NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

By: Jim Hodges

Please excuse Wayne Walters if he stops and takes a breath. It's been that kind of year.

"Within one year, my daughter graduated from James Madison, I left Northrop Grumman after 26 years, my son made it to the Olympics and I turned 50," he says, succinctly summarizing a series of events, any of which would have been enough to satisfy a yen for midlife change for most people.

Taken together, it's been quite a ride.

Much of that ride has centered around 20-year-old son David and his quest for an Olympic gold medal. David Walters was part of the 800-meter men's relay that brought home Olympic gold.

That was tough enough. Getting there was even tougher, on David and on the Walters family.

"I think we all went through an emotional rollercoaster," Wayne says. "The highs were high and the lows were low."

The preparation began when David was 6, when he and sister Gailey seemingly dedicated their lives to competitive swimming. That means they also dedicated the lives of Wayne and wife Susan.

CAPTION

Photo Credit: NASA/Sean Smith

With his son's competition swimsuit, a model that was tested at NASA Langley Research Center, Wayne Walters holds son David's Olympic gold medal from Beijing.

"The whole family was geared towards swimming," says Wayne. "The diet, sleep or lack thereof. The amount of food that it takes to support swimmers is huge. We did a lot of Costco. The household budget consisted of the mortgage and food."

The schedule consisted of swim practice, school, job, more practice, home and homework.

And success. David was a junior national swim team member, then a national swim team member. A swimming scholarship-winner to the University of Texas. An Academic All-American there.

And disappointment. He missed qualifying for the Olympic trials in 2004 by 0.01 of a second when he was 16 years old.

"David goes into practice, goes into school with the mindset that he never wants to look back and say, 'If I had tried a little harder, I could have made this,' " Wayne says. "I think that's the lesson from that 0.01 of a second."

There were daily 5 a.m. practices for David, which meant Wayne was up early to drive him to the Hampton YMCA and watch him swim up to 13,000 yards. And to talk with him, which is something parents of many teens would like to be able to do.

"I get that from a lot of my friends," Wayne says. "A lot of my friends' children who are my children's age say their children won't do anything with them."

And still there was that 0.01 second, both gnawing at and driving David while the family watched and wondered.

And then came the Olympic trials in Omaha, Neb., in late June. David had qualified to be there. Now it was a case of swim faster, to make the U.S. Olympic team.

Faster, always faster.

"We tried to maintain an even keel," Wayne says. "He was never satisfied with what he did in his preliminaries. Even though he was doing his best, he always wanted to do better, and that was difficult for us to manage. We always told the kids, as long as you did your best, we're happy with you.

"It put us in unknown territory. We kept responding that we're here and we love him and we're happy with his performance. We tried to convince him that he should be as happy as we were."

David swam fifth best at the Olympic trials in the 200-meter freestyle. The top two – Michael Phelps and Peter Vanderkaaye – would swim the event in the Olympics. The next four – Ricky Berens, Klete Keller, David Walters and Eric Vendt – would swim in the Olympic preliminaries, with Phelps and Vanderkaaye subbing in for the finals.

David Walters was going to the Olympics. So were Wayne and Susan Walters.

"The excitement was, I can't describe," Wayne says. "I was proud. I knew the work he put into to get there. I was happy for him. I was proud to be there, proud to be a parent and to represent the USA."

The pride swelled when David led off for the U.S. swimmers in the 800-meter freestyle men's relay. Wayne's computer in Building 1267 has a screen saver of a swimmer diving into the water. The picture was taken from underwater in the "cube," or the pool. It's of David, diving in for the first 200 meters of the relay, which he swam in 1:46.47, part of a team that set an Olympic record of 7:04.47, more than three seconds faster than Italy in a sport in which a second is a lifetime.

As important, they won the favored Lane 4 position for the finals. It's the place to swim, as far away from the turbulence of the side of the pool as possible.

It helped the U.S. team win the final in a world record 6:58.57, led by Phelps' 1:43.31. The four American swimmers mounted the medal stand to receive their gold medals. The others who swam in the preliminaries – including David Walters – received their medals in a quiet meeting with coach Eddie Reese.

"I understand it was quite emotional," Wayne Walters says.

They spent some family time, and now David has gone back to school. Wayne has a new job, Systems Engineering and Integration lead for the Orion Launch Abort System, which he returned to on Tuesday after his time in Beijing.

Ahead for David is another two years of swimming for the university of Texas and, likely, a try for the 2012 U.S. team for the London Olympics.

His father is at NASA Langley with a new mission that will guarantee that more time off in the future is going to be hard to obtain. But that's OK.

"I can honestly say that I've done it all," Wayne says. "I've had the dream vacation, the opportunity of a lifetime. … I think it's time to do what I think I need to do."

That's to help get a new spacecraft to the moon and beyond, itself an Olympian task.


 
NASA Langley Research Center
Managing Editor: Jim Hodges
Executive Editor and Responsible NASA Official: H. Keith Henry
Editor and Curator: Denise Lineberry