San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Millie HughesFulford — astronaut, scientist
In 1984, UCSF research professor Millie Hughes-Fulford took a leave from that position and left her Mill Valley home for Houston so she could become an astronaut and work on the Spacelab, a laboratory in Space Shuttle Columbia.
Her mission was postponed and HughesFulford was at Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, watching on that cold morning of Jan. 28, 1986, as Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in the air shortly after liftoff — a national tragedy broadcast live to much of America. It took another five years for HughesFulford to get back into Columbia. But when it launched, on June 5, 1991, she spent nine days in orbit, drawing blood and conducting all form of tests on herself and her six crew mates while floating around to measure the effects of weightlessness on the heart, lungs and balance.
The research conducted on her flight, at age 46, laid a foundation for all the knowledge that has been built on the effect of space flight on humans, and shaped the rest of her career when she returned in 1991 to open the HughesFulford Laboratory at the San Francisco VA Healthcare System.
“She came back to her world as a scientist and carried this experience of having flown in space and that became a unique filter through which she passed all of her scientific work,” said Dr. Mike Barratt, a NASA flight surgeon assigned to Columbia. “Everything she did had this base of space work and it was very credible.”
The HughesFulford Laboratory was active at the San Francisco VA Healthcare System, in the Outer Richmond District, right up through HughesFulford’s own sevenyear battle with lymphoma. She died Tuesday, Feb. 2, at her home of 50 years. She was 75. Her death was confirmed by her granddaughter, Kira Herzog of Mill Valley, who spent the last year recording an oral history of HughesFulford, with the intent of writing her biography.
“She was one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. She told me that when she was taking off in the shuttle she had absolutely no fear,” said Herzog. “She was logically thinking of what her next task was and that is how she faced everything including her cancer.”
At the VA, HughesFulford studied the effects of weightlessness on the immune system, and why astronauts returning from space are susceptible to infection. A lab instrument she modified was able to study bone cell structures in a condition that mimics outer space.
“Millie was an absolute delight to work with. Her enthusiasm for science was infectious,” said Dr. Carl Grunfeld, who was her supervisor and colleague at the VA lab for 40 years. “Even during her illness she was writing papers and coming up with ideas for grants that she would bounce off of me. She never gave up.”
Millie Elizabeth Hughes was born Dec. 21, 1945, in Mineral Wells, Texas. Her father ran a country grocery and feed store where Hughes started working as soon as she was tall enough to stock shelves. The Hughes family had a TV console in Mineral Wells and there was always a crowd when space adventurer “Buck Rogers” came on. HughesFulford was 5 years old when it premiered in 1950 and she idolized Buck’s sidekick Wilma Deering.
As soon as she was proficient at calculating prices and change in her head she was promoted to cashier where she worked up through graduation from Mineral Wells High School, in 1962. Always tall and rail thin, Hughes was 5 feet 11 inches tall at age 16 when she entered Tarleton State University, which later became part of the Texas A&M system. She majored in chemistry and biology and was often the only the woman in a class full of men, who did not appreciate it when she outscored them on exams.
“There was even hostility from some of the professors and the dean,” said Herzog. “They definitely did not want her in that program.”
After graduating at or near the top of her class in 1968 she enrolled at Texas Woman’s University, in Denton, to earn her doctorate in biochemistry. By then she was married to police officer Rick Wiley, and they had a daughter, Tori. After earning her doctorate in 1972, she handtyped applications for maybe 100 academic jobs around the country. She got four responses and accepted a lab position at Southwestern Medical Center. That turned out to be the right choice because within a year or two that entire lab relocated to the VA hospital overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the Outer Richmond District.
HughesFulford had been to California once, on a family trip, in a truck with a camper on it, to visit Disneyland when it opened in 1955. When she returned to the Golden State she had Tori, then 4, and they both brought a thick Texas drawl to the canal zone of San Rafael where they lived before moving to Greenbrae, and later to Strawberry, on the Richardson Bay side of Mill Valley.
HughesFulford was content with her research at the VA, until the moment in 1978 when she saw an ad in the back of Family Circle magazine, asking for applications to be the first woman in space. There were 8,000 applicants and HughesFulford made it to the final 20 before Sally Ride was selected to be the first female astronaut, aboard the Challenger in June 1983.
While going through the selection process in Houston, HughesFulford learned that NASA was looking for bone researchers. She called a colleague at the VA and told him to start working on a NASA grant. That opened the door to her trip on the Columbia.
In the late 1970s she and Riley were divorced. In 1981, she met George Fulford, a United Airlines pilot based in San Francisco. They were married in 1983, and left on their honeymoon the same week she was accepted to the astronaut program at NASA.
“She was always smiling and enjoyed every second of her training,” said Dr. Barratt. “She just seemed happy to be there. But along with that she had the focus of a scientist.”
Columbia continued to fly. On its 28th mission, in February 2003, it broke apart when returning to the earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. But neither catastrophe shook HughesFulford’s dedication to space exploration, which she displayed in lectures at schools, national conferences and most recently on Zoom.
“She was devoted to getting young people excited about science,” said Dr. Grunfeld. “She realized what happened in space flight had implications for aging.”
In 2018, which was after she had technically retired, HughesFulford partnered with Dr. Aenor Sawyer to start the University of California Space Health Program, based at UCSF. The program draws in researchers from the 10 campuses and three national laboratories. During its first conference, at the Rutter Center at Mission Bay in November 2019, HughesFulford was a featured speaker on immunology. That same day she joined a panel of three astronauts to share her space travel expertise. Even now, HughesFulford is coauthor of a scientific paper titled “Women in Space” being submitted to a medical journal.
“Millie was an inspiration on so many levels, from the surface of the earth to the lowearth orbit,’’ said Dr. Sawyer. “She infused every conversation with compassion, optimism, energy, humor, and an unshakable confidence that a solution could be found.”
She is survived by her daughter, Tori Herzog and granddaughters Shoshana Herzog and Kira Herzog, all of Mill Valley. Donations in her name may be made to Stand Up to Cancer, P.O. Box 843721, Los Angeles, CA 900843721.