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By Ted Phillips
Astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, towered over the entrance to the Cradle of Aviation Museum as her statue was unveiled at the Uniondale institution Friday.
In bronze, a 7-foot Ride wearing NASA flight gear reaches up, lifting a small space shuttle with her right hand as if into the heavens where she made history in 1983 as a crew member on the shuttle Challenger.
"It's going to give us an opportunity to focus on Sally Ride's contributions beyond just being a shuttle astronaut," Andrew Parton, president of the museum, said Friday. "The stories of Sally Ride hopefully will inspire more kids, especially young girls, to really look at STEM as a career path," Parton said, referring to the abbreviation for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Born Los Angeles in 1951, Ride received...