Queer Places:
Woodlawn Cemetery Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, California, USA
Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American physicist and astronaut. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space in 1983. Ride was the third woman in space overall, after USSR cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1982). Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32.[1][2] After flying twice on the Orbiter Challenger, she left NASA in 1987. She worked for two years at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, then at the University of California, San Diego as a professor of physics, primarily researching nonlinear optics and Thomson scattering. She served on the committees that investigated the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, the only person to participate in both.[3][4] Ride died of pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012.
Ride was extremely private about her personal life. In 1982, she married fellow NASA astronaut Steve Hawley. They divorced in 1987.[21]
After Ride's death, her obituary revealed that her partner of 27 years was Tam O'Shaughnessy, a professor emerita of school psychology at San Diego State University and childhood friend, who met her when both were aspiring tennis players.[22][23] O'Shaughnessy was also a science writer and, later, the co-founder of Sally Ride Science.[24][25] O'Shaughnessy now serves as the Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board of Sally Ride Science.[26] They wrote six acclaimed children's science books together.[16] Their relationship was revealed by the company and confirmed by her sister, who said she chose to keep her personal life private, including her sickness and treatments.[27][28] She is the first known LGBT astronaut.[29][30]
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
Ride died on July 23, 2012, at the age of 61, in her home in La Jolla, California,[31] seventeen months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.[3][32][33][34] Following cremation, her ashes were interred next to her father[35] at Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery, Santa Monica.
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