Mark Kelly

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Mark Kelly : biography

February 21, 1964 –

Shooting in Tucson

Kelly’s wife, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in an assassination attempt on January 8, 2011, putting Kelly in the national spotlight. On February 4, Kelly described the previous month as the hardest time of his life and he expressed his gratitude for the enormous outpouring of support, good wishes and prayers for his wife. He said that he believed people praying for her helped.

Kelly received word that his wife had been shot from an aide of the Congresswoman almost immediately after the shooting. He flew from Houston to Tucson with members of his family. While on route the Kellys received an erroneous news report that Giffords had died. "The kids, Claudia and Claire started crying. My mother, she almost screamed. I just walked into the bathroom, and you know, broke down." Calling family in Tucson, Kelly found out that the report was false and that she was alive and in surgery. "It was a terrible mistake," Kelly said, "as bad as it was that she had died, it’s equally exciting that she hadn’t."

From the time he arrived in Tucson, Kelly sat vigil at his wife’s bedside as she struggled to survive and began to recover. As her condition began to improve, the Kelly-Giffords family researched options for rehabilitation facilities, and chose a center in Houston. On January 21, Giffords was transferred to an ICU unit at the Memorial Hermann–Texas Medical Center Hospital where she spent five days prior to moving to TIRR Memorial Hermann, where she continued her recovery and rehabilitation.

Giffords and her husband had spoken dozens of times about how risky her job was. She was afraid that someone would come up to her at a public event with a gun. In an interview filmed just over a week after the shooting Kelly said "She has Tombstone, Arizona, in her district, the town that’s too tough to die. Gabrielle Giffords is too tough to let this beat her."

Aftermath

A memorial service for those killed was held on January 12, 2011, at the University of Arizona. President Barack Obama flew to Tucson to speak at the memorial. Kelly sat between Michelle Obama and Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, the previous governor of Arizona. At the end of the service President Obama consoled and embraced him, after which Kelly returned to the hospital to be with his wife.

Kelly spoke on February 3, 2011, at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. His remarks closed the event where President Obama also spoke. The attack on his wife brought Kelly closer to God and gave him a newfound awareness regarding prayer. Kelly said that prior to the attack, "I thought the world just spins and the clock just ticks and things happen for no particular reason." Kelly said that in Tucson, as he found himself wandering in makeshift memorials and shrines, filled with bibles and angels that "You pray where you are. You pray when God is there in your heart." Kelly offered the final prayer of the morning. The prayer was from Rabbi Stephanie Aaron, who married Kelly and Giffords, and who said the same words over Giffords’ on the night of the shooting:

Kelly believes that there’s now a chance to change a political environment he thinks is filled with far too much vitriol. He hoped that the tragedy would also be an opportunity to improve the tone of our national dialogue and cool down the rhetoric. In response to a question on February 4, regarding the discussions about civility in politics Kelly said: "I haven’t spent a lot of time following that but I think that with something that was so horrible and so negative and the fact that six people lost their lives, including a nine-year old girl, a federal judge, Gabby’s staff member Gabe—who was like a younger brother to her—it’s really really a sad situation. I am hopeful that something positive can come out of it. I think that will happen, so those are good things."

On March 28, 2012 SpaceX announced that Mark Kelly would be part of an independent safety advisory panel composed of leading human spaceflight safety experts.