Kaylah Barney paused a moment when asked what it was like to meet Vice President Mike Pence.
“It wasn’t on my bucket list,” she said. “I think it’s a cool opportunity to meet someone that important. He said I was remarkable.”
The 17-year-old Kecoughtan High School student who has completed treatment for brain cancer ? with her physician, Dr. Allan Thornton, by her side ? shook hands with Pence during a tour of Hampton University’s Proton Therapy Institute.
The facility tour was the second of Pence’s three stops Wednesday in Hampton Roads, including NASA Langley Research Center and the Naval Air Station Oceana.
The Vice President, accompanied by the U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, made his first visit to NASA Langley Research Center, touching down around 10:45 a.m. in Air Force Two at Langley Air Force Base, Langley spokeswoman April K. Phillips said.
His visit marks the first since 1983 for a sitting vice president.
For this trip, Pence toured the center’s wind tunnel, its lab and addressed hundreds of NASA employees to support their work with advancing the Artemis program. The program aims to land the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024, eventually leading to exploration of Mars.
Pence also came to honor pioneering African American NASA mathematicians and engineers ? Dorothy Johnson Vaughan and Mary Winston Jackson, Katherine G. Johnson, now 101, and retired NASA engineer Christine Darden, who is 77.
The women are depicted in the book “Hidden Figures” by Margot Lee Shetterly. Last December, they were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, Vaughn and Jackson posthumously.
“Our most famous human computer was Katherine Johnson, whose daughters were in attendance today,” Phillips said in an email. “Katherine is still alive at 101 years of age but wasn’t able to attend today.”
At the proton institute, Pence was escorted by secret service and university President William R. Harvey, who invited the vice president to see the facility.
Harvey, who raised some $225 million to build the facility, noted that more than 3,000 patients had been treated at the institute since it opened a decade ago.
“Cancer is such a pervasive disease. It is the number one killer in Virginia and Hampton Roads leads the nation in prostate cancer deaths,” he said “So, the fact that we are fighting disease and doing a great job of it. I like to say that we’re easing human misery and saving lives.”
During this visit, Pence met with a few patients, including Barney. Diagnosed when she was in the eighth grade, the 11th-grader now says she has been six months with “no evidence of the disease,” she said.
Pence and DeVos also had a discussion with several student leaders and university officials; most of the roughly 30-minute session was not open to the news media.
“I won’t get an opportunity to see the Emancipation Oak today, but I saw its offspring,” Pence said. “As we celebrate African American History Month, we just came from Langley Research Center where we talked about the Hidden Figures … and the tremendous progress that our researchers have made … not only advancing scientific understanding but advancing a more perfect union.”
“Hampton University, I know, (has) been there every step of the way making history and making a difference as a historically black college,” he said.
Pence and DeVos both highlighted strides the Trump Administration have made to permanently provide funding to historically black colleges and universities.
Oshae Moore, the university’s junior class president, said the topics included funding for HBCUs and initiatives to increase STEM resources for students.
“It was something that I wasn’t necessarily expecting, so it was a pleasant surprise,” Moore said. “It was definitely rewarding, definitely informative. That we came here with an open mind and we’re really invested in what they had to say, I think it definitely did change our perspective.”
Lisa Vernon Sparks, 757-247-4832, lvernonsparks@dailypress.com
