Posted on 12/19/2007 5:58:07 PM PST by DaveLoneRanger
Police say the mother of a NASA astronaut who is on board the International Space Station died this afternoon when a train struck her vehicle at a crossing in a western Chicago suburb.
Police say 90-year-old Rose Tani (TAH-nee) of Lombard is the mother of NASA astronaut Daniel M. Tani. Authorities say she was stopped behind a school bus that had halted at a crossing for a train. Officers said she apparently became impatient and drove around the bus.
The train struck the passenger side of the vehicle. The woman was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Daniel Tani has been in space since October 23rd and was expected to remain until January 8th.
Condolences out to Dan Tani and his family.
Sad. School buses stop at train tracks even if nothing is coming, so she may have thought that was what was happening.
oh no.
Prayers for his strength.
WOW, that’s gotta hurt being up there and can’t return home to be with loved ones.
Oh my. Sad. Prayers for the family.
very sad. i wouldn’t want to be in his shoes. sympathy.
very sad. i wouldn’t want to be in his shoes. sympathy.
Man, how do you break the news to him.....
RIP, but what the hell was a 90-year old doing driving a car ?
Very sad.
So sad.
If this is what occurred, she could have killed many, and if true, this was not an accident but a total neglect of law and common sense.
God grant the family comfort.
Maybe she figured if her son can drive a rocket ship, she can drive a car.
There are a lot of old folks past 90 still driving. It may not be the wisest thing, as this demonstrates.
You would think that a person would develop a little patience after NINETY years!
Could be, but on the other hand at 90 years old you have to know you are on borrowed time and there's no point in spending much of that time sitting in traffic. ;^)
Good point. I’ll reserve an opinion on that for another 44 years, when I’m 90. :)
Do they surf the net from space? /pregnant question
Honest to God, that was all I could think too.
Prayers up.
“...what the hell was a 90-year old doing driving a car?”
-
Ain’t that the truth.”
Wait until you are 90 and you still want to drive.
How awful.
She sounds pretty stubborn from the description of how she got in the train's path in the first place.
Sounds morbid, but maybe funerial arrangements could be made to have the actual services and burial of the deceased until after he returns.
A sad time for the loved ones. May God bless them with comfort and peace.
not a chance in hell
Awwwwwww...pretty sad all around. She lives to 90 only to get killed in a vehicle accident. I hope they don’t tell this astronaut the news until he returns home from space.
‘Hope he’s not Cody Jarret.
And how old is Daniel Tani, pray tell?
If he's 40, then she had him when she was 50?!
Back in 1988 when Lloyd Bentsen was Michael Dukakis’ running mate, I remember him talking about his father having a radar detector in his car so he could drive over the speed limit without getting caught—at that time Lloyd Bentsen, Sr., was 92 (he died at the age of 93 in January 1989, a few days before his son would have been sworn in as VP if he had won). Lloyd, Jr., died last year at the age of 85.
Here is Daniel Tani's NASA biography.
90 yrs. old minus 46 equals 44. She had Daniel when she was 44 years old!
That is terrible. Prayers for Astronaut Tani and the family.
Tani's mother killed in car-train collision
Space station astronaut Dan Tani's 90-year-old mother, Rose, was killed today when her car was struck by a train in Lombard, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, police said.
In a statement, the Lombard Police Department said a preliminary investigation showed Rose Tani went around a school bus that was stopped at a railroad crossing, "going past the downed crossing gate at which time the westbound train struck the passenger side of the vehicle."
She was transported to Good Samaritan Hospital where she was pronounced dead, police said.
Launched to the international space station aboard the shuttle Discovery Oct. 23, Dan Tani was originally scheduled to return to Earth this week aboard the shuttle Atlantis. Liftoff originally was planned for Dec. 6, which would have resulted in a landing today. But Atlantis was grounded twice by suspect fuel sensors and the flight is now on hold until Jan. 10 at the earliest.
Tani and his two station crewmates - Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko - can return to Earth aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule in a life-threatening emergency, but that is not an option for the death of a friend or family member.
"This is something we consider," former astronaut Jim Voss told CBS Radio. "NASA understands there is a possibility of things like this happening while someone is on orbit. And they actually get the crew member's permission to either tell them or not tell them when something happens like this."
Most astronauts, Voss said, choose to be informed.
"It's particularly difficult to have a loss like that when you're in orbit because you're kind of helpless, you can't do anything, you can't be there to be with the family, you feel very, very isolated," Voss said. "And I think for Dan, this will be just a very, very difficult thing because of the closeness of the family member and not being able to return.
"Even in the military, when people are very isolated and far away, they make every effort possible when there's a death in the family to return the service member to be back with their family. And that probably is not a possibility in this case. You just can't do that. It's something you just have to endure."
Tani has trained with Whitson and Malenchenko for years and Voss said the closeness of the crew will be a comfort.
"And of course, NASA will offer any assistance that they can," he said. "They have flight surgeons who have worked very closely with the crew and know them extremely well and they're trained to assist in cases like this. ... It'll just be a very hard time for him for a while on orbit."
Tani's father, Henry N. Tani, is deceased, according to Dan Tani's NASA biography. Rose Tani lived in Lombard. During World War 2, Tani's parents and a brother were forced to leave their home and move to a California internment camp. They were U.S. citizens, but like 100,000 other Japanese-Americans, they had no choice.
In an interview with CBS radio station WBBM-AM before Tani's launch aboard Atlantis, Rose said she was proud of her son, adding "he was lucky to be picked as an astronaut."
Prayers and condolences to Dan Tani and his family.
Lloyd Bentsen Sr., the millionaire rancher whose son. Lloyd Jr., was the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee in 1988, was killed early this morning in a traffic accident in Edinburg, Tex. He was 95 years old.
The Edinburg police said Mr. Bentsen had failed to stop at a stop sign...
Not all 90 year old people are invalid.
Ah, OK. My aunt had my cousin when she was in her early 40s. That’s not that unusual these days. Better 44 than 16 like the stupid little twit Jamie Lynn Spears (whose parents should’ve been sterilized before having had children).
90 year olds have no business driving vehicles.
Your opinion. Okay.
I’d say that’s a lot of people’s opinions. And with good reason.
She drove around the crossing guards. Stop with the excuses for people.
Even if I do still want to drive at age 90, I won't. It's not safe for a person of that age to operate a motor vehicle. I'm not going to risk my life and the lives of innocent people by driving no matter how much I want to.
Some things are not open to people of all ages. We don't let five-year-olds drive, and for good reason. Those same reasons apply to the elderly.
If the Lord allows me to live until I'm ninety, it will be 48 years from now — AD 2055. I doubt that motor vehicles as we know them will even exist in 2055; by then some better form of transportation will no doubt be available. (I'm betting on wormholes.) In any case, when I'm old I intend to keep my wrinkled German ass at home, where it belongs.
If you're quick maybe you could get to the funeral and ask family members in person. Perhaps they thoughtlessly allowed her to drive. I'm sure they'll appreciate the advice.
I sure hope there weren’t any children on the bus to witness that accident. :(
She stopped driving at 83. She probably could still drive if she wanted to but she thinks it is crazy (her word) for the very aged to do so.
She is in favor of the mandatory driving test for everyone over 75, proposed many times in many states but usually defeated by various senior citizen lobbies. These groups are doing their members no favors by keeping them on the streets past their time.
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