McNair Center continues astronaut’s legacy

Challenger astronaut and South Carolinian Ron McNair (NASA photo)

The McNair Center for Aerospace Innovation and Research at the University of South Carolina was launched to help grow the aerospace industry in South Carolina. Now with major donors in place, including The InterTech Group CEO Anita Zucker, the effort is taking off.

Executive director Martin Keaney said the organization is gathering intellectual resources and funding to take on its mission that became clear when Boeing entered the state, according to the Columbia Regional Business Report, an affiliate publication of the Charleston Regional Business Journal. 

But before Boeing, the spark of aerospace began in rural South Carolina, where the namesake of the center grew up and went to high school.

The McNair Center was named for S.C. native and astronaut Ronald E. McNair, who died in the 1986 loss of space shuttle Challenger. McNair was from Lake City, like Wall Street financier Darla Moore who started the center with $5 million in 2011.

Zucker, whose company is based in North Charleston like Boeing S.C., also gave $5 million in 2012. In 2013, TV exec Marva Smalls added a $1 million gift to support scholarships for minority students from the Pee Dee where she is from.

We think Ron McNair would be pleased with this center and its focus on opportunity and education, and that’s first-hand knowledge.

One of our staff members in the newsroom of the Charleston Regional Business Journal went to Lake City High School, and met McNair shortly before the flight that ended his life.

He was self-deprecating, unassuming and seemed to understand what it meant to come back to the Pee Dee in a NASA jumpsuit. He talked about the warmth he felt returning to the place where he grew up. Even though he disavowed the role-model label, he served as one, and the McNair Center is a continuation of a legacy he started by refusing to settle.

Click here to go to the McNair Center’s website or watch the video below where, in a 1984 USC commencement speech, McNair says the “road between South Carolina and space flight is not a very simple one.”