MORGANTOWN – Morgantown native, TV host and soon-to-be space traveler Emily Calandrelli came to WVU Medicine Children’s Tuesday to share her dreams, and her book, “Reach for the Stars.”
“It just means so much to me to come back to my home state, my hometown, and try to connect with the students here and show them that country roads can lead them to the stars,” she said before her audience arrived.
“I’m excited to sort of share my journey with the kids here so they may be hopefully able to see themselves in me and dream something just as big, if not bigger for themselves.”
Calandrelli, who hosts Emily’s Wonder Lab on Netflix, will be heading into space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin New Shepard NS-26 space tourism flight, sponsored by Space for Humanity’s Citizen Astronaut Program. The New Shepard suborbital craft is named for Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and the flight follows his 1961 path.
The date of the launch remains confidential, she said. She’ll have a week’s worth of training for the 12-minute experience. At the peak of the flight, she’ll be able to release from her harness and float to the window for about 5 minutes to look down on earth, she said. “It’s a view I’ve dreamed of.”
She said, “It’s meaningful to me to be part of the West Virginia Legacy of Katherine Johnson and Homer Hickham and Chuck Yeager, and just be among those people from West Virginia who have really contributed to the space industry.
She wrote “Reach for the Stars,” a picture book illustrated by Honee Jang, after her daughter was born, she said. It tells in verse of a parent’s hopes and dreams for their own child.
Her parents, Brad and Kimberly Calandrelli, volunteer and Children’s NICU, and it was her mom’s idea for her to read her book there. As she awaited her audience, she said, “I’m excited to share those dreams with them.”
The reading was set in the Jeff and Vicky Hostetler Family Resource Center on the top floor of the hospital and Lisa Rollyson, of Gilmer County, brought her son, Zebadiah, 5, to hear the story.
Zebadiah told Calandrelli that his sister likes her TV show, and he laughed and smiled when she suggested he could go into space someday.
Email: dbeard@dominionpost.com
