice in the afternoon. I felt like I was properly training both my mind and my body to become a well-rounded person, but the two aspects remained divorced from each other. In school, I wanted to become a scientist; in the gym, I strived to one day compete at the NCAA level. It was not until I joined the William & Mary gymnastics team that I began to appreciate how interrelated these two spheres of my life were. As the skills I worked on became more and more challenging, the ability to break them down and analyze them step-by-step became indispensable. Instead of simply taking the same turn 20 times, as I would have done in high school, my teammates and coaches encouraged me to apply the same problem-solving principles that I employed in my physics classes. By taking a moment to think about the different stages of a skill, it often became possible to make the critical adjustment in only a couple of turns. Through moments like these, it became clear to me that my gymnastics experience itself was an inseparable component of my intellectual growth.
 
The values exemplified by William & Mary gymnastics allowed my academics to improve rather than distract from my gymnastics, but it wasn't until after graduation that I realized how much the reverse was also true. As I become more involved in scientific research during my PhD, I increasingly notice parallels between the skills that I developed in the basement of Kaplan arena and the skills that make a successful researcher. For example, deciding how to adjust a routine or making a conditioning plan both come about from a free exchange of ideas between teammates and coaches, mirroring the process of collaboration in research. It was this openness and exploratory attitude that allowed the team to make some of its greatest leaps forward during my years in college. In my experience, it was often a teammate who did not even train pommel horse that gave me valuable insight into something I could improve. Similarly, steps forward in physics often come about by connecting ideas and fields that seem to be entirely unrelated at first glance. 
 
Another benefit of the collaborative spirit that I experienced in the gym is dealing with failure, something that happens routinely in research as well. Unlike courses, where learning is linear and there are definite endpoints to reach, the process of doing research is much more random, fraught with missteps, setbacks, and changes of direction. Having faced many such moments during the competition season, I have already been exposed to the camaraderie and deep thought needed to emerge from these lows stronger. Most importantly, gymnastics has taught me the importance of failure as an opportunity to grow, a crucial lesson also for pushing the boundaries of science. In short, despite their superficial differences, the lessons I learned from gymnastics at William and Mary, where a culture of learning and openness drove our progress as a team, are the same lessons that I can now apply to try to discover new structures in physics and chip away at the unknown.

Dave Brown helped establish the William & Mary legacy that allowed a member of the very same team, graduating 41 years after him, to share in a similar experience - to articulate much the same sentiment that Dave did when he stopped by practice to talk to my teammates and I 20 years ago. And what a fitting tribute, indeed.  A member of the same William & Mary team, better prepared, thanks to the legacy Dave helped establish, to discover new things and continue to chip away at the unknown.  Dave's is a living legacy. 
 

And so, with that, I will leave you with one final quote from an email Dave sent from space:

I will make one more observation - if I'd been born in space I know I would desire to visit the beautiful Earth more than I've ever yearned to visit to space. It is a wonderful planet.

Perhaps as you take a moment to honor Dave's memory today, you will stop and look around, too.  At the night sky, at the wonderful planet we inhabit, at the "teammates" in your life, or even inside, at the dreams you wish to pursue. 
 
Thanks for the legacy, Dave. 

- Mike Powell