Documentary filmmaker Steven C. Barber has been on a commemorative space mission the last few years spearheading an effort to create statues for Apollo 11 at Kennedy Space Center and Apollo 13 in Houston. Now he’s looking to give Sally Ride her due.
In 2019, Barber was able to help secure a sponsor for $750,000 to create the 7-foot-tall bronze statues of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins that was installed at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s Apollo/Saturn V Center Moon Tree Garden.
The statues were created by Colorado-based sculptors George and Mark Lundeen and Joey Bainer.
The team followed up that effort with another $750,000 raised to install an Apollo 13 monument featuring the rescued astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise at Space Center Houston.
Now Barber, taking on the role of project manager, has worked on raising $300,000 to build a monument to the first American woman in space, NASA astronaut Sally Ride, to be unveiled next month at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island in Garden City, N.Y.
It will feature Ride, who first flew on Space Shuttle Challenger on STS-7 in 1983 and again in 1984 on STS-41-G. She had been slated for a third mission before the Challenger explosion grounded the shuttle fleet in 1986. Ride retired from NASA in 1987 after serving on the Rogers Commission to investigate the disaster. She also served on the investigation team in 2003 after the Columbia tragedy. She died at the age of 61 in 2012.
“65 women have flown in space. 12,000 women have worked at NASA and there’s not one monument to any of them,” Barber said. “I’m about to change that.”
The unveiling coincides with the release of the Sally Ride quarter from the U.S. Mint. as part of the American Women Quarters Program. It also comes as NASA is attempting to return to the moon with its Artemis missions and send the first woman ever to the lunar surface by 2025.
Barber is optimistic that the planned June 17 ceremony will feature former President Barack Obama, who was friends with Ride and awarded her posthumously the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.
Barber plans to include the unveiling ceremony in a documentary about Ride, including images of the thousands of children holding the new Sally Ride quarters. With each statue effort, Barber has produced a documentary through his production company Vanilla Fire.
His drive for space-related memorials was born after working on documentaries since 2009. He encountered a statue done by the Lundeens of Apollo 13’s Swigert located in Washington’s National Statuary Hall Collection to represent Colorado. The Denver-born Swigert was also elected to Congress for to represent the state before his death in 1982.
“I just remember being overwhelmed by that statue,” Barber said in a 2018 interview. “I was like, ‘Where does this come from? How did this get done?'”
He said he had a vision to bring the Apollo 11 statue to the Space Coast ahead of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
Its installation at KSC in 2019 was followed by the Apollo 13 statue in Houston in 2021.
Now Sally Ride takes center stage.
The 7-foot-tall representation has Ride holding aloft a space shuttle with one hand while looking skyward. The final bronze version won’t be unveiled until the June ceremony.
“Finally women, small girls will have a monument that looks like them so they can reach for the stars,” Barber said. “This will open up the floodgates to honor more high-end science-minded women in history.”
![From Amelia Island on the northeast tip of Florida to Alligator Reef in the Keys. From the pink sands of Eleuthera in the Bahamas to the slopes of Mount Scenery on the Dutch island of Saba in the Lesser Antilles. The May 2024 issue of our Explore Florida & the Caribbean takes you places – by land, sea and air. The new issue that will appear in digital format on Sunday, May 5, features stories on Florida’s lighthouses, cruise-line dining, a return to ultra-luxe Little Palm Island in the Keys, a camping trip to Peanut Island in Palm Beach County, a […]](https://www.orlandosentinel.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Explore-Florida-cover-May-2024.jpg?w=620 "From Amelia Island on the northeast tip of Florida to Alligator Reef in the Keys. From the pink sands of Eleuthera in the Bahamas to the slopes of Mount Scenery on the Dutch island of Saba in the Lesser Antilles. The May 2024 issue of our Explore Florida & the Caribbean takes you places – by land, sea and air. The new issue that will appear in digital format on Sunday, May 5, features stories on Florida’s lighthouses, cruise-line dining, a return to ultra-luxe Little Palm Island in the Keys, a camping trip to Peanut Island in Palm Beach County, a […]")
