This is a story from the WQAD News 8 archives from March of 2001 with reporter John David.
During the first week of March, 15 years ago, a Burlington native made history
On March 8, 2001, astronaut Jim Kelly made his first of two space flights. Both were aboard the space shuttle "Discovery" as its pilot.
"When I grew up I lived in the same house for most of the time I was growing up and I spent 18-years in one place," Kelly recalled during an interview with News 8's John David before the launch.
Jim Kelly did a lot of exploring at Burlington Community High School. The 1982 graduate stood out with his studies and was familiar on the football field.
"I took all of the advanced math class, all the advanced sciences classes, physics, chemistry, and things like that. And the education was fantastic I received from them."
That encouraged him to reach for new goals by soaring into space and piloting the space shuttle "Discovery".
"Oh my, I thought it was so exciting, just an incredible opportunity for Jim that reflects very positively, I think, on the community and our school here at Burlington Community High School," said former classmate Carol Knickerbocker.
"Although Kelly is known here for his academic achievements at Burlington High," John David reported, "his dream to fly started much earlier. At age four he could look out his bedroom window and watch planes take off and land here at Burlington Airport."
"My room was on the side of the house facing the airport," he said.
"I always had my window kinda open with the shade up and I would watch the rotating beacon at the airport and watch the planes taking off and landing at night as I went to sleep so it was a constant part of life where we happened to live."
Teacher Carol Rutenbeck remembers Kelly as a superior student with a sense of humor. While her current class learns about faraway places, Kelly will take off to become the first Southeast Iowan up in space.
"How many kids can sit in their desk and say 'I intend to be in space and at the space station in some year and make it' and so if you can do it from Burlington High School you can do it from any high school in the nation," said Rutenbeck.
"The kids that are back there can look at someone who came from their home town and can just think that 'Hey, if this person can do it, he started from the same place that I did, and maybe was sitting in the same desk chair when he was going to school here, if he can get here then maybe I could do the same thing or something similar'."
Something like taking off in the space shuttle. Not bad for the kid who dreamed of flying.
Jim Kelly would fly in one other shuttle mission. It was a tense one. He piloted "Discovery" when it launched July 26, 2005. It was the first space shuttle flight after the shuttle "Columbia" disintegrated upon re-entry two years earlier.
Kelly still works at NASA and recently spent times with a class of California students to talk about the life of an astronaut.