NASA Astronaut Patrick to Visit Rye Elementary Schools

T-minus 12 days and counting…

Kids in Rye will be seeing stars on April 7th. Or at least one big star – a NASA astronaut who calls Rye his home town.

NASA Astronaut Nicholas Patrick will address elementary school students in Rye, starting with a 20-minute presentation about his most recent mission to space and following that with about 15 minutes of Q&A with the students.  He will speak at Milton School on April 7, and at Midland and Osborn schools on Thursday April 8 (see the schedule below). 

MyRye.com spoke with Marlowe Khoo, the PTO Cultural Enrichment Chair at Milton, who credited the visit as the brainstorm of Carol Seltzer, librarian at Milton, who wanted to observe the 40th anniversary of the moon walk (maybe Seltzer read our January 2009 story on Patrick). Then Khoo went to work, chasing down the good folks at NASA. "Patrick is really going the extra mile for us.  NASA usually restricts astronaut presentations to one per school, but given space restrictions in the school auditoriums, he is making two presentations to each school," Khoo told MyRye.com. 'In order to do this, he is actually catching the red-eye on the night of 4/6.  But I guess he’s used to tough travel assignments."

(PHOTO: Patrick on space walk. Courtesy of NASA) Patrick just returned (on February 21) from the latest shuttle mission to the International Space Station, where he completed two space walks to connect a cooling unit and an observation unit to various modules on the Station.

Born in North Yorkshire, England, Patrick grew up in London and Rye, where he attended Midland and Osborn Schools.  He is a naturalized US citizen. 

Mayor French and other Rye City officials, various school and Board of Education officials, and Assemblyman George Latimer have been invited to attend the presentation at Milton School.

The schedule of Patrick's appearances:

Wednesday, 4/7:
1:30 pm Milton School 12 Hewlett Avenue, Rye

Thursday, 4/8:
9:00 am Midland School 312 Midland Avenue, Rye
1:00 pm Osborn School 10 Osborn Road, Rye