The Whidbey Island Naval Air Station family gathered at Ault Field Friday to honor one of their own, Columbia astronaut William “Willie” McCool, who perished last Saturday when the space shuttle disintegrated as it streaked toward the Kennedy Space Center, and home, killing all on board.

Cmdr. William C. McCool may have been a NASA astronaut to the rest of the world, but to this group he was a “Prowler Bubba from Whidbey,” Capt. Stephen Black told the gathering, which included Gov. Gary Locke and the family of McCool’s wife Lani.

“Willie was a down-to-earth space traveler,” Black said. “He showed us the best that we all can hope to be.”

Black took the crowd back to the year 1968, when Willie McCool was seven years old and the U.S. was at war. People were rioting in the streets, and it was dismal year, but it was also the year when American astronauts first orbited the moon and uttered these words: “In the beginning God created the heaven and earth. God bless all of you on the good earth.”

“The reaction was, ‘wow,’ whether you were seven or 77,” Black said.

The space race required people with a focused intelligence and a sense of wonder — people like Willie McCool, Black said.

Cmdr. Michael Davidson remembered his friend from their days in the Prowler squadron VAQ-133, the Wizards, aboard the USS Coral Sea in 1987.

“Willie had two dozen ways to say ‘dad gummit’,” Davidson recounted. McCool put other shipmates to shame by writing to his wife and children almost daily, when others could barely manage once a week.

Even then, the squadron thought highly of McCool.

“We thought of Willie as a diamond in a field of zircons,” Davidson said. “His legacy will be his enthusiasm and the ability to bring out the best in all who worked with him.”

Gov. Gary Locke changed his plans in order to attend the ceremony, adding his accolades for McCool and extending condolences to McCool’s family on behalf of his own, and the people of Washington state.

“They lived the dream so we can continue to dream,” Locke said of the astronauts.

A sailor rang the bell seven times for the seven astronauts lost, and a Prowler squadron flew overhead in the missing man formation with one jet dropping off to signal McCool’s departure.

After the ceremony several of McCool’s friends remembered better times.

Cmdr. Bill Jensen, who flew with McCool in the VAQ -183 Yellowjackets, said from the moment he learned McCool had been accepted into NASA his feeling was, “Go Willie.”

“We knew he could do it,” Jensen said. He remembered McCool as always being positive.

“He was always looking for the positive outcome,” Jensen said. “We knew he could do it.”

Cmdr. Steven Kochman had to chuckle at Davidson’s comment that Willie never swore.

Kochman recounted that McCool didn’t like to fly at night, and on one night training flight in Patuxent River, Md., McCool did a right break — turning into a landing to the right — which was unusual. Then, instead of heading for the landing lights, McCool lined up on the blue lights of the taxi run — for takeoffs.

“He swore that time,” Kochman said.

“We really gave him a hard time about that. We called him ‘Blue Light” for a long time.”