MORGANTOWN, W.Va (WDTV) – Emily Calandrelli, the Morgantown native, Netflix host, author and soon-to-be astronaut, took time out of her busy schedule Tuesday to read to kids currently living in WVU Medicine Children’s.
Soon, Calandrelli will be heading to the stars… literally. But, at WVU Medicine Children’s, her mission was much closer to home.
Calandrelli read her book, “Reach For the Stars,” to a patient at the hospital, hoping to inspire him to follow his own journey.
“Who would have ever thought this girl from Morgantown, West Virginia would be going to space?” Calandrelli asked. “It’s just like a dream I don’t think I was bold enough to dream when I was their age, so my goal is to help them have the courage to dream.”
West Virginia has a storied history of its citizens exploring and studying space, and Calandrelli hopes to put her name in the history books alongside some of the greats.
“To just show the people of the region how far we can reach, how far we can go, it’s meaningful to me to be a part of the West Virginia legacy of Katherine Johnson, Homer Hickham and Chuck Yager,” Calandrelli said.
Calandrelli will be in orbit for 12 months with Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin. She hopes to help inspire the entire state when she blasts off.
“My goal was to leverage my flight to uplift my home state of West Virginia. I think we all know being from West Virginia, when West Virginia is in the national news, it’s not often for reasons we would like it to be, so I’m so excited to be able to uplift West Virginia in this positive way,” Calandrelli said.
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