A year ago, young Tre Hart and his family were featured on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” for a surprise reunion with his father, who was serving his country in Afghanistan.
The reunion included another big surprise for the young space fan: the promise of a trip to Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, which Delaware North operates for NASA.
Tre had come to the attention of Ellen DeGeneres after a video of him had gone viral. In the video, Tre’s hilarious reaction to his mother Shanee’s pregnancy news includes him saying it did not “make sense” and that he is “exasperated” by it. So DeGeneres decided Tre needed a break from his “stressful” young life, arranged the reunion and gave him and his family the trip.
Last week, the Hart family made the trip to Florida, spending a day with space shuttle astronaut Winston Scott, taking a tour of the Apollo/Saturn V Center and Space Shuttle Atlantis, hopping a ride on the Shuttle Launch Experience and seeing some aspects of what it would be like to be in space via the Astronaut Training Experience.
The next day, the family toured the rest of the visitor complex and met several NASA and Delaware North officials. Tim Ferris, chief of the visitor complex for NASA, presented the family with annual passes so they can come back and visit again soon. WESH-TV 2, the NBC Orlando affiliate, ran several stories about the visit.
Pictured at right (left to right) are Darlene Koenig, vice president of new business development for Delaware North at the visitor complex; Tre Hart; Nick Beasley, Tre’s cousin; Therrin Protze; chief operating officer of the visitor complex for Delaware North; Shanee Hart, Tre’s mother; William Hart, his father; and Ferris.
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