STORIES
Women
DONATE

Sally Ride

by Morgan from New York


Sally Ride had once said, “I thought of myself as an astronaut and a research physicist always.” “Not some famous person or hero like I had thought Marilyn Monroe was when I was little.”

Sally Ride is a hero to me because she was the First American Woman in Space. Also because she inspired women all over the world that they could do things men could do too, which made her a role model as well.

While Sally was entering her last years of college she thought about becoming a tennis player, but when winter came she wanted a job that she could do all year round. In that time NASA had put out a job hunt looking for people who would like to be astronauts, so Sally went and got accepted. However, one of Sally’s biggest problems when she was getting accepted into NASA was people thought that women should not be able to do things men could do because then women were supposed to say home with the children, cook and clean. But Sally didn’t care. She wanted to be an astronaut. She had said that “the training was hard, I ran four miles a day and twice that much on weekends, I lifted weights, played tennis and volleyball.” Also with physical training, Ride and the other astronauts had to learn how to operate the shuttle for a landing if something happened to the pilot of the space shuttle. “It also took me awhile to get used to zero-gravity and when you came back to earth it took some more time getting used to gravity again.” Said Sally Ride.

During and after her space career she was somebody who broke down barriers. She also inspired women that they could do anything they wanted to do. Instead of staying home all day long. She was also responsible for establishing major science organizations to help the local schools. Also she wrote four kids non- fiction books to get kids interested in space. She also wrote a memoir called To space and back.

Sally Ride also got many awards and recognitions. She appeared on Sesame Street, carried the torch into the 1984 Olympic Games, she even appeared on the cover of Ms. Magazine, she got the key to New York City. Now she is even in the astronaut hall of fame! After she finished college she had a bachelor’s degree of science, a bachelor’s degree of English, a master’s degree of physics and a Ph.D. in astrophysics and later into college she got her pilot’s license.

In Conclusion, Sally Ride is not a hero to some people who think women should still be home cooking and cleaning. But I will always know that Sally Ride will be a hero.

Page created on 2/3/2009 12:00:00 AM

Last edited 2/3/2009 12:00:00 AM

The beliefs, viewpoints and opinions expressed in this hero submission on the website are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs, viewpoints and opinions of The MY HERO Project and its staff.