Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 12, 1993 TAG: 9312120051
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
DATELINE: WHEATON, ILL. LENGTH: Short
At Edwin Hubble Middle School in this Chicago suburb, the pupils are used to such ribbing. It hasn't been easy sharing a name with the Hubble Space Telescope, which cost billions of dollars but didn't work right, forcing scientists to squint into the farthest reaches of space.
Embarrassment city. Especially for Hubble pupils.
Until now. After astronauts conducted five spacewalks and painstaking eye and brain surgery on the four-story-tall patient sometimes described as an astral Mr. Magoo, scientists believe the telescope's vision may have been corrected.
"This is kind of a vindication," said Chuck Miller, principal of Hubble Middle School. It is also hoped to be the end of sneering comments from pupils at rival Wheaton middle schools: Edison, Franklin and Monroe.
"They call us the Hubble bubbles. They think we're weak," said Christie Guido, a Hubble 8th grader.
"They think we're all broken up, like the stupid telescope," said Julie Berland, one of Christie's classmates.
"They're just mad, because we beat them in everything," added Jeff Kolb, another classmate.
Now that the repair mission is completed, pupils are contemplating sassy comebacks for their snide peers.
Some pupils want to mimic Hubble's convalescence: "We should all wear Band-Aids, like, to volleyball games and stuff," suggested Wende Adams, an 8th-grader at Hubble.
And she suggested this comeback for hecklers from the school named for Edison: "Our telescope cost more than your light bulb."
by CNB