Astronaut Jose Hernandez

"I can do everything through him who gives me strength." (Philippians 4:13)

I like "against all odds" type of stories. Tonight I watched the interview of Astronaut Jose Hernandez on TV. The NASA engineer remembers exactly where he was when he heard the first Hispanic-American had been chosen to travel into space.

"I was hoeing a row of sugar beets in a field near Stockton, Calif., and I heard on my transistor radio that Franklin Chang-Diaz had been selected for the Astronaut Corps," says Hernandez, 41, who was a senior in high school at the time. Already interested in science and engineering then, he recalled, "That was the moment I said, 'I want to fly in space.' And that's something I've been striving for each day since then."

Hernandez was one of four children in a migrant farming family from Mexico. He didn't learn English until he was 12 years old, and spent much of his childhood traveling with his family from Mexico to southern California each March, then working northward to the Stockton area by November, picking strawberries and cucumbers at farms along the route. Then they would return to Mexico for Christmas, and start the cycle all over again come spring. He thanked his parents (who only had 3rd grade education) for settling down in Stockton so that he could attend school and follow his dream.

Parents, do you know your child's aspiration?

Copyright © 2006 Winnis Chiang, Parenting ABC