Israel mourns loss of country's first astronaut.(Chicago Tribune)

Byline: Christine Spolar

JERUSALEM _ Col. Ilan Ramon's family in Israel was waiting breathlessly Saturday afternoon for the historic landing. His 79-year-old father was warming up with Israeli television reporters, and his older brother Gadi, at home north of Haifa, was watching a live shot of the space shuttle Columbia speeding across the sky.

And then the two men saw the unimaginable. There was an odd stream of vapor and light, a baffling smear of trouble. They soon realized their family lifeblood and Israel's first astronaut was lost, one of seven astronauts doomed in the last moments of a failed flight.

"We hoped until the last minute," Ramon's father, Eliezer Wolferman, said on Channel Two television a few hours later, after NASA officials confirmed that catastrophe had claimed Columbia and there were no survivors. "I don't have a son. You can imagine, it's very sad," Wolferman said.

Ramon's death Saturday seemed a cruel twist of fate to a country that, for a few short weeks, has been captivated by a personal and professional odyssey that made them think of something beyond the deadly, daily Middle East conflict.

The astronaut's adventure was the lore of the tabloid press in the past month, which had emblazoned their front pages with his photo and banner headlines: "Israeli in Space" and "Touching the Sky." One newspaper cartoon captured the nation's eager mood in January with a wink at the memory of the historic words of Neil Armstrong, the first American who walked on the moon: "One small step for mankind, one giant leap for morale."

Israel had relished the achievements of Ilan Ramon, a 48-year-old Tel Aviv native and a father of four. He was a distinguished fighter pilot whose career had been burnished by exploits in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and then the Lebanon war in 1982. He was among the first Israeli pilots to learn to fly the F-16 and was one of the top guns, in a much-heralded raid, who attacked and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear facility under construction in 1981.