Ellen Baker

`We just hung out in the neighborhoods where the bus would take us. Nobody had a car.'

By Kathleen Kerr | Staff Writer

She has hurtled through outer space and traveled through the Andes mountains. She is an accomplished physician. And her mother is a prominent New York City politician.

Still, when astronaut Ellen Baker thinks about the important influences on her life, the person who comes to mind first is ``Miss O'Gara, my fifth-grade teacher.''

Baker, 45, can't recall O'Gara's first name - ``Kathleen or Katherine'' - but she does remember how the teacher at PS 41 in Bayside helped mold her into the adventurer she became.

``How do you separate the place from the people?'' asks Baker, a Queens native. ``Clearly the people were very influential.''

O'Gara ``was a great teacher,'' says Baker, daughter of Queens Borough President Claire Schulman. ``She taught everything. She was patient and kind but tough and made us work hard.'' Teacher and student have seen each other occasionally over the years and they still exchange notes at Christmas, Baker says.

Otherwise, Baker says, the years she spent growing up in Queens were unremarkable, although she remembers them fondly. Her mother's many community activities were just another part of her life and besides, Baker says, Schulman didn't hold a salaried community job until the future astronaut had left Queens. And Schulman didn't become borough president until Baker was long gone from New York City.

The veteran of three NASA space missions recalls ice skating at the Flushing Meadows rink, which now attracts Tara Lipinski wannabes, and repeated visits to the 1964-65 World's Fair.

Baker was born in Fort Bragg, N.C., where her father, a physician, was serving in the Army during the Korean War. But she grew up in houses on 222nd and 215th Streets in Bayside along with her brothers Lawrence and Kim, doing mostly what she calls ``kid stuff.''

That meant swimming freestyle for the Flushing YMCA team and lots of softball and baseball, Baker says, and the occasional trip into Manhattan with friends to museums, concerts and restaurants.

But mostly, Baker remembers, ``We just hung out in the neighborhoods where the bus would take us. Nobody had a car. The skating rink was a big hangout.''

Baker says memories of her childhood in Queens have blurred with the passage of time and now she remembers ``just good friends and good people and a nice place to grow up.''

In addition to PS 41, Baker also attended JHS 158 and Bayside High School. She earned a degree in geology from the State University at Buffalo and then went on to earn an MD from Cornell University.

Baker's interest in outer space and the NASA program didn't surface until she had completed medical school. Baker joined NASA in 1984.

Baker's husband, Ken, is a NASA pilot; the couple, who live near the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, have two children, Karen, 9, and Meredith, 6.

Baker, who returned to Queens in January for her mother's swearing-in as borough president, says the biggest change she's noticed is the tall apartment buildings that have sprung up around the borough.

And one other thing, says Baker: ``I don't think I could afford to buy a house there now.''