“We saw a big ball of fire rushing across the sky and a little spark came off of it," recalls Tulsan Lottie Williams.She’s been on the earth for 56 years but Williams remembers one day best of all, back in 1997.
“I'd never seen anything like that.”
It was something strange in the sky during an early morning walk in O’Brien Park.
“I felt a little tap on the back of my left shoulder and I thought someone was just trying to get my attention, and I knew everybody else that I walked with were nowhere near me to be doing that,” says Williams. “I turned around and looked back because you could hear it hit the ground.”
She kicked it into the light and saw a metallic piece of something that could fit in the palm of her hand.
“Originally I thought it was a shooting star, I'm laughing because that's what I thought I had, I thought I had a piece of a star,” said Williams.
She made some calls, went to the library, then got in touch with the National Weather Service.
“The gentleman told me it was a Delta II rocket that had reentered earth's atmosphere. I said well I have a piece of it and it hit me, so he laughed and he said you need to call the news media,” said Williams.
In 2001,after tests were completed, she got a letter from the government.
“Fiberglass fabric consistent with that used on the Delta II second stage rocket chamber,” she reads from the letter. “Everybody was trying to tell me it wasn't possible, but I knew better than that because I HAD it, if I hadn't had it I probably would've said the same thing but I had it.”
Two larger pieces landed on open land in Texas.
“If I got hit again I don't know if I'd be as lucky or blessed to be hit by such a small piece!”
This week Williams has been closely watching the skies and another satellite headed toward earth.
“They say lightning doesn't strike twice but then again I saw a guy struck by lightning three times, I don't want to be him,” Williams says.
She’s stored her little piece of space junk, her “star” that landed her a spot in history, in a safe place.
“I’m still not giving it back. I mean it's mine it hit me! I look at it like this: It belonged to them when they sent it into outer space, but when it returned, they weren't planning on getting it back anyway, it was going in the ocean. So it belongs to me. So it's mine, so it's safe.”
