Sutton is among the elite chosen for NASA camp

Thomas “Tom” Sutton, who completed his freshman year at Vandalia Community High School in the spring, was one of only eight chosen from the state of Illinois to attend the coveted 2012 NASA WINGS Camp.

That experience included actually co-piloting a plane for a brief time.
Learning of the program, one of Tom’s teachers, Amber Connor, biology and honors biology teacher in VCHS, wrote a letter of recommendation for him to attend the NASA camp.
The letter, in part, follows:
“I am currently in my fourth year of teaching, and have had the privilege of educating Thomas Joseph Sutton in my freshman honors biology course. Thomas is also an active member in our Science Club, which I sponsor as well.
“Throughout the year, he has succeeded in taking all honors classes, including mine, which is honors biology. Our honors biology class is available only to the top 15 eighth-grade students coming into our high school each year. They are evaluated and placed in my class based on their EXPLORE test scores, current grades/GPA  and teacher recommendations.
“He is one of the top students when it comes to his grade, he is highly inquisitive, constantly asking intelligent questions that pertain not only to our lessons, but to modern/real world situations, and he is highly liked and valued by his peers.”
In Person
Tom is a courteous, respectful and soft-spoken young man. He shows no evidence of boastfulness nor arrogance about being chosen for the NASA camp, a selection that was based on his academic performance and intelligence.
Rather, he humbly said that when he was co-piloting a plane, he felt he might do something wrong.
His parents are Tom and Terri Sutton and he has a younger brother, Tyler. He attended the Fayette Christian Academy School until he entered VCHS as a freshman.
He plays the guitar and, sometimes he and Tyler, who plays the piano, entertain at the Evergreen Outreach program for nursing home residents.
Tom explained how the opportunity came to him.
“My biology teacher asked me one day if I was interested in going to the NASA Space Camp and I said, ‘Yes,’ so she signed me up. She wrote a letter to them, and they told me I was allowed to go.”
Tom went to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where the camp was held. “They showed us a lot about how to fly and how to navigate, a lot of different stuff that had to do with flight,” he said.
Tom was the only person from this area of the state picked for the camp.
“There were three or four people from the Chicago area and some from around the Carbondale area,” he said. He was very modest about the fact, but admitted he felt honored to have been chosen.
The camp was not about the space program.
“It was a flight camp sponsored by the NASA program,” he said. “NASA had a representative come down, but (the camp) was to get people interested in flight, which is the first step.”
Tom said he was more interested in the engineering aspect and coming up with ideas that would work for planes than to actually fly.
“We did go up multiple times,” he said. “Two different days, Tuesday and Thursday, we went up for an hour, then switched pilots.
“The pilot would take two people up, and one (of us) would get to co-pilot and fly the plane, then we would switch out and the other one would co-pilot and we would fly back to the Carbondale airport.
“Then, on Thursday, we flew to St. Louis to an airport and looked at models and replicas and other stuff. Then we flew to another airport to look at more replicas and learn about air flight.”
Tom said he flew as a co-pilot for about 20 minutes each time, but they had actual flight time with the pilot. “I was OK with flying, but when I was co-piloting, I wasn’t really sure; I kept feeling I might do something wrong.”
In the Future
Tom has no long-range plans at present, except “ to study about anything that I might need. I will probably career-hop, because I have way too many things that I would like to do.”
Tom has a real thirst for knowledge and, wanting to increase his knowledge, he plans to work his way through college to learn more. But wisely, he plans to major in one thing, to get a basic education that will allow him to get a job and make enough money to allow him to continue learning in college.
Summing Up
He said his brother is a computer whiz, and that he is better at doing things with his hands, not as an artist, but writing and figuring things out.
In other words, he is very creative and imaginative, and will probably author some books in the future.
He likes sports, and plays soccer. He has a sense of humor, and although he excels in all academic areas, he said that his favorite subject in school is “the one that there is no test that day.”
He is active in both school and church activities. He attends First Baptist Church of Vandalia. “I have been going to church since I was 1 week old.”
He sings in the choir, is a member of the youth group, goes on the church youth missions and trips, helps with the children’s extended care on Sundays and helps with the church Clothes Closet.
He enjoyed the NASA Flight Camp, the flight experiences and the knowledge he came home with.
And, as a normal youth, he especially enjoyed the challenge of the egg drop participation in which uncooked eggs were wrapped in protective  materials and dropped from extreme  heights.
The team tjat Tom was on wrapped their egg so well, it never broke from being dropped from several stories … and they won the contest.
A well-rounded, courteous, sincere, conscientious and very intelligent young man and, as to Tom Joseph Sutton’s future, even the sky may not be the limit.