Students at Lamping Elementary School hold a ceremony Wednesday marking the third anniversary of the space shuttle Columbia disaster. Photos by John Locher. Audrey McCool, standing at left, talks with second-grade teacher Leesa Apodaca at Lamping Elementary School on Wednesday during an event honoring McCool's son, William, who died aboard the space shuttle Columbia three years ago.

Three years after their son's death aboard the space shuttle Columbia, Las Vegas residents Audrey and Barry McCool are looking toward the future.

The future to them comes in the form of the hearts and minds of students at Lamping Elementary School, where a state-of-the-art science center bears the name of their son, astronaut William McCool.

"Our whole existence depends on them," Barry McCool said in a telephone interview as he was dressing up in a flight suit for Lamping students. "They're a very important commodity."

Students honored the memory of William McCool and his six crew mates Wednesday by placing bouquets of pink roses on benches outside the center bearing the names and engravings of the astronauts.

The day marked the third anniversary of the Columbia disaster, when the shuttle was destroyed upon re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

Hundreds of students, some wearing "Science Rocks" T-shirts, sat outside the William McCool Science Center on campus, a $600,000 facility that features a two-thirds scale shuttle cockpit, mission control center, computer lab and observatory.

Improving science education -- and helping children achieve their dreams -- is the legacy the McCools would like to continue for their son.

"These kids here, they're bright," Audrey McCool said. "They just need the right opportunities."

She read a book to a class of second-graders inside the center after a short ceremony, and took photos of the benches for her own keepsake.

She said that she and her husband, both professors at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, don't get to visit the school, located near Eastern Avenue and Green Valley Parkway, as often as they would like. But the community and the school feel their influence nonetheless.

Second-grade teacher Leesa Apodaca said she has never worked at a school that had such a facility.

"I'm new to Las Vegas, and I'm very impressed," she said.

With the science center, teachers have even succeeded in piquing student interest in a subject that many find dull.

"As soon as (students) see the science center on the calendar, they get excited," she said.

The key, said Frank Lamping, the school's namesake and longtime Clark County educator, is to get students involved at an early age.

"It starts here," Lamping said. "It has to start here."

Few elementary schools in the district have science teachers, he said, and making middle school the first exposure students have to science is a mistake.

At Lamping, science teacher Stephanie Steckler said the students are in the science center about once a week, and the activities are always hands-on.

"It gets kids excited, it gets them exploring instead of working in books," she said.

The center is not just focused on space exploration. Students replicate scientific experiments and paleontological digs.

Lamping said the center should be getting a replica of a dinosaur skeleton next week, and students will be able to unearth it in a sand pit behind the center and put it back together.

The center has plans to expand, building a greenhouse and a tri-desert garden where students can compare the Great Basin, Mojave and Sonoran deserts. To build the additions, the school will be hosting a fundraiser at Green Valley Ranch on March 3. Like the additions, the center was privately funded. Tickets for the fundraiser can be purchased by calling the school at 733-1330.

But nobody here forgets the reason why the science center was built.

"Willie's a hero for us," Lamping said. "And there aren't too many of those for kids these days."