Two Schools, One Building
Swigert McAuliffe International School (SMIS) campus is home to two separate schools—Swigert International School (SIS), which serves children ECE3 through 2nd grade, and McAuliffe International School (MIS), which will open in 2012-2013 with a 6th grade. Eventually, SIS will serve students through 5th grade and MIS will serve 6th-8th grades.
Jack Swigert
SIS was named after Jack Swigert. John “Jack” Swigert was born on August 30, 1931 and grew up at 17th and Kearney in Park Hill. He attended Blessed Sacrament and eventually East High School. He then went to CU Boulder, where he played football and graduated with a B.S. in mechanical engineering. He learned to fly at Combs Field, located at 38th and Dahlia, in what is now the Park Hill Golf Course. After earning his MBA and a M.S. in aerospace science, he served as an Air Force pilot.
In April 1966, Swigert was accepted into the NASA Apollo program. He was the only bachelor in the space program. He trained with John Young and Charlie Duke as the backup crew for the Apollo 13
mission. Three days before launch, NASA doctors learned that Charlie Duke had caught German measles from a friend’s child. Blood tests showed that Apollo 13 crew members James Lovell and Fred Haise were immune to measles, but command module pilot Ken Mattingly was not. Even though he showed no signs of measles, doctors grounded Mattingly. He was replaced by Jack Swigert.
On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 left Earth. Two days later, mission control heard “Houston, we’ve had a problem“–first spoken by Jack Swigert and then repeated by James Lovell when mission control needed clarification. An explosion in the command service module left the spacecraft loosing oxygen and electricity. Lovell, Haise and Swigert were forced to leave the command module for the lunar module, which was equipped with adequate oxygen, but was built to carry two people to the moon for 33 hours, not three people for twice that long. In order to conserve power, the temperature in the lunar module stayed in the forties. After overcoming several other obstacles–like carbon dioxide buildup in the lunar module and restarting the command module after days of being off–the crew returned to the command module, survived re-entry, and landed in the South Pacific on April 17. Mattingly would call this ordeal “NASA’s finest hour.”
Years later, Jack Swigert became the staff director of the Committee on Science and Technology of the U.S. House of Representatives. In November 1982, he was elected to represent Colorado’s 6th congressional district, but passed away from bone cancer before he could take office. He was buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetary in Wheat Ridge. Apollo 13 crewmate James Lovell gave the eulogy.
Christa McAuliffe
MIS was named after Christa McAuliffe, a high school social studies teacher in New Hampshire who was selected out of 11,000 applicants to be the first teacher in space. On January 28, 1986, she and 
six other crew members boarded the Space Shuttle Challenger. Only 73 seconds after take-off, the O-ring on the shuttle’s right solid rocket booster failed. The leaking rocket fuel quickly ignited and all seven crew members were lost. It was later determined that the O-rings were likely affected by the cold temperatures on January 28th, which were 15 degrees cooler than the next coldest launch day. NASA had planned for McAuliffe to give science lessons in space that would be televised for American children.
For more information about McAuliffe International School (MIS), see their website.
